Kondylis' methodology ("Power and Decision", Intellectual History, and "Planetary Politics")

Abstract: In my presentation, I will draw an explanatory line between three strands in Kondylis' work: the theory of power as set out in Power and Decision, political theory as set out in Planetary Politics after the Cold War, and the methodology of the history of ideas as set out in The Enlightenment in the Framework of Modern Rationalism and The Modern Era Critique of Metaphysics. The theory of power holds all these works together and introduces the basic concepts on an anthropological level, which also guide Kondylis' analyses of the history of ideas. The basic question that guides Kondylis' analysis of polemical constellations could be formulated as follows: Who, when, in what polemical constellation, took what position against whom, for what reasons, and in what situation of power struggle? The political aspect of this question is obvious; what I want to shed more light on is how it is rooted in socio-ontological anthropology, i.e. how it can be understood as the unfolding of the relationship between power claim (Machtanspruch), self-assertion, (Selbstbehauptung) and the implicitly polemical constitution of the worldview (Weltbildkonstitution).