The Wallerstein Institute is partnering with Falk Bretschneider and Rainer Maria Kiesow at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris, on a program of mobile theory walks developed under the auspices of the EHESS’ EURETES program in collaboration with the Centre Georg Simmel as part of their joint series: Making Society (Faire société).
Program description
In 1978, Jürgen Habermas compiled a number of historically oriented studies on the theory of society in a book entitled Theory and Practice. The question of the relationship between theory and practice is an old one. Karl Marx’s 11th thesis on Ludwig Feuerbach is famous, for example: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it”. Thinking or acting, thinking and acting, thinking first then acting, acting instead of thinking — the theoretical, practical, artistic and political arenas of the relationship between theory and practice continue to haunt us to this day in every consideration of what ought to be done in the face of the multiple crises of the present: war, the environment, the economy, society, democracy, etc.
One way of reflecting on the connection between theory and practice presents itself, quite practically: to visit the places where the theories originated. It is by no means an easy question to decide whether places have anything to do with theories. Undoubtedly, however, some places are linked to certain theories; indeed, some theories bear the names of these places. In any case, going to where theory was practised — at a university, for example — is a very practical way of approaching it. Hence the “theory walks”. For since the time of the Peripatetics in ancient Athens, theory has (also) been developed whilst walking. This is precisely what we want to do: with students, with professors, with colleagues on the ground, always with an international focus, because perspectives from different countries, each with their own traditions regarding “theory and practice”, enable a broadening of our intellectual outlook.
The theory walks are undertaken as part of the EURETES programme at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, which takes the figure of the εὑρετής (inventor, discoverer, creator of an idea) as its model; more specifically, within the EURETES project “Faire société” between the Centre Georg Simmel at the EHESS and Goethe University Frankfurt. Each theory walk lasts two days and three nights, with the respective theories being discussed in a seminar format on the first day, whilst on the second day the locations associated with the theory are visited and discussed. The second principle of every theory walk is multilingualism: German, French, and preferably a third language if partners from other countries are involved.
Walks held
- Bielefeld, December 2024 — Niklas Luhmann and the Bielefeld School
- Berlin, December 2025 — Berlin as a setting for modernity: Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, Niklas Luhmann, Georg Simmel
Walks scheduled
- Frankfurt am Main, October 2026 — the Frankfurt School
- Vienna, April 2027 — Sigmund Freud, Karl Popper, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Vienna Circle (Rudolf Carnap, Kurt Gödel, Otto Neurath, Moritz Schlick), the Vienna Secession
- Paris, autumn 2027 — French Theory
- Korčula and Dubrovnik, June 2028 — a combined walk: the Praxis Group’s Korčula summer school, which drew Zygmunt Bauman, Ernst Bloch, Lucien Goldmann, Jürgen Habermas, Ágnes Heller, Henri Lefebvre, Georg Lukács and Herbert Marcuse; and Braudel’s The Mediterranean in the Dubrovnik Archive
Further walks in planning
- Lviv — Hersch Lauterpacht, Raphael Lemkin, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
- Turin — Antonio Gramsci
- Zurich — Exile during the Second World War
- Jena — The invention of the self / individual around 1800
- Others to be determined