Scientist and philosopher. He has lectured in Cultural History at Humboldt University for many years, and currently heads the International Research Centre for Cultural Studies in Vienna. His main research areas are temporality, death, cults of the dead, religion in modernity, the aesthetics of the monstrous and the cultural history of relations between man and animals. A prolific thinker and author, highlights among his publications include two books of conversations, one with Peter Sloterdijk, Gott, Geist und Geld (God, Spirituality and Money) and another with Anselm Kiefer, Am Anfang. Kunst und Gnosis (Anselm Kiefer: In the Beginning, Art and Gnosis), as well as his work Das Leben ist ungerecht (Life is Unfair) about how illness, disability, life expectancy and causes of death question the socio-political ideals of justice. He has also dealt in depth with suicide, the subject of his book Arrebatar la vida (Snatching Away Life, Herder) and humans’ relations with an animal species, Cerdos (Pigs, Adriana Hidalgo), to discuss the sense of foreboding that pervades corners of the familiar.
- Why We Have Built Ourselves This Way
