«Wir stehen an einer Zeitenwende!» Davon ist die Historikerin Annette Kehnel überzeugt. Vor allem mit Blick auf unserer Freiheitsverständnis. Doch sieht sie darin auch eine Chance in ein neues, nachhaltigeres Wirtschaften. Vor allem, wenn wir unsere Vorstellungskraft nicht auf Lösungen und Gedanken der letzten 200 Jahre begrenzen. Selbst oder gerade Wirtschaftsformen des Mittelalters, ist Kehnel überzeugt, enthalten wertvolle Zukunftsinspirationen für eine ökologische Wende.

Was heutige Welthandelsorganisationen von Bodenseefischern des 14. Jahrhunderts lernen könnten, warum «ungeordnetes Begehren» die Mutter aller Sünden ist, Diogenes die Tiny-House-Bewegung gegründet hat und welche alten Teufel gerade heut wieder unseren Verstand vernebeln, erklärt sie in diesem Gespräch mit Wolfram Eilenberger. Denn: «Geschichte schult unseren Möglichkeitssinn» – und gerade diesen Sinn gilt es gegenwärtig neu zu schärfen!

Prof. Annette Kehnel ist Inhaberin des Lehrstuhls für mittelalterliche Geschichte und Ria & Arthur Dietschweiler Fellow am St.Gallen Collegium. Zu ihren Werken zählt neben «Die sieben Todsünden – Menschheitswissen für das Zeitalter der Krise» (2024) auch das preisgekrönte Buch «Wir konnten auch anders – Eine kurze Geschichte der Nachhaltigkeit» (2021).

"The Free Market" has been a dominant concept in 20th century political and economic discourse – so dominant in fact that it has remained unquestioned. It has become both ambition and panacea as is reflected by the conditionalities of development banks. Let the "invisible Hand" reign supreme and all shall be well, seems to be the mantra. Yet in the 21st century, even the US right, once stalwart defenders of libertarianism, have fallen out of love with "the free market." We dissect the history of the "free market" with historian Jacob Soll whose recent book "The Free Market: History of an Idea" busts many a myth.

Jacob Soll is Professor of Philosophy, History, and Accounting at the University of Southern California. He received a BA from the University of Iowa, a D.E.A. from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France, and a Ph.D. from Magdalene College, Cambridge University. He has taught at Cambridge University, Princeton University, Rutgers University, and the European University Institute in Fiesole, Italy, and USC. Soll has been awarded numerous prestigious prizes including the Jacques Barzun Prize from the American Philosophical Society, two NEH Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and, in 2011, the $500,000 MacArthur "Genius Prize" Fellowship. His book "The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations" (2014) has been a global best seller.

What does it mean to be free – in an age of artificial intelligence, total transparency, and the permanent carnival of modern life? Political anthropologist Arpad Szakolczai explores the cultural roots of our understanding of freedom in this conversation with Wolfram Eilenberger – from the Greek ideas of autonomia, autarkia, and eleutheria to the paradoxes of technology and modernity.

Szakolczai sees our world in a state of “permanent carnival”: everything becomes spectacle, stage, and simulation of freedom, while we increasingly become slaves to technology. And an economy in which escaping nature is mistaken for being free. Yet true freedom, he argues, does not arise from fleeing nature but from living consciously within it.

In his critique of liberalism, Szakolczai traces how markets grew out of medieval fairs, how rationality can turn into unreason, and what charis – the Greek notion of “grace” – can teach us about a more humane future. Szakolczai reminds us: Freedom must be lived, not programmed.

Arpad Szakolczai is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at University College Cork in Ireland and Michael Hilti Fellow at the St. Gallen Collegium. His work combines political anthropology, sociology, and philosophy, focusing on liminality, charisma, and the crises of modernity. Among his numerous publications are Permanent Liminality and Modernity: Analysing the Sacrificial Carnival through Novels (2017) and Comedy and the Public Sphere: The Rebirth of Theatre as Comedy and the Genealogy of the Modern Public Arena (2013).