Der Utopie eine Stadt geben

Gespräch mit Klaus Heinrich

Abstract

Klaus Heinrich discusses with Wolfram Ette and Volkmar Billig to what extent cities can be understood as historical utopias which make transparent the conflicts, breaks and infringements which defi ne human life. Are ruins, fallow land and nature growing into the city mere signs of economic decline and failed city planning? Or do they rather function – even inadvertently – as a realist correction of a misguided urbanist rationalism? According to Klaus Heinrich, Religious studies expound „the repressed of philosophy“. In doing so they not only pick up on religions but also the arts and, eventually, also psychoanalysis which itself is a practice countering the rationalism of European enlightenment.