With the deaths of Jürgen Habermas and Alexander Kluge, an entire era has lost its voice and intellectual conscience.

Just a few weeks ago, the filmmaker, writer and visual artist Alexander Kluge, who passed away on March 25th, gave an interview in which he spoke of his 70-year friendship with Jürgen Habermas. “Fundamentally, there is no difference [between us],” Kluge stated. That sounds rather vague, but it is entirely accurate in describing the depth of their commonalities. But what specifically connects the two?

The answer is not only their association with the famous Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, but also an unabashed rejection of the Adenauer world of the 1950s, from which the so-called Suhrkampkultur —to which both wholeheartedly belonged — sprang and which continues to shape the intellectual mainstream in Germany to this day. Habermas and Kluge, each in their own way, through meticulously detailed work and with remarkable productivity, gave the German Left a voice and thus contributed significantly to its aestheticisation and academisation. But what remains of these two influential figures in a world that is increasingly turning its back on their premises, ideals, and practices; one in which public and non-authoritarian rational discourse, supported aesthetically and culturally by a productive counter-public sphere, is no longer the measure of things?

What Kind of Reason Was Habermas Actually Talking About?

Let us first turn to the philosopher himself. Whilst the German feuilletons are currently erecting a posthumous monument to Habermas, intended to remind us that we have no choice but to continue working on his Enlightenment project, critical voices that recoil from such glorification multiply.

When Habermas is praised as the last defender of reason, one cannot help but become sceptical and ask what kind of reason Habermas was actually talking about. This form of rationality is no longer the excellent tool that enables us to recognise the world and its limits (as it was with Kant or Thomas Aquinas), but rather a communicative faculty emptied of all metaphysical content, intended to guide us through procedural considerations to ethical decisions.

The inadequacy of Habermas’s project of reason, however, is evident above all in the fact that, ultimately, no truly politically viable decisions can be made on the basis of its premises, because a politically consequential formulation of the general will through discourse, based on interests that are in principle incommensurable and worldviews held by actors with no interest in cross-partisan compromise, is simply impossible to conceive of empirically, let alone to apply.

Sharpening the Functional Definition of Religion

Years ago, in a remarkable discussion in the magazine Merkur, Robert Spaemann invoked these arguments to reproach Habermas for his inability to dispense with the idea of a wise ruler or decision-maker, since otherwise discourse ethics would risk slipping into utopianism. At this point, we could cite further examples, including the absence of a consistent theory of the good, which cast doubt on whether Habermas deserves the place accorded to him in the pantheon of modern philosophy.

Perhaps we could highlight Habermas’s interest in religion and theology as a distinctive hallmark of his thought. Here, too, caution is called for. Just because Habermas was interested in theology does not mean that it became part of his thought. As Peter Hoeres rightly observes, Habermas never moved beyond a primitive and thus mistaken understanding of religion and theology. Even in his unpublished dissertation on Schelling, he attempted to strip anthropology of its theological and speculative elements in order to align it with a Neo-Marxist philosophy of history.

Habermas’ media-friendly exchange with Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, on secularisation cannot obscure the fact that we were dealing here with a thinker who sought out compliant interlocutors whom he used as a foil to further sharpen his functional concept of religion. This is evidenced clearly in his recently expressed regret that large sections of contemporary theology merely parrot the prevailing ideas of the age and attempt to articulate belief in God in the language of a spiritualistically charged philosophy of existence.

One thing is thus clear: until the end of his life, although he always adapted to the philosophical fashions and trends of his time, Habermas stood in the tradition of Adorno and not in that of Horkheimer, who, at the end of his career, certainly attempted to effect a genuine religious turn.

Kluge and Habermas: Complementarity of Worldviews

But let us now turn to Alexander Kluge. It may at first seem surprising to place Habermas alongside one of the most influential and versatile intellectuals and media figures in contemporary Germany, but this example only shows how deeply a certain form of thinking, acting and evaluating has penetrated into the hidden nooks and crannies of the local cultural landscape. Kluge and Habermas struck the same intellectual and political note is demonstrated not only by their friendship, but also by their ideological complementarity.

Like Habermas, Kluge explores the various cultural possibilities and political forms of expression offered by the ‘post-metaphysical’ age to his advantage. For both Habermas and Kluge, there is no transcendence, no ‘view from nowhere’ (Thomas Nagel). Whilst Habermas settles into and indulges in the horizontality of linguistic-pragmatic acrobatics, Kluge follows suit in his own way by collecting or creating countless media objects that present themselves to the viewer as works of art, but instead express and document the world’s disintegration into various objects, the resistance of which the modern artist must grapple with.

This anti-essentialist undertone ensures that the viewer and reader feel adrift and cannot—and are not allowed to—find any point of connection to their own experience of the world and its values. The present author thus can no longer recall anything when he thinks back to his visit to a Kluge retrospective in 2019 at the Munich Literaturhaus. Kluge, who was once described by Adorno’s wife Gretel as an ‘adopted son’, was a typical child of his time, who seemingly felt more at home in the shadow than in the light of great ideas.

What remains? With the deaths of Habermas and Kluge, an entire generation – whose mainstream had more or less consciously aligned itself with both men – undoubtedly loses two of the most formative intellectual figures in post-war Germany, a country defined by its search for a new direction. With them, we must also bid “farewell to yesterday” (to quote the title of one of Kluge’s films); that is, to the hegemony of a culture which, through its homogenising grip over universities and cultural life, was increasingly unable, to paraphrase Nietzsche, to “think against its own thoughts”.

Dr. Martin Hähnel is the director of the Carlsbad Institute and a lecturer at the University of Bremen.

I.

To understand a nation’s strategic culture is to unravel the essence of that nation. Conversely, to fully comprehend a country, it is essential to recover and examine its tradition of strategic thinking, both in the sense of a consciously elaborated body of theoretical literature on strategy and statescraft , and in the way that its leaders, over time, interpreted and reacted to the world’s challenges and opportunities. Only from this act of introspection can a solid vision be built, serving as the foundation for a national project.

How about Brazil, in this context? In certain regards, the nation’s rich and complex history has been relegated to oblivion. Brazil’s historical trajectory, marked by processes of colonisation, independence, and development, is nevertheless full of lessons that can underpin robust Brazilian strategic thinking. For this strategy to materialise, a conscious effort of recovery, understanding, and reformulation of the nation’s political thought is necessary. This is a process that requires the careful study of Brazilian history and the recognition of the internal dynamics that have shaped its identity.

Developing a national style of strategic thought is not an empty exercise in nostalgia. It means identifying what constitutes Brazil’s “spirit” as a nation, charting a path that allows not only for overcoming adversities but also for building a clear and inspiring vision for the future. The formulation of this strategy demands a constant dialogue between past and future, between tradition and innovation, a dynamic balance that allows for the creation of a strong nation, aware of its values, and confident in its potential.

II.

After the 2024 local elections, the mayor of Recife, João Campos, re-elected in an impressive victory in the first round with 78.11% of the votes, participated in a television interview on the program Roda Viva. The discussion prompted a curious question when a journalist asked the politician which books had influenced his worldview. Campos, grandson of former governor Miguel Arraes and heir to a long lineage of power in the state of Pernambuco, responded with three titles that he claimed were fundamental to his formation: Daron Acemoğlu’s Why Nations Fail; Rutger Bregman’s Utopia for Realists; and the Getúlio Trilogy, by Lira Neto.

This answer, as expected, led to heated reactions. Many found it unusual that a leader from a historic Pernambuco family involved for decades in local politics would mention two books by foreign authors to explain his worldview instead of national reference works. Skeptical voices also emerged, doubting the authenticity of the selection and even the notion that Campos had read these books, suggesting that it might have been a deliberate choice to appear well-informed and cosmopolitan.

But perhaps what matters in this answer lies less in the doubt about the mayor’s sincerity and more in the symbolism of these choices. The mix of those works reflects a contradictory vision that to some extent characterises the Brazilian political elites, especially those from the Northeast Region and the state of Pernambuco, who often legitimate power with a discourse of modernity and progress, but maintain it through practices of resource extraction, patrimonialism, and authoritarianism. These three books, for all their differences, seem to form a symptomatic triad of this ambiguous thinking: on one hand, the search for a modernizing and utopian ideal; on the other, the rootedness in traditional power practices.

Daron Acemoğlu’s Why Nations Fail is known for its thesis that inclusive and extractive institutions are the main drivers of a country’s development or stagnation. For the author, societies that adopt extractive institutions, where power and wealth are concentrated in the hands of a few, tend to fail. This is a vision with a peculiar echo in the Brazilian context, where the concentration of political and economic power remains a difficult reality to circumvent. João Campos’ choice of this book, as a politician from a traditional family, carries a historical irony. Will he really be able to apply in practice what Acemoğlu theorises, combating structures of exclusion and a concentration of power that his own house has been part of for generations?

Utopia for Realists, by Rutger Bregman, offers a more hopeful approach, with proposals aimed at making the world fairer and more egalitarian, such as universal basic income and the reduction of working hours. These modern ideas imply a worldview that aims to break with the status quo towards a less unequal society. Yet the actual implementation of these proposals in a context marked by patrimonialism and authoritarianism is more challenging. To what extent can Bregman’s progressive ideas prosper in a system where power is strongly centralised and local political structures resist radical changes?

Lira Neto’s The Getúlio Trilogy charts the trajectory of one of the most influential and controversial leaders in Brazilian history, former President Getúlio Vargas, whose government shaped contemporary Brazil with labor and industrial reforms, but also did much to deepen those elements of authoritarianism and personalism that we have already discussed. Vargas is seen as the creator of an epoch in which the centralisation of power, accompanied by social concessions, profoundly shaped Brazilian politics. It is significant that João Campos includes this work in his repertoire, as Getúlio personifies a centralizing leadership model that still resonates in Brazil today, especially in the relations between political elites and society. It serves as a reminder of the risks of any ideal of progress associated with authoritarian methods of control.

These literary choices reveal the intrinsic tension within Brazilian political elites between self-identification with the (supposed) values of progress and modernity while maintaining patrimonialist and, often, authoritarian practices. This contradiction, which permeates Brazil’s political history, is particularly present in the Northeastern Region with its deeply rooted oligarchic heritage. By invoking these works, Campos seems to give voice, perhaps unintentionally, to this spiritual duality present in Brazil’s political elites: a desire to advance towards an ideal of justice and inclusion, accompanied by a silent but persistent coexistence with the most primitive techniques of power and the maintenance of a highly abusive relationship between the electorate and the political class.

João Campos, in his search for a modern and critical vision, seems to echo the stance of former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC), a sociologist from the University of São Paulo (USP) by background, who also trod an ambivalent path between political modernisation and the deep roots of the Brazilian ethos. In 2003, FHC prefaced an edition of Gilberto Freyre’s Casa-Grande & Senzala (The Masters and the Slaves), one of the most celebrated yet simultaneously most controversial books in Brazilian historiography. In the introduction, the former president offers an analysis that mixes reluctant praise with criticisms of the work and its author. FHC does not diminish Freyre’s historical relevance but points out the limitations of an interpretation that, according to him, almost romantically exalts the “cordial” character and racial syncretism of Brazilian society without directly confronting the violence, inequality, and racism that, in his view, instead characterise Brazil.

For Cardoso, Freyre’s landmark work represented a white and colonial vision that was at its core trapped in a narrative that spoke from the coloniser’s perspective. In FHC’s words, Freyre’s vision is a “fiction” that accommodates, idealises, and, to some extent, distorts the contradictions of Brazilian society. He saw the Freyrean interpretation as a “flattening” of Brazil’s true problems, offering the country a mirror in which colonisation became a tale of harmonious coexistence, not a reality of exploitation and oppression.

The context in which FHC made this analysis is also significant. As an intellectual and politician, he was part of a social-democratic generation that saw the end of the Cold War and the rise of globalisation as a hallmark of the “End of History” — an era of triumphant liberalism in which ideologies appeared to converge. Cardoso – alongside figures like Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and António Guterres – led an attempt to reconcile ideals of social justice with the freer operation of the market mechanism and policies oriented towards economic openness. These politicians, although coming from left-wing or center-left parties, advocated an approach that combined the welfare state with a liberal orientation, seeking to modernise the state without breaking with the market economy.

FHC’s reflections centred on the essential question: the Brazilian ethos and its incompatibility with the liberal ideal. In a remarkable insight, he argued that Brazilian culture – historically patrimonialist, personalist, and collectivist – conflicts with liberalism, which places value on contractual relationships, impersonal norms, and individualism. Brazilian society, with its centralised organisation and its attachment to clientelism and favors, does not naturally fit the Anglo-Saxon liberal model, where the state is merely an impersonal arbiter between autonomous individuals. For the USP sociologist, Brazil’s social fabric is not prepared for the impersonal rationality of the shift from status to contract, but shaped by traditions that resist these precepts.

Can we say he is wrong? I don’t think so. I fully agree with him here. Our disagreement lies in what we point to as a solution to the problem. Cardoso intends to discard the real Brazil to impose this artificial and alien model on the society; I, on the contrary, intend to rescue Brazil by throwing off this institutional form that does not communicate with the country and its political tradition.

In this sense, it is ironic to think that FHC, one of the country’s greatest sociologists, would have wished to get rid of the figure of Macunaíma, the writer and poet Mário de Andrade’s “hero with no character.” Macunaíma represents Brazil’s ambiguous spirit: both cunning and lazy, adaptable and nonchalant, he is a character who embodies the ethos that FHC, in his analysis, criticises as an obstacle to Brazilian modernity. Macunaíma is, for many, the synthesis of an accommodating character and the search for immediate advantages, characteristics that do not align with the liberal mentality. FHC, as an intellectual and moderniser, wished for Brazil to overcome this mentality, creating a society governed by strong institutions and impersonal norms.

And here emerges a particularly contradictory point: it was none other than the former president Cardoso who implemented the reelection mechanism in Brazil, marking a turning point in the country’s political dynamics. Reelection, although considered an important development for political stability in many respects, broke the counter-cyclical logic previously dominant in Brazilian politics. Before, short and non-renewable terms encouraged policies aimed at the public good, as officeholders could not perpetuate themselves in power. By allowing reelection, FHC initiated a cyclical dynamic where the maintenance power became a new vector, encouraging self-preservation strategies characterised by short-term policies in anticipation of immediate electoral rewards.

This development reveals the central tension of the moderniser in Brazil, who always finds himself held back by the archaic forces he insists on underestimating or circumventing. The paradox is that, in trying to build a rational and modern state project, the reformer often ends up reinforcing the same power mechanisms he once criticised. This is the fundamental and chronic tension between Brazil’s archaic structures — patrimonialism, clientelism, personalism — and the periodically attempted liberal institutional model. It is a dissonance between form and content: while liberal institutions require a field of impersonality and respect for the general rule, Brazilian political tradition still operates under the weight of personal relationships and the pursuit of centralised control.Brazil’s modernisers, in their eagerness to update the country, end up remaining trapped in the old ethos of an elite that cannot, or will not, free itself from the privileges of its positions. This dilemma continues to haunt the country, reducing said progress to no more than ephemeral “concepts of a plan”, always reabsorbed by the weight of the archaic structures underlying the political system.

III.

The consensus seems solid: Brazil is, in its essence, a patrimonialist country. This heritage dates back to colonial times and continues to structure power relations today. To understand this diagnosis, it is fundamental to clarify what the term “patrimonialism” means and how it shapes our reality. The legal sociologist Raymundo Faoro, in his seminal work Os Donos do Poder - Formação do Patronato Político Brasileiro (The Owners of Power - Formation of Brazilian Political Patronage), investigates the development of this structure in Brazil, which he considers deeply rooted in the Portuguese colonial heritage. According to Faoro, the Portuguese patrimonialist model was transplanted to colonial Brazil and, over the centuries, became an inflexible mold that shaped the Brazilian State, influencing it from Independence, through the Empire, to the Republic.

Faoro describes this structure as a historical immutability supported by two pillars: economic and socio-political. In the economic sphere, he highlights what he calls “politically oriented capitalism.” Unlike liberal capitalism, where the logic is that of a market regulated by impersonal laws, the state in Brazil has always played a leading role in the economy in favour of the interests of a specific, privileged group within society that Faoro calls the “estamento”; in English the estate [after the old medieval system of estates – the implication of calling it simply “the estate” is that in Brazil there is only one social group that enjoys the privileges that this term would suggest – ed.]. Faoro uses the concept of “calculability,” borrowed from Max Weber, to demonstrate how the Brazilian State never offered legal certainty or predictability for free economic development. Instead, the State acts as a guarantor of the private interests of the estate, interfering and adjusting rules as suits this social stratum. Thus, Brazilian capitalism adopts the technical apparatus of modernity but rejects its “soul,” that is, impersonal rationality and respect for general norms. For Faoro, it is the state that sustains Brazilian capitalism, such that, without it, this system would not endure.

In the socio-political aspect, Faoro argues that Brazilian society is not primarily organised into classes as occurs in liberal capitalist societies. Instead, the society is divided between the bureaucratic estate and the remaining mass of the population. The estate, unlike a social class, is not primarily defined by economic factors but rather by social and political ties. It is a social stratum whose identity is strongly linked to its relationship with the state, not to economic activity. This etatised social structure does not offer the universalizing and equalizing potential typical of class societies. In a class society, there is a possibility of mobility and articulation of interests based on market relations; in an etatised society, like Brazil’s, social and political barriers become rigid and exclusive, perpetuating inequalities and particularisms.

For Faoro, the estate is more than a simple state bureaucracy. Although it uses the bureaucratic apparatus, it distinguishes itself by its exclusionary modus vivendi, by the social and political practices that differentiate it from the masses. Bureaucracy, as an organisation, is merely the vehicle through which the patrimonialist estate asserts and perpetuates itself; it is “bureaucratic” in function while essentially being an expression of patrimonial domination. This type of structure, deeply entrenched within the Brazilian state, prevents the formation of a rationalised capitalism in which economic agents can freely develop their potential under stable norms.

Patrimonialism is thus a specific form of domination in which power is exercised in a way that supports an elite that governs as if public goods and offices were private property. Max Weber offers a perspective on domination that helps to understand this phenomenon: for him, domination is not limited to the crude exercise of power but rather to the process by which the dominated accept the authority of the dominator. In patrimonialism, this acceptance occurs in an almost “natural” way, as Brazilian society has historically internalised the authority of the estate as something legitimate and normal, consolidating a tradition of obedience and conformity. Here, the relationship between dominators and dominated becomes a mechanism in which the estate reaffirms its power through the social validation of its authority.

In the 1990s, however, an ideological shift in favour of the dismantling of this structure occurred, at least in part. Inspired, among other elements, by Faoro’s diagnosis of patrimonialism, several political and economic currents emerged advocating for reducing the state’s role and reorganising it on supposedly modern and rational bases. The discourse of “demonising” the state emerged, seeking to reduce it and replace its presence with market forces. This movement was accompanied by an appreciation for “individual interest” as the organizing principle of society, seen by many as an attempt to break with the patrimonialist heritage.

This modernisation effort was met with ambivalence and failed to translate into structural change. After all, the roots of patrimonialism are deep in Brazilian political culture, and the patrimonialist state does not easily yield to the ideal of liberal capitalism. The patrimonial relationship between the estate and public power has survived all attempts to slim down the state, reconfiguring itself to accommodate the demands of modernity, but without ever abandoning its archaic nature – or its central role in politics and the economy.

This understanding of patrimonialism presented by Raymundo Faoro, who defines it as a form of domination where the boundaries between public and private are blurred, is an important point of departure for a truly Brazilian strategic culture. But instead of seeing it as a problem to be eradicated, I propose an alternative: it must be embraced. This is our ethos as Brazilians; a deeply rooted trait in the structure of Brazilian society and collective psychology. The grand projects of state and societal modernisation in Brazil are, in essence, imports of ideas and structures that have no roots in the nation’s context and end up throwing us into a state of constant tension and maladjustment.

The schizophrenic character of the Brazilian state — divided between the ideal of modernisation and the practice of personalism — stems from this fundamental dissonance between this foreign institutional model and the political culture we inherited. The attempt to impose an external political-institutional project, which follows the pattern of impersonal and objective rationality, meets resistance in a country that has always cultivated personal relationships and direct contact as legitimate ways of exercising and understanding power. Here it is not about rejecting universal principles of impersonality and transparency, but about recognising that, in Brazil, power takes on a distinct expression in which family relationships, patronage, and closeness occupy a central space. By imposing structures that disregard this aspect, we end up perpetuating a system marked by paradoxes and distortions, never managing to align form and content.

The first step to overcome this duality is not to fight against Brazil’s essence, but to create incentive mechanisms that are in tune with it. To build a state that is truly functional in Brazil, it is necessary to recognise the centrality of influence networks and personal relationships and not discard them as vestiges of an archaic practice. These relationships can, in fact, be utilised to serve the common good if they are encouraged to develop within parameters that promote responsibility, accountability, and transparency while respecting the direct bond that exists between public figures and their constituencies. Brazil is not a flawed version of other countries, but as an entity with that possesses its own logic and trajectory. The acceptance thereof is not a celebration of corruption or clientelism, but a search to find, within Brazilian practices and values, a way to build a more congruent, effective, and organic state.

IV.

Two examples help us understand the particular tension between political culture and institutionality that marks Brazil: the cases of Itapetinga in the State of Bahia and Melgaço in the State of Pará. In these, we glimpse how the Brazilian patrimonialist structure operates in local contexts, reflecting a dynamic where public power serves personal interests, while the needs of the population remain secondary.

In Itapetinga, a town with a modest economy, the elected mayor for the next term will earn a salary of R$28,400 [~€4530 at the time of writing – ed.], a value exceeding that of mayoral salaries in 17 state capitals across the country. The contrast between the economic situation of the town’s population and the mayor’s remuneration could not be more shocking. Based on IBGE data, only 26% of the population is formally employed, while 34% receive a monthly income corresponding to <50% of the minimum wage. Those formally employed are not much better off, earning an average monthly salary amounting to 160% of the 0 minimum wage, placing the town low in the state’s income ranking. The mayor, however, will enjoy a salary that positions him as one of the highest-paid municipal managers in Brazil.

This high salary becomes even more questionable when considering that the incoming mayor will succeed his own nephew in office. This practice reinforces the personalistic nature of local public administration, where the mayor’s office becomes the main vehicle for power and prestige. The city hall, in a town so dependent on welfare programs and with few formal employment options, is the largest employer and, consequently, the axis of power in the city. The mayor’s office is not just an administrative position, but the “largest company” in the town. In this model, the city’s economic development comes second to the maintenance of the manager’s personal privileges. The mayor is not required to deliver results that justify his high salary, as his re-election depends more on the distribution of positions and welfare benefits than on economic and social advances.

In Melgaço, state of Pará — the city with the lowest Human Development Index (HDI) score in Brazil — a pattern of yet more acute structural dysfunction can be observed. Only 6% of the city’s budget comes from its own revenues, while 94% comes from state and federal transfers. The main reason for this dependence is the absence of formal private property. Without deeds or land regularisation, there is no collection of IPTU (property tax), and the power relationship over property develops informally and tacitly. The city hall becomes the central authority in the absence of a legal property system, which creates a relationship of dependence between the public administration and the population. In this scenario, city hall employees occupy prominent positions in a context where the formal apparatus of rights and duties is replaced by a primitive system of exchanges and informal agreements.An unwritten social contract has emerged in Melgaço under which people build their homes on land that they occupy without any formal property rights , and the city hall, in turn, tolerates this occupation. Yet this permissiveness also implies the absence of obligations on the part of the city hall towards the propertyholders, which the population accepts in return for city hall’s tolerance of illegal tenancy. These examples illustrate the precariousness of life under the Brazilian institutional model, where local authorities operate in a feudal manner.

The relationship between the powerful and their subordinates, so characteristic of Brazil, manifests in ways that reinforce the patrimonialist and personalistic legacy of the country’s politics. In many cities, a common practice is for the children of local politicians to adopt their fathers’ first names as electoral surnames, thus reinforcing the bond and continuity of the family dynasty in power. This designation is not merely a choice of identification: it serves as a seal of belonging, a reminder to the electorate that this candidate is a direct heir to a tradition. In smaller cities, where family memory and trusted ties hold decisive weight, this strategy reinforces local power with an almost feudal touch, sustaining dynasties that perpetuate themselves through affective connection and a power over the popular imagination.

In larger cities, we find the same oligarchic phenomenon, but in a different format. João Campos, whom we already encountered in the city of Recife, is an example of this. A descendant of two of most influential political families from the state of Pernambuco, he represents the convergence of powerful lineages, carrying the weight of a name that mobilises voters. This type of political identity linked to heredity represents an even greater constraint, whereby power becomes almost a family asset, transmitted not only by competence or public vision, but by birthright.

Another common type of political figure, likewise shaped by the context of scarcity and the chronic inefficiency of public services, is the candidate with a functional link to an area of social need. Without delving into specific cases, one might imagine a fictitious candidate with a modest position in the healthcare field who uses his “insider” status to help the population in a tangible way. Due to the precariousness of Brazil’s Unified Health System (SUS), this individual could expedite appointments and solve minor problems, thus accumulating political capital and credibility within the community. This ability to transform a system failure into something akin to a personal favor makes him an ideal candidate transforming the ability to offer temporary relief and a familiar face for solving daily problems into hard political capital. He then runs for office, mobilizing his local prestige and the electorate’s dependence on his figure to supply what should be a right (which some understand to be universal).

These phenomena are more than mere examples of campaign strategies: they are direct reflections of the patrimonialist and clientelist nature that permeates Brazilian politics. When power is structured based on a logic of benefits and patronage, the incentives do not align behind improving or advancing the system; on the contrary, they preserve precarity, which reciprocally feeds these political figures. Small and medium-sized cities in Brazil become zones where systemic failure is a driving force that perpetuates dynasties and reinforces a dependent relationship between governor and governed. Under this mechanism, “progress” is undesirable, as clientelist politics thrives on the permanence of backwardness and the insufficiency of public services.

Politicians, therefore, are motivated not to fix the system, as it is precisely its failure that keeps them in power. There is no genuine interest in structural reforms or in developing policies that make citizens less dependent on the local intermediary. The more fragmented and dysfunctional the system, the easier it is for these characters to become indispensable to the electorate, as their promises are not about improving the collective, but about selectively addressing the personal and emergency needs of the voter. It is a politics where what sustains the mandate is not progress and improvements, but the continuity of an unequal and personalistic relationship, where the politician positions himself almost as a patron of his electorate, rather than a public servant representing the interests of the common good.This perverse logic delays development and keeps much of the country in a cycle of precarity and dependency.

V.

All political action originates in the realm of ideas. Understanding this genesis is fundamental, as the proposal I am developing is inspired by another proposal by the Brazilian politician and intellectual Renan Santos: the Managerial Responsibility Law. This law is not an effort to idealistically “moralise” Brazilian politics, nor does it aim to create a utopian scenario of Swedish virtue. On the contrary, it aligns with what Gilberto Freyre called “balanced antagonisms,” a concept that expresses Brazil’s ability to reconcile disparate realities, respecting the patrimonialist nature that permeates our political culture.

The Managerial Responsibility Law does not seek to radically alter the character of Brazilian politics but rather to create a system of incentives that balances the privileges of officeholders with their social responsibilities. Instead of a direct confrontation with the patrimonialist ethos, it proposes a structure that uses this ethos to favor collective development. The idea is that benefits and advantages attributed to public agents – such as access to electoral funds, possibilities for salary increases, and the continuation of federal transfers – should be conditioned on the fulfillment of concrete and measurable goals.

These goals include advances in the Human Development Index , improvements in basic education rankings, combating school dropout rates, expanding sanitation programs, among other possible quantifiable guidelines. It is not just about establishing abstract goals, but about promoting a culture of results that engages politicians to commit themselves efficiently to the needs of their communities. This goal-setting system would create a layer of accountability that, even if patrimonial in nature, would aim for the common good in a structured way.

The inspiration for this law also lies in the writings of the German jurist Hans-Bernd Schäfer, who observed that underdeveloped countries — or “low-income countries” — need precise and highly specific legal rules to ensure that political decisions are not distorted by the individual interests of magistrates or legislators. The Managerial Responsibility Law follows this same spirit: the more specific and clear the goals and criteria, the less room for dubious interpretations and maneuvers that deviate from its original purpose. Instead of trying to eradicate patrimonialism from the political system, the law leverages it, using it as a motor for collective objectives. The performance targets act as compasses, encouraging actions oriented towards social development without disrespecting the logic of “personalism” that is rooted in the country’s political practice. Ultimately, the objective is not to moralise, but to structure a system that, within Brazilian political reality, leads society to concrete advances in basic and essential areas.

By creating an incentive structure that harmonises the patrimonialist culture with public interest objectives, this law offers an innovative model of governance. It recognises that Brazilian politics operates within its own matrix, and not in a mold imported from liberal or modernising theories. It is a proposal that, without ignoring the idiosyncrasies of the nation’s history, seeks to establish a realistic and functional social pact, allowing the Brazilian state to grow according to its own logic.

It is thus fitting to conclude by evoking one of the works João Campos mentioned: Why Nations Fail. The common, liberal reading of this book holds that strong institutions are the gears that drive a nation to success – as if institutions were autonomous entities, capable of emerging spontaneously, without connection to culture, history, or society. I, however, advocate an inverse and more comprehensive view: it is robust nations, grounded in deep cultural roots and with a consolidated political landscape, that shape and strengthen particular institutions. Institutional construction depends on the solidity of the social and political body that gives it form and meaning. Institutions do not arise from nowhere; they are a reflection of the collective power, organisation, and values of a country.

If we look at Brazilian history, institutional failure has very deep origins. The semi-feudal dynamic of Brazilian social structure reflects an ambivalent elite that simultaneously seeks American modernity and the preservation of privileges. This elite built a system in which patrimonialism blends with Americanophile and idealistic visions, in an attempt to adapt institutions that reflect completely distinct values to the national reality. Instead of creating their own model, with institutions that truly represent the Brazilian ethos, Brazilian thinkers have imported ideas that fail when they collide with a political culture deeply rooted in personalism and bonds of loyalty.

It is in this constant tension that Brazil’s greatest weakness lies. When the elite tries to modernise the country without altering the patrimonialist base, it ends up weakening the very institutions it intended to strengthen. Laws and rules have become empty shells, serving more a symbolic than an effective role, as they lack a social structure that truly legitimises them.

Therefore, the failure of the nation’s institutions lies not only in their construction but in their detachment from Brazilian reality. Brazilians fail by trying to impose a foreign institutional logic on a culture that, in essence, still operates in an almost medieval dynamic of privileges and personal relationships. Brazil needs, first and foremost, a vision that starts from reality, restores political authenticity, and serves as a basis for truly vigorous institutions, rooted in what Brazil actually is, and not in what we idealise Brazilians to be.

Orlando Lima is the editor-in-chief of Valete Magazine and a scholar of political science.

Europe is visibly disintegrating – politically, socially and morally. Panagiotis Kondylis (1943-1998), a historian of ideas today only read in certain specialist circles, writes the following in his work Planetary Politics after the Cold War: “Compared to the classical ethical tradition – from the pre-Socratics to the Enlightenment via Plato, Aristotle, and Christianity – a loss of verisimilitude and a feeling for reality [Realitätssinn] has occurred insofar as this tradition was grounded in the fact and necessity of reason’s incessant struggle against the overflowing urge of ineradicable drives and passions, and — directly or indirectly — placed this struggle at the centre of its considerations. In contrast, today’s universalist ethics do not seem to have any serious, even theoretically articulated concerns about man’s ability to permanently master the murkier layers of his existence. Instead, its efforts are directed towards furnishing epistemologically sound definitions of reason, obligation, etc., from which — rather tautologically — ethical desiderata and the comforting social consequences of their fulfillment are then deduced. The programmatic or factual elimination of all anthropological and historical factors necessitates that every binding doctrine of virtue and duty also be dispensed with, upon which the constructions pile up in the vacuum of logical consistency.”1

What Kondylis thus describes from the metaperspective of the historian of ideas — one which does not always do justice to the specific, inner complexities of specific situations or constellations of facts [Sachverhalte] — is in a sense reminiscent of the reflections of Ludwig Wittgenstein, for whom ethics could never be elaborated as a science of anything, let alone morality. Yet unlike Wittgenstein, Kondylis does not reject the general idea of employing moral-philosophical constructions to capture [einfangen] ethics (for Wittgenstein, ethics was something supernatural or mystical), but rather laments the fact that ‘ethics’, which in modern times [in der Neuzeit] crystallised as a program of ethical universalism articulated in principle in human rights and institutionally in the United Nations, is above all else blind to its historical function and, lacking connection to any well-elaborated political anthropology, becomes a “battlefield on which each of the competing sides will fight to enforce its own interpretation of the aforementioned principles against all other interpretations”.2

As a theorist of power and decision, Kondylis emphasises in several passages of the above cited work — a new edition of which shall be published by the Carlsbad Institute in 2026 — the inability of moral-philosophical theoretical constructs to account for the political and social function of their own premises and conclusions. This habitus has become firmly established in the West, especially since the Enlightenment, and today constitutes the universal mainstream of academic discussion: Kantians, utilitarians, followers of critical theory — today all indulge in a certain form of ethical universalism because they understand its principles of equality, cultural invariance, impartiality, and logical consistency to be unavoidable axioms of socio-political and thus also ethical discourse. Accusations of a general dysfunctionality of this axiomatic system, repeatedly confirmed by events outside the academic context, are usually countered by its defenders, especially the (Neo-)Kantians, with the argument that it can no longer be a question of whether ethical universalism still works as a method of procedural reason or not (the primary concern of Rawls and Habermas), but rather that universalism is indomitable because, in the words of Georg Mohr, it is the “presupposition of every moral standpoint”.3

But are these axioms, on which Mohr seeks to base ethical universalism, truly irrefutable? At the very least, doubts here are warranted. For Kondylis, the axioms of ethical universalism are highly presuppositional; his method is not to examine the inner mechanics of the various systems of ethical universalism, but rather to draw our attention to its external political and social conditions which can be clearly linked to economic and religious interests and thus ultimately capable of reshaping any moral standpoint. He is thus not concerned with demonstrating how the idea that universally valid moral principles and norms apply to all people at all times and in all places regardless of cultural or individual differences can be operationalised in ethics. Rather, he makes clear how, in modern times, ethical universalism has been exploited in a drastic manner both geopolitically and economically, thus creating a paradigm easily transferrable to societies neither able nor willing to adopt the rules thereof: “The expectations that the West has raised by exporting its ethical universalism to the rest of the world have explosive potential. The victory of the West’s ideas has not relieved it, but instead burdened it with tasks and liabilities under whose pressure it could change fundamentally”.4 The ongoing wars, geopolitical upheavals, and distributive struggles show that the burden of ethical universalism has become so great that its centrifugal forces now outweigh the centripetal. The rebalancing of power relations has impelled and continues to impel the rise of political, social and ethical particularisms which make transparent that the universal law of rational agreement neither can nor should longer apply, but that another law is returning to the political and social realm, one more reminiscent of the old law of the jungle or even certain political strategies which we might associate with the positions of Callicles, Machiavelli, or Nietzsche.

This naturally raises the question of how we should deal with the situation of an ethical universalism increasingly alienated from social and political realities underpinning it; one which, while not entirely novel, is certainly unprecedented in its global scope. In view of these developments, can ethical universalism still be justified? How can today’s ethical universalism survive when it is inextricably linked to the victory of Western ideas that are increasingly being called into question? How can ‘the West’ — insofar as in the midst of its ongoing self-dissolution it is still able and willing to perceive itself as such (since, as Josephine Quinn notes, now that the expression “Christian West” has been successfully deconstructed, it is now that of “the West” that finds itself on the block) — continue to assert itself in the great game of social and political ideas and interests?

The answer is anything but simple. It therefore seems sensible to first look at the historical and philosophical causes that might have paved the way for ethical universalism’s considerable success whilst at the same time sowing the seeds of destruction in the fruits of its triumph. In current analyses of the value and disadvantages of ethical universalism for humanity, opinions often differ diametrically, which should hardly be surprising. While some, such as Hans Joas, believe that ethical universalism and all its consequences, which are enshrined in the notion of human rights, can somehow be saved, others — such as Panagiotis Kondylis — see in its momentous decline the starting point for a power struggle between different political and social systems of ideas. Still others believe that it is possible for ethical universalism to return to its original sources and qualities, though these must first be recognised and understood.

But first let us turn to Joas’ position. In his new book on universalism, Universalismus: Weltherrschaft und Menschheitsethos, the sociologist of religion Joas does not apparently believe the West has to change at all in order to maintain and make plausible ethical universalism as a value independent of culture and mentality. Rather, he assumes — not unlike Kondylis — that what is at stake when it comes to ethical universalism is not any specific theoretical idea about ethics or morality, but that we are instead engaged with a byproduct of the debate on so-called ‘political universalism’.5 According to Joas, we can understand ethical universalism only in dialogue with the history of empires; that is to say, as reactions to these empires’ claims to world domination or as attempts by the aforementioned to somehow justify themselves. In emphasising the unexplained idea of a unifying human ethos, Joas is of the opinion that ethical universalism did not originate in the West, but developed in equal measure in various cultural spheres between 800 and 200 BC. He further believes that the core message of ethical universalism is not located in the democratic ideals of the 18th and 19th centuries, but rather in the religious wars of the 17th century. For Joas, the foundations of ethical universalism are thus not to be found in the progress of reason and self-determination, but in experiences of violence and manifold violations of the fundamental right to the integrity of the person. Joas correctly distinguishes here between the idea of ethical universalism and its political, economic and social implementation, but forgets that these experiences are precisely the consequences of the enforcement of a rather perverted idea of ethical universalism.

In contrast to Kondylis, Joas develops an ‘affirmative genealogy’ of the human ethos that does not grant normative priority to any culture, least of all the European. For Joas, the universal sacrality of the person through which the human ethos can unfold stands at the centre of things.6 Joas does not provide a satisfactory answer to the questions we posed above, partly because he generally avoids making normative statements and addressing ethical universalism as a genuinely Western political and social idea. Nevertheless, at the end of his book, he poses an important question: How can ethical universalism be prevented from serving as an imperial ideology?7 Joas, a Catholic who attaches great importance to religion in the justification of ethical universalism, is clearly suspicious of any form of hegemony: the logical consequence of his position would be to reject missionary Christianity or missionary Islam as imperial ideologies. Like Marxists, Kantians and utilitarians, Joas, despite his different premises, retreats to a moral standpoint that he inseverably links to the idea of a human ethos. Yet this moral standpoint, which only ethical universalists (who suddenly become normative relativists with regard to the validity of anti-universalist approaches) are allowed to invoke, is extremely fragile and can be overturned with a stroke of the pen.

Robert Spaemann, one of the last great conservative intellectuals in Germany, does not — unlike Joas and in partial agreement with Kondylis — shy away from clearly associating ethical universalism with the West or with Europe. For Spaemann, it is a consequence of the spread of scientific civilisation in the 19th century and historicism (to which Joas, as a disciple of Ernst Troeltsch, necessarily adheres) that ethical universalism, having rid itself of its metaphysical presuppositions, transmogrified into radical cultural relativism. Kondylis argues in a similar vein, viewing, like Spaemann, ethical universalism as an expression of a general ‘functionalism’ of modernity. This functionalism, both made possible and actually brought into being by ‘European self-relativisation’,8 was, as indicated at the outset, extremely persuasive in proclaiming with full conviction that the age of virtue and traditional (Christian) values was over and a new age of merchants and functionaries had begun (in the exact words of Edmund Burke: “The age of chivalry is gone. — That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.”) Like Kondylis, Spaemann sees this degeneration of ethical universalism emanating from ‘old Europe’ as a burden that continues to weigh on global society to this day. This has been and still is the cause of numerous political and social tensions: “Having exported the poison,” he writes, “Europe is obliged to export the antidote”.9 Joas clearly does not share this diagnosis, because his claims that Europe did not spread this poison, and that ethical universalism should be understood as an instrument of power wielded by the powerful and only to be domesticated within the framework of a nebulous humanistic ethos, lead him to the conclusion that the West does not bear any responsibility in this regard. Spaemann and Kondylis, by contrast, believe we have no choice but to deal with this toxic legacy. While Kondylis, the ‘Enlightenment thinker without a mission,’ believes the West, having embarked on a hopeless struggle between divergent particularistic views over the political implementation of ethical universalism, is no longer in any position to export the crucial antidote, Spaemann believes that ethical universalism can still be saved without being able or willing to restore it to its old position. For Spaemann, the ancient concept of physis is an important standard, because without an understanding of what is inherently good and right (physei/physikon dikaion), we cannot formulate and justify universal ethical norms: “The Greek way of life, the polis, was defended not because it was Greek, but because it was more natural than other (for example, despotic) constitutions”.10 In order to prevent today’s civilisation from relapsing into pure despotism in which — according to Joas — individual states dictate to their citizens which universal norms and values they must adhere to, it is necessary to refasten universalism to objective, natural law criteria: “Where universalism as a European way of thinking no longer focuses on the absolute, as in Plato and in the Christian tradition, but instead on itself and its own tradition, it becomes nihilistic”.11 We can thus deduce from Kondylis’s ideational-historical critique of human rights universalism and Joas’s sociological de-emphasising of the dysfunctional power of religion that ethical universalism in the form that Spaemann describes it cannot be conceived of as an inclusivist expansion of moral rights and social norms that naturally provokes strong political resentments, but can only be revived in connection with the apologetics of its natural law core. The struggle to rediscover this natural law core has begun.

Dr. Martin Hähnel is the director of the Carlsbad Institute and a lecturer at the University of Bremen.

Since antiquity, Western thought has revolved around the great question of how the whole maintains its integrity despite the disintegration of the parts. The result is a curious romantic irony: through sheer repetition over endless permutations of circumstance, the question itself has assumed a permanence that transcends the specific wholes and parts of which it has been asked and raises it to spheres higher than the ephemeral conditions under which it has been posed. This transcendent yearning that yearns for the transcendent is the great untieable knot holding the sails of Western civilisation aloft, and little here need be added to Whitehead’s well-worn conjecture that “the safest general characterisation of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato”.

The modern research university, pioneered in Germany and today everywhere dominant, operates on the principle of the division of humanistic study into separate disciplines. Its primary mission is, as the name implies, research; understood as the continuous unearthing of new discoveries in ever more niche realms of cultural experience, pausing only to synthesise these with the established body of scholarship. It often goes missing in Kuhn’s classic theory of “paradigms” that the research university and the concept of science that it houses are also paradigms; in fact some of the most successful in the history of epistemic inquiry. Yet ever more there crystallises an understanding that — at least in the humanities — the present-day organisation of knowledge yields only what the economists would call diminishing marginal returns; that the discrete parts of the atomistic university find themselves in a steady disintegration, and the hour ripens for a breakthrough into something… older, yet at the same time new.

The return to a holistic humanism driven by the perennial questions — a venture never fully abandoned among the English-speaking peoples and oft revived in continental Europe — is the mast to which the Carlsbad Institute pins its flag. It is guided by these principles that the Carlsbad Institute strives towards a restoration of the social sciences and the humanities as an integrated whole, to be conducted at all times in a free, open-ended, and value-neutral spirit. By drawing on the deep academic tradition of the nations of Central Europe, the Institute hopes to foster a classical humanistic spirit amongst tomorrow’s generation of thinkers.

Although primarily focused on the cultivation of the sciences, the Institute aims to reach beyond academia towards cooperation and dialogue with the great and the good of the arts, business, and politics. Carlsbad, as a historic spa town in the heart of Europe, whose enduring charm has enticed centuries of the continent’s profoundest thinkers to roam its hills and take in its waters, offers an ideal location for this work. In planting the seeds of a new holistic and interdisciplinary humanism in the fertile soil of Central Europe, and yet still looking to those distant lands in the best mitteleuropean traditions of cosmopolitanism, the Carlsbad Institute strives to lay the deep roots for new theoretical paradigms and intellectual fruits to sprout throughout society, and to unite the levity of speculative thought and the gravity of political decision.

The Carlsbad Institute will pursue its mission through the support of various academic research initiatives, including but not limited to the sponsoring of conferences, colloquia, and lectures, by facilitating and supporting academic publication, through the direct education of students and young professionals, and by making the insights of some of the greatest minds of our time accessible through our free and public online journal, the Carlsbad Considerations, which will publish the innovative work of leading scholars in all fields of social thought in the aim of bringing the cutting edge of contemporary thought to all.

Those interested in the work of the Carlsbad Institute can find further information on carlsbadinstitute.org.

Dr. Martin Hähnel, Director
Christopher Gadsby
Seweryn Górecki
A.W. Taubenberger