Mendelssohn Discourses

Panelists

Carolin Emcke is a philosopher, writer, and journalist. Her books, essays, columns, and artistic interventions engage with the subjects of violence and trauma, anti-democratic sentiment and racism, sexuality and desire. Most recently, she published Für den Zweifel. Gespräche mit Thomas Strässle (In Favor of Doubt: Conversations with Thomas Strässle, 2022). Her honors and awards include the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Johann Heinreich Merck Award for Essay Writing, and the Carl von Ossietzky Award for Contemporary History and Politics.

Hannah Peaceman is a post-doctoral scholar at the University of Jena and investigates philosophy’s entanglements with antisemitism and racism from the perspective of public philosophy. Peaceman completed her doctorate in 2020 with a dissertation on the potential of Jewish perspectives for political philosophy. She is also a co-editor of the journal Jalta – Positionen zur jüdischen Gegenwart (Yalta: Positions on the Jewish Present).

Further Events in the Series on 24 May and 5 July

Moderated by Frederek Musall and with a rotating cast of panelists, the Mendelssohn Discourses take Moses Mendelssohn’s writings as a point of departure for discussions of contemporary issues and debates. Each of the three discussion events is devoted to a thematic area: Enlightenment: Fake News, Sentimentality, Reason; Power: Tradition, State, Religion; Media Revolution: The Public Sphere, Celebrity, and the Proliferation of Imagery.