Wolfgang Müller-Funk

The aim of this cross-disciplinary research project is to analyze the precondition of the possibility of calculated—that is, not purely spontaneous— affective cruelty. It does not mainly refer to an anthropological dimension, although it is indispensable as a horizon: human beings are potentially capable of violence. However, in this cultural study, the investigation of the cultural conditions under which an economy of cruelty arises and thrives, in which it becomes, as it were, a quasi-natural matter of course, is much more important.