 | This biographical article is written like a résumé .(March 2022) |
Gerhard Stapelfeldt | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 26, 1947 |
| Nationality | German |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Sociology |
Gerhard Stapelfeldt (born October 26, 1947, Hamburg, Germany) is a German sociologist. He was a university teacher at the University of Hamburg until December 2010.
Contents
In 1979 Stapelfeldt published his PhD Thesis, a reconstruction and interpretation of Karl Marx's Das Kapital with special reference to Marx's further studies and writings. [1] Following this interpretation he then put its consequences into practice by developing a programme of depicting and interpreting political economy, from mercantilism, [2] to Liberalism, [3] imperialism [4] and finally Neoliberalism. [5]
The focus of his studies lies in the critical theory of society and the history of ideas with theorists Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse as reference points. Other major influences on his thinking come from Greek philosophy, Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, and Sigmund Freud. He teaches sociology but also social history, economic history and philosophy.
His major achievement is a three-part work, also his habilitation, entitled Critique of Economic Rationality (Kritik der ökonomischen Rationalität). In it Stapelfeldt describes the genesis, as well as the logic and institutional and empirical structure of capitalism in the eras of state-interventionism and Neoliberalism. [6] The books contain a general historicophilosophical part as well as examinations of the political economy of the Federal Republic of Germany, the European Union and world economy.
Among Stapelfeldt's current works is an analysis of the Euro crisis (http://www.kritiknetz.de Archived 2011-11-24 at the Wayback Machine ). In explaining the history of the Euro critically the author demonstrates that European policy wielded the currency mostly, not political ideas, as EU-European identity. [7]
