Franz Hinkelammert: biographic and bibliographic notes

Abstract

The life trajectory – life of teaching, research, militancy and vast intellectual production – of Franz Hinkelammert bears the marks of deep qualification in economics, theology, philosophy and political praxis. And within each of these qualifications there is the permanent presence and always renewed of the power and capacity of observation and sensitivity, of interpretation, and finally, of very specific critical reflection, with the particular conception that the limit between the possible and the impossible is given by the metric of the production of real and concrete human life. The submission of the impossible (the utopian critique) to the criterion of feasibility is what indicates what is possible. And it is not about the whole and any possible, but the possible that makes life possible, human life worthy and life of the entire planet. In each of his works, new aspects of the real that transcend experiences and theories were assuming creative determinations in the critical search for the path that would allow an exit from the labyrinth of modernity. We present some existential notes, few and lacking – in general indicated by the thinker himself – but that somehow mark his intellectual itinerary and that also somehow manifest themselves in the theoretical production that is partially indicated in the line of events of his life, without the claim of a linear, continuous and complete timeline. They are dots in a vast sky of stars that, from the first publications to the last, show that we are in a labyrinth and that we have the need and the possibility to seek the way or ways out. It seems that this has always been your intention. The present text presents some marks in the form of existential, political and intellectual extracts from the trajectory of this great thinker.