Here is my email-address: liber@hotmail.com

Hi, my name is Christopher Gohl ("Loffer"), I am a German student of Political Science, Jewish Studies and American Studies, and I welcome you to my incomplete web of thoughts. It's an ongoing experiment (since 1997) of me trying to trace my thoughts down and interlink them. Can't promise the thoughts are all intelligent - but I did my best. That's how I look like when working on my computer:

(click on pic to see more)

- My Academic Work
Papers From Political Science, American Studies, Jewish Studies, History, and Woman Studies (LINK doesn't work yet)
(some of the work is also linked below)

- Literature
- Three sets of pages discuss American Literature.

• "Literature: Overcoming de-humanization" is the more comprehensive page and deals with five different American novels Moby Dick (Herman Melville), Puddn'head Wilson (Mark Twain), Ceremony (Leslie Silko), Beloved (Toni Morrison), and Maus (Art Spiegelman). I apply the idea of the philosopher Richard Rorty that literature is an attempt to overcome de-humanization.

• "Moby Dick:  Seeking the encounter with the Truth" deals with Moby Dick only.
• I'll try to upload "The Fragile Project of Meaningful Conjunction - Existentialist Postmodernism & City of Glass" soon. Existentialism and post-modernism go well together, especially in the work of Paul Auster. On occasion of this major work of mine :-) my professor remarked that I should learn not to invent worlds in a term paper, and that I should learn how to deliver Volkswagens instead of Bentley's. The he gave me a straight A. Hehe.

- Political Theory
Several sets of pages are concerned with problems of a compassionate Liberalism in the age of post-modernity.

• "Political Liberalism and Universalism: Problems in the Theories of David Gauthier and Richard Rorty" is a critique of the philosophical state of Liberalism today. Whereas Gauthier marks the end of the line on the libertarian side, Rorty takes Liberalism to its impractical, cynical post-modern end.
• "A liberal narrative" was my first attempt to accept postmodern criticism and turn it into a constructive force for a more compassionate liberalism. These two pages are merely a collection of vocabulary, but I make several crossreferences to other pages and papers in my web that might be illuminating.
• "A New Liberal Narrative - Liberalism Redefined" -  In a second effort to redescribe liberalism from a postmodern, but compassionate perspective, I propose a more detailed analysis. My effort to redescribe liberalism aims at legitimizing liberalism as the only political theory that has the capacity to take the individual radically serious, while at the same time acknowledging that the individual 'stands in relation' to others and needs community. Beware of quick labels such as 'existentialist liberalism', 'communitarianism' or 'republican liberalism'.
• "Jewish Problems with Liberal Citizenship - On universal claims of Enlightenment thought and the conflict with parochial identities" are two pages that are a good commentary to many of my problems with Political Liberalism. From the perspective of Jewish identity, how can one be a good citizen and a good Jew? This question is, I think, at the very heart of Political Theory today, and a Liberalism that can not answer this question fails in setting the real framework that preserves human dignity.
• Here are my two articles on Michael Walzer's project of establishing a Jewish Political Tradition (2001). One is in English, the other in German. Both were published.
• A short critique of the Free Market, central to Political Liberalism, is titled  "The Corrosive Effects of the Market on Society".
• "Tales of our Lives - Tocqueville and Narratives" is the most detailed analysis of history, liberalism and the postmodern critique I have to offer. Beyond the analysis, I propose a new view of human beings as story-telling, order-constructing beings and sketch out some of the consequences for a new liberalism that preserves human dignity. This paper will be at the heart of all my future ideas on a postmodern, yet compassionate Liberalism.
• A short treatise on the question of "Violence" in the thought of Hobbes, Tocqueville and Nietzsche addresses a fundamental problem of human existence: how, why rebellion and uproar? For postmodern liberals whose only common demand is 'no cruelty', a wortwhile reflection.
• I will also upload one short paper each on the the image of the person in the thought of John Rawls and David Gauthier, and an essay on Plato's view of the tyrant and the democratic condition.
• "A feminist critique of Liberal citizenship" will also be added.
• Here is a term paper on "Tocqueville and Emerson: A Study in "Democratic Religio", where I do take a look on Emerson's and Tocqueville's conception of democracy, and their prescriptions for its shortcomings. Both Emerson and Tocqueville have been read as founding fathers of American Democratic Thought, albeit of two (complementary?) schools in polar opposition.
• An essay on Robert Kennedy serves to explore the "conditions of aristocracy" that Tocqueville talked about. In conclusion, the sixties, for which Robert Kennedy was an exemplary person, were a time of pettiness as well as great ideals.

- Religion: Being Jewish as a postmodern German
The third theme of my pages is devoted to the questions of religion and Jewish identity - a matter that is close to home for me.

• "Sprituality and religiosity -  Martin Buber's and Abraham J. Heschel's Help for Modern Man" is the first introduction into my problems. It recounts the impact of two important authors on my journey through Judaism, and observes what is appealing or not appealing in religion for a postmodern German Jew.

• A more personal window into the question is my short story Sabbath Dawn. It was written for one of my American studies classes.
• Again, "Jewish Problems with Liberal Citizenship - On universal claims of Enlightenment thought and the conflict with parochial identities" are two pages that are a good commentary to many of my problems with Political Liberalism.
• One of my best papers ever has got to be "Zelig sind die Juden der Moderne - Woody Allen und die Diaspora-Situation" ("Zelig are the Jews of Modernity - Woody Allen and the Diaspora Situation") Sorry it's in German.

- Essays and Articles
Being a good citizen of the world, I try to alert other people and love to write articles for various publications. Some of them are uploaded here.

• "A Dream Must be Earned" is the original version of a Hoya-column from January 27th, 1998. The Hoya is a campus newspaper at Georgetown University in Washington DC. It commemorates Martin Luther King and inaugurates a column I was to write during that spring semester 1998. Not exactly my best article.
• "McMurder Constitutionalized" is the second of these columns. I discuss the terrible practice of the death-penalty on the occasion of the execution of Karla Faye Tucker.
• A third column dealt with the craziness with which Americans follow their diets (Stop that Fat Joke). It is a plea for more "Gemuetlichkeit" in relation to food, and for an appreciation of beautifully figured women. BBW's are great!
• The essay in German "Euer Deutschland: Ein Volksfest ohne Thema" ("Your Germany: An overcrowded Party without Leitmotif") is published in a book called "Die 68er: Warum wir Jungen die Alten nicht mehr brauchen". ("The Babyboomers: Why the young Generation has no Need for Them Anymore"). The book was published by the German "Society for the Rights of Future Generations".
• Please check http://www.ak-demo-netz.de, a site devoted to discussion of Civic Society. Also check http://members.aol.com/BGseminar for the documtentation of a seminar on "Why Civic Scoiety? Perspectives on the Future", and http://members.aol.com/loffergohl/buchprojekt.htm for a book project I have initiated on "Young German perspectives on the Holocaust". The book has now been published. Email me for more information at liber@hotmail.com.
• "Buergergesellschaft als politische Zielperspektive" ("Civic Society as a Comprehensive Political Perspective") appeared in the supplement of Das Parlament (The Parliament), an official governmental weekly publication dealing with, well, our parliament. I was asked to write that essay after publishing "Die Renaissance der Politik in der Buergergesellschaft" in an anthology of young political writers put together by my flatmate ("The Renaissance of Politics in Civic Society" - for an early version click here).

• http://www.futur-x.de - I'm president of the German Futur X - Society for Generational Justice.
• http://www.ak-demo-netz.de - the network of Naumann-fellows (liberal students) which I coordinated in 1998-99
• http://www.new-ways.net - Some pals and I organized this conference in Poland on Think Tanks for a Civic Society, funded by the German Marshall Fund in December 2000. We'll try to have a follow-up in Washington DC in 2002.
• http://www.buergerturm.de - The same pals and I have this idea to build a Civic Tower in the middle of Berlin. The establishment of the city (the ole boys) want to rebuild a Prussian castle. In our eyes that's just sentimental, reactionary, plain wrong and utterly un-imaginative politics. We need another symbol there - the Civic Tower. We'll go public with this idea and try to raise support in August of 2001.