No theory forbids me to say "Ah!" or "Ugh!", but it forbids me the bogus theorization of my "Ah!" and "Ugh!" - the value judgments. - Theodor Julius Geiger (1960)

Hartmut Rosa

Hartmut Rosa (* 1965) was a student of Charles Taylor, who has taught that social reality is constituted by interpretation, so changing our best account of it means already changing social reality. Hartmut Rosa is involved in this self-interpretation of society, with his concepts of social acceleration (which he often illustrates by means of the cover of Motörhead's Orgasmatron album: the social desire for growth, increase and optimization, on the tracks of modernity), unavailability (uncontrollability), alienation, and the desire for resonance.

Below you can see Rosa's 90-minute lecture "Living in times of acceleration", as delivered at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. It gives a nice overview of his thinking. For more, check out his books (1) Social Acceleration, (2) Resonance, and (3) The Uncontrollability of the World.