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Self-determined now! The path to shaping the future

Selbstbestimmt jetzt! Der Weg zur Gestaltung der Zukunft

Scientism, wokeness, the welfare state: Michael Esfeld offers the philosophical counter-programme to paternalism

Why were liberal states under the rule of law, which after 1989 seemed secure, able to turn so quickly into paternalistic states of emergency? Michael Esfeld, professor of philosophy of science at the University of Lausanne, looks for the common source behind Covid regimes, climate policy and wokeness – and finds it in the alliance of political scientism, intellectual postmodernism and post-Marxism. While scientism elevates the natural sciences into a normative authority, postmodernism and post-Marxism set the political agenda – an alliance without identifiable leaders, but with a clear direction: unlimited regulation reaching into private life.

The basic thesis: the industrial revolution was a singular event, made possible only by two achievements of Western civilisation – free science oriented towards objectivity, and a legal order that secures property rights. Esfeld shows how the open society was never really consolidated: it held only as long as the anti-communist narrative carried it between 1945 and 1989. With the fall of the Berlin Wall a gap opened up, into which new collectivist narratives have been pushing ever since.

In the constructive main part, Esfeld develops freedom as the use of reason and derives natural law from it: the right of property in one's own body as the primary right of defence. His analysis of the Hobbes dilemma is particularly instructive – liberalism failed because it tried to tame the Leviathan instead of separating the legal order from the state. Economically, Esfeld becomes concrete on fiat money since Nixon abandoned the gold standard in 1971, which allowed the welfare state to buy itself time. The book provides the tools for a new Enlightenment, with self-determination rather than paternalism as its foundation.

Author

Michael Esfeld, born in 1966 in Berlin (West), has been full professor of philosophy of science at the University of Lausanne since 2002 and is the author of numerous books on this field. In 2010 Esfeld was admitted to the Leopoldina, the German National Academy of Sciences. In 2013 he received the research award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Since 2022 he has been a member of the board of trustees of the Liberales Institut in Switzerland. Since 2026 he has been deputy chairman of the Hayek Society.

At a glance

  • ISBN: 978-3-911941-08-2
  • Type: Non-fiction – philosophy / social criticism
  • Format: Hardcover (also available as an e-book)
  • Pages: 200 pages
  • Size (cm) / weight: 21.5 × 15.1 x 1.8 cm / 360 g
  • Publication date: 1st ed. / 5 July 2026
  • Publisher: Achgut Edition
  • Price: EUR 25.00

Print edition

ISBN 978-3-911941-08-2
Achgut Edition EUR 25.00

Available here: https://shop.achgut.com/products/selbstbestimmt-jetzt-der-weg-zur-gestaltung-der-zukunft

The book is published in German under the title «Selbstbestimmt jetzt! Der Weg zur Gestaltung der Zukunft».