Armin Nassehi holds the Chair of General Sociology and Social Theory at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and has been the editor of the cultural journal Kursbuch since 2012.

Armin Nassehi's book Kritik der großen Geste begins with a grand gesture. Anyone with even a rudimentary interest in philosophy, especially in Germany, will immediately think of Immanuel Kant's magnum opus Critique of Pure Reason when they hear this title. I would like to have seen a chapter dedicated to Armin Nassehi's definition of a grand gesture (as such) in this obviously deliberate choice of introduction. However, the author does not address this in any of the 17 chapters (interestingly numbered 0 - 16, plus preface). If I have understood correctly (I am not a sociologist and struggle with sociological jargon, for example, that uncertainty does not simply mean uncertainty, but contingent dynamics etc.), then the grand gesture of politics of our time is probably that everything must change. Why? Because the breakneck speed at which our climate is changing looms large over everything, fundamentally calling into question our economic model, which began with industrialisation, making it a question of long-term survival. Add to this war, species extinction and migration. Individuals and humanity as a whole are faced with the question of whether the world as we have known it since the Second World War is not - to put it bluntly - going down the drain.

C.H.Beck

Armin Nassehi | Kritik der großen Geste - Anders über gesellschaftliche Transformation nachdenken. | C.H. Beck | 224 pages | 18 EUR

The author is explicitly uninterested in interfering in concrete politics, but rather in reflecting on how individuals, groups, society and politics can act in such a difficult overall situation. One very important point: modern society is an illusion, it no longer actually exists. It has disintegrated into individual spaces, each becoming ever more distinct, and where communication with each other is increasingly being replaced by communication merely among each other. This is nothing new. Self-sufficient bubbles in the digital world have long been an issue. However, this year's US presidential election campaign shows just how dangerous this phenomenon can be. When Republicans and Democrats no longer share a common space for discourse, civil war is already lurking just around the corner. The image described by Armin Nassehi is reminiscent of galaxies moving away from each other. It begs the question: "Where will it all end?"

No one knows the answer and no one can know, not even Armin Nassehi. His own uncertainty is evident again and again - he frequently writes 'maybe, probably, certainly'. The most important achievement of his work is that we are forced to think very fundamentally about our current world. Major transformations are inevitable, but if politics does not take into account the inertia inherent in all systems (because this ensures their survival), they will not succeed due to excessive demands. He accuses politics of an adherence to old methods that have been successful for decades and of being incapable of thinking outside the box. This applies just as much to "conservatives" as it does to "progressives". I was surprised to read this of the latter; hasn't "progressive" been replaced by "innovative" since the 1990s, when computers radically changed all our lives? And when it comes to survival, isn't progressivism a luxury and innovation a necessity, albeit a bitter one at times?

Armin Nassehi makes two important points in the first few chapters. Firstly, he points out that the problem of CO2 waste in the atmosphere is a result not of failure, but of success. The success of scientific civilization was based on the combustion of fossil fuels. Never before in its history has mankind been as successful as it is today. The author implies that for this reason, we should not forget to take pride in our achievements, even if it is now imperative that we find new ways to create energy.

Secondly, the author quite openly asks whether liberal democracy can adequately deal with the problems that arise. This question can be asked in a different way: Has the complexity of the modern world now become so great that it essentially overwhelms humanity as a species? This question, and the debate around it, is extremely important. Armin Nassehi, like me, has no better answer than that any dictatorship would only make things worse. In the end, all he can do is appeal to human reason. Reason that can perform miracles in the individual, in the concrete, but which has difficulty maintaining the upper hand in groups, tribes, societies, nation states, sometimes supranational unions ( the European Union). If we cannot convincingly answer this question about the problem-solving capacity of liberal democracy, we will not be able to prevent future dictatorships - and thus further disasters.

What Armin Nassehi is advocating could ultimately amount to the notorious English way of "muddling through". You don't always know exactly what you're doing, but you always aim to keep your head above water. The Cambridge Dictionary defines the phrase as follows: "To manage to do something despite being disorganised and lacking the necessary knowledge." The success lies in the word "to manage". We would do well not to scoff at this method. Armin Nassehi clearly points out that politics (like all of us) never has all the information at its disposal and is therefore always in a state of uncertainty. Contingent dynamics, in other words

However, I still lack a compass. I can live with 'muddling through'. But I want to stick to a direction of travel. Anything else would be floundering in the fog.

That's why the big picture must be added to the "small gesture". This is where we need Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger de Saint-Exupéry: If you want to build a ship, don't call people together to collect wood, assign tasks and divide up the work, but instil in them a longing for the great, wide sea.

In the global climate crisis - which is synonymous with the fact that the great success of Homo sapiens may become too much for life on our tiny planet as we know it - humanity needs to build an 'ark' of sorts. We need to think very hard about what this might look like. Reducing carbon emissions is not and cannot be the purpose of life. My question to Armin Nassehi is, therefore: Can sociology contribute part of the answer to this question: What should, can and must the society of the future resemble, for us to contain and control climate change for generations to come?