“To say what is”

But what, exactly, is ‘what is’?

“To say what is.” – But what, exactly, is what is?

This week SPIEGEL put the AfD’s candidate for the office of Minister-President of Saxony-Anhalt on its cover. Since then, criticism has been raining down on the editorial team, from right to left, from politicians and from other media. The newsmagazine is being criticized with rare unanimity.

Dirk Kurbjuweit of SPIEGEL justifies the editorial decision with the founder’s mandate: “Sagen, was ist” – translated by SPIEGEL itself as “Tell it like it is”, but more accurately rendered as “To say what is.” Invoking the same phrase, PIONEER’s Gabor Steingart senses that SPIEGEL is “on its way to becoming a left-wing Fox News.” He is no longer saying, he claims, what is, but practicing opinion journalism instead.

Is Is Not Is

But what, exactly, is that – what is? Or, asked with Aristotle: “τί τὸ ὄν (tí tò ón) – what is being?” – Contrary to the assumption, and the claim, made by both SPIEGEL and PIONEER, that one can simply say what is, Aristotle already explained: “Being is said in many ways” – τὸ ὂν λέγεται πολλαχῶς (to on legetai pollachōs). He develops a theory of categories that order our speech about being: quantity, quality, position, relation, and so on.

Simply put: the word is means something different each time, depending on whether I say: It is hot. Or: She is more intelligent than he is. Or: Friedrich Merz is Chancellor. Or even: Friedrich Merz is a good Chancellor.

Aristotle identified around ten categories in which being can be predicated. Much of what something or someone is, is changeable. The apple is first unripe, then ripe. It is first on the tree, then on the ground. It is mine or yours. – Yet there is something that the apple itself is, its ousia, as Aristotle calls it, its substance or essence, as the Latin translated it, or even the hypokeimenon, the underlying, from which the modern subject emerged.

If we want to say what is, we are searching for that (unchanging, true) essence of things. The core, the underlying. That is the claim of SPIEGEL, and the accusation levelled at PIONEER. But even the ancient Greeks already sensed they were onto a paradox here. Plutarch tells of the “Ship of Theseus”, whose planks were, one by one, all replaced. Some claimed the ship had remained the same throughout; others, that it was no longer the same. How, then, is one still to say what is?

Language as the “House of Being”

We are cutting radically short here (and impermissibly so): philosophy arrived at the insight that the essence of a thing is not an inherent property, but a linguistic attribution.

“Language is the house of Being. In this home, man dwells” (Heidegger, Letter on Humanism, 1946)

Because we dwell in it, we cannot get beyond language by means of language. The problem with saying what is does not lie in the is. It lies in the saying.

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” (Wittgenstein, Tractatus 5.6)

That is why the world looks different in different languages (Guy Deutscher). Reality does not exist in pure form.

Language itself has no fixed point, but consists of mutual references (Saussure). At the latest since language models started formulating all manner of impressive sentences without ever having seen the world, this much is clear. But it also means that we can only make statements about whether something is true or is false within a (linguistic) reference system.

This insight does not open the door to absolute relativism: for once we have committed to a reference system, true and false statements are entirely possible within it. Whoever accepts the reference system of medicine must accept that measles vaccines save lives. Whoever accepts the reference system of physics (and most of us rely on the brakes in our car) must accept that global warming is owed to the CO2 emissions of the recent past. – One can, of course, deny both; but then one finds oneself in a (performative) self-contradiction and can no longer be taken seriously, as Habermas and Apel pointed out.

To Say What Is?

SPIEGEL now manages the feat of entangling itself in a contradiction while also uttering a tautology:

“The AfD is here, unfortunately it is strong and therefore relevant, which is why it is the subject of our enlightening coverage, in every form.” (emphasis mine)

What it is really saying is: “The AfD is spoken about, unfortunately it is spoken about a great deal, which is why we speak about it.”

“The AfD is spoken about, therefore we speak about it.” – That is the obvious part, the tautology: a = a. And: “Unfortunately it is spoken about a great deal, therefore we (too) speak about it.” That is the contradiction: a ≠ a.

In a single sentence, SPIEGEL thus paces out the boundaries of Western logic:

“Contradiction is the outer limit of propositions, tautology their substanceless centre” (Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 5.143)

Language Creates Reality

But the situation is more complicated still: where medicine and climate science observe changes in a system that are independent of our language, the political system offers no such thing. For the political system consists of nothing but language. Politics acts through language. Laws are language. And elections, too, are linguistic utterances. Even the order to exercise the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force is issued in linguistic form. This is the great challenge in describing discourses in and about politics, society and culture: language does not simply say what is – it creates the reality it describes.

When the AfD candidate signs the SPIEGEL cover, he makes use of a cultural symbol and changes reality: an enlightening wanted poster becomes an autograph card, the criminal becomes a pop star. This is how language shapes reality. It does so explicitly, as John Austin set out in his speech act theory. But it also does so implicitly, whenever it merely claims to say what is – or accuses others of failing to do just that.

Every article, every comment shifts the frame of reference. Dirk Kurbjuweit writes: “We do not suffer from the hubris of believing that our journalism can influence election outcomes.” – That is not hubris. That is how public discourse works.

Would we still plant a tree today if the world were to end tomorrow?

Samuelson, discounting the future, and the clearing of the forests

There is a sense of doom and gloom in the air. The economy is struggling, so environmental efforts are being called into question. It is time to ask the philosophical question: would we still plant a tree today if the world were to end tomorrow?

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Samuelson analysed this issue in 1976 in an article on sustainable forestry. He reports on management consultants who had concluded that planting trees was not worthwhile; indeed, to optimise returns, one would have to fell the trees before planting them.

Optimising yield

Ask forestry scientists about the maximum sustainable yield of a forest, and they will point to a specific moment for felling: the point at which a tree’s expected growth in the coming year falls below its average growth so far.

From that moment on, a newly planted tree will produce more wood per year over its life cycle than the old tree would add in its next year of growth. Harvesting at that time maximises total timber yield over the long run.

Optimising financial return

Economists, however, think differently. For them, biological growth is only part of the story. Opportunity costs—captured in the discount rate of an investment calculation—matter just as much.

Following this logic, a tree should be felled as soon as its growth rate no longer exceeds the market interest rate. Since nature rarely outperforms capital markets, this reasoning implies that it would almost always have been better to fell the tree last year and invest the proceeds in a balanced ETF.

That is the logic Samuelson attributes to these management consultants.

Deforestation as a consequence

This logic came to dominate economically driven forestry from the dawn of the modern era, when timber was needed for shipbuilding, through early industrialisation, when wood fuelled energy production and iron smelting. The result was predictable: vast forests in Europe and North America disappeared.

Sustainability, on its own, was not profitable enough.

This was economically rational then—and it remains so today. The ongoing destruction of primary forests is the empirical proof.

The fear of death as the cause

At its core, the problem lies in how economics treats time. Something available today is valued more highly than the same thing available tomorrow. This reflects a simple fact: I will not live forever. As I might die tomorrow, income today is preferred to income tomorrow.

Interest rates translate this intuition into mathematical models and produce a net present value (NPV). For very long-term investments—an oak tree takes two hundred years to mature—this NPV approaches zero.

Impending death as a counterargument

But impending death can also be interpreted differently. The closer it comes, the less relevant differences in interest rates become, because the effect of compound interest diminishes. Suddenly, even planting trees becomes worthwhile, as the gap between alternative returns narrows.

Put differently: if we die tomorrow—or if the world ends tomorrow, which amounts to the same thing—opportunity costs fall to zero. There are no longer any alternatives to choose from.

Put differently again: only if we will not see tomorrow—only if the world ends tomorrow—does it make economic sense to plant a tree today.

We could die any day.
So let’s plant trees.

Why business won’t save democracy

On the adaptability of business to any form of government

Many European companies have spoken out in defence of democracy following the American president’s speech in Davos. They cite economic reasons. But the economic argument will not suffice.

The adaptability of the economy

We all saw the American tech elite’s gestures of submission at the White House last autumn. We also remember that they and many other corporations have discontinued or reduced their diversity programmes; including European companies operating in the US. The same applies to climate targets.

There is always great moral outrage, but the public debate ignores the fact that diversity and climate were only on the economic agenda because they paid off. Now the circumstances have changed, the calculations have been redone and the strategy adjusted. That’s how it works in business.

And it has always worked this way: German industry had long opposed Hitler because it feared his customs policy. When he became Reich Chancellor in 1933, it changed its stance – and how: it donated 3 million Reichsmarks to his re-election campaign in March 1933. And immediately after the election, it organised the Adolf Hitler donation, which was intended for him personally.

The German Nazi regime was not an isolated case: in many (Western) dictatorships, the business community worked brilliantly with the government: South Korea, Spain, Greece, Chile – to name but a few. And even today, business maintains excellent relationships with many other dictatorships: German exports to Saudi Arabia have grown twice as fast as those to France, Italy, Great Britain or Spain over the past 20 years. Exports to China have grown almost six times as fast.

Companies follow economic logic. And economic logic is agnostic about human rights or environmental consequences as long as these are not translated into a framework for action by laws. The business of business is business.

Economists’ doubts about democracy

We assume that democracy and a prosperous economy belong together. However, this hypothesis still cannot be empirically proven with data. It has also only been widely held for about a generation. In 1989, Francis Fukuyama proclaimed the

‘end of history’ and outlined the state model of the future as a ‘liberal democracy […] with easy access to VCRs and stereos’. (Francis Fukuyama, 1989)

As recently as 1960, Milton Friedman and the economic mainstream disagreed. For Friedman, democracy was not a prerequisite for prosperity; rather, economic freedom was the necessary condition for political freedom. Without capitalism, there can be no democracy.

The founding fathers of economics were even more adamant in their belief that a democratic order was detrimental to economic development because it undermined the pursuit of prosperity: Adam Smith considered it the task of government to protect the property of the wealthy from the poor. And in the mid-19th century, French economist François Guizot declared that universal suffrage would lead to the poor expropriating the rich. Vilfredo Pareto was also convinced:

‘[Democracy] digs its own grave and destroys what it brought into being.’ (Vilfredo Pareto)

In the United States and parts of Europe, such voices are becoming louder again. There are fears of falling behind in the ‘system competition’ with China. We can’t afford Democracy no longer, it is said.

Another argument

Liberal society is about the protection of minorities, freedom of the press and the arts, freedom of religion, protection of privacy, control of state action by the people, preservation of human dignity – if all of this is measured against the question of whether it leads to greater prosperity, then we are surrendering liberalism to economic arguments. And then it is up for grabs as soon as it is no longer worthwhile.

A liberal society protects the individual from the state. That is the classic argument. It stems from a time when the state was represented by powerful monarchs. Translated into our times: a liberal society protects the individual from the arbitrariness of the powerful, even if they can organise a majority.

Or even more pronounced: Liberal society protects the weak. It protects those who are not worth standing up for; those who are of no use. It does so because doing so is liberal, not because it pays off.

At the limits of the West

A philosophical reflection after Davos

‘A Spirit of Dialogue’ – That was this year’s motto for the World Economic Forum. Genuine dialogue in the Socratic sense, where one can learn something, present one’s insights and doubts, and listen to the arguments of others, is not in good shape at the moment. So it was probably right to invoke the spirit of dialogue instead. – Though, was it?

“Despite all the frustration and anger of recent months, let us not be too quick to write off the transatlantic partnership. […] No, we Europeans, we Germans, know how precious the trust on which NATO is based is. In this age of great powers, the US will also depend on this trust. It is their and our decisive competitive advantage.” (German Chancellor Merz, Davos 2026)

This was the German Chancellor’s pledge. Strictly following Adam Smith, he did not appeal to the goodwill of the Americans, but to their self-interest. He spoke as an economically minded person, as someone who relies on reason and the power of better arguments. Towards the end of his speech, he once again invoked the spirit of the Enlightenment:

“Let us be inspired by what is perhaps the most important lesson of enlightenment: our fate is in our hands. It is our responsibility and our freedom to shape it.” (German Chancellor Merz, Davos 2026)

For those who are not familiar with those spirits, the French President explained the core idea of the Enlightenment once again for simple minds:

“But we do prefer respect to bullies. We do prefer science to conspiracy theories, and we do prefer the rule of law to brutality.” (Emmanuel Macron, Davos 2026)

This was widely perceived as a courageous statement – reinforced by the sunglasses – but anyone who reads Macron’s speech understands that the reference to our values was ultimately little more than an argument for investing in Europe: here there is stability, here there is reliability. Macron appealed to the self-interest of global companies.

Both speeches evoked the spirit of dialogue, the spirit of enlightenment that has been whispering to us for over 200 years: you can afford to be a decent person, it will pay off. So far, it has always worked out well. To quote Canadian Prime Minister Carney: ‘The fiction was useful.’

No one had yet asked the crucial question: But what if it no longer pays off? Will we then stop being decent? The answer could be painful. For dignity has no price. According to the great philosophers of the Enlightenment, it is not subject to the regime of utility maximisation. Dignity is, to quote the German Constitution, ‘inviolable’. The value of human beings is not measured by what they contribute. Our common foundation is not prosperity.

The American president, on the other hand, believes that people are different in value and that their value is reflected in the extent to which they can prevail:

“Many of you in this room are true pioneers. You’re truly brilliant, brilliant people. Just your ability to get a ticket is brilliant, because you have about 50 people for every seat.” (Donald Trump, Davos 2026)

His entire speech exuded that striving for dominance, that regaining of strength, that assertiveness and that contempt for the weak.

It was therefore no coincidence that the Canadian Prime Minister began his speech in French. French is not Carney’s mother tongue; it is the mother tongue of a minority of around 25% of Canadians. Carney thus paid tribute to those who depend on the majority to show consideration. He put himself in the shoes of those who struggle to make themselves heard in the chorus of the strong, who struggle to be understood by the assembled elite. Carney bore witness to the diversity of the human community even before he had said anything substantive. In doing so, he set himself apart from the rhetoric of the American President in style, content and language.

French is also the language of the revolution against authoritarian regimes, the language of the Enlightenment, the language in which human rights were first formally declared and written down, those human rights that protect the weak from the strong. Americans may have forgotten, but it was French soldiers who supported them in their War of Independence against the British Crown. In this language, Carney reminded the weak:

“La puissance des moins puissants commence par l’honnêteté.” – “The power of the less powerful begins with honesty.” (Mark Carney, Davos 2026)

The Canadian Prime Minister compared the current situation of the international order with the communism of the 1970s described by Vaclav Havel in his essay The Power of the Powerless. Everyone put communist slogans in their shop windows, but no one believed in them. The system only survived because no one was honest.

It worked for a long time. According to Carney, occasionally, the hegemon was allowed to break the rules because we all benefited from free sea lanes, a stable financial system, common security and international agreements. That has now changed. However, honesty not only requires a clear description of the situation, it also requires consistent action:

“Apply the same standards to allies and rivals. When middle powers criticise economic intimidation from one direction but stay silent when it comes from another, we are keeping the sign in the window.” (Mark Carney, Davos 2026)

Carney called on states and companies to take the signs out of the window. He called on the assembled elite to stand by their values and enter into (pragmatic) cooperation based on these values, instead of gathering in strongholds around a hegemon.

In doing so, he emphasised the idealistic character of the community that calls itself the ‘West’, which the US President also invoked so often in his speech. But contrary to what Trump believes, the ‘West’ is not a geography, a culture, an ethnicity, a skin colour, nor a business or economic model. The ‘West’ is the fundamental conviction that human dignity is not measured by utility. It is the conviction that the powerful cannot do whatever they want, as laid down in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789:

Les hommes naissent et demeurent libres et égaux en droits. (Art. 1)
La liberté consiste à pouvoir faire tout ce qui ne nuit pas à autrui. (Art. 4)

All men are born and remain free and equal in rights. (Art. 1)
Freedom consists in being able to do anything that does not harm another. (Art. 4)

For those who struggle with French, there is also an old English-language document:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” (US Declaration of Independence, 1776)