Mr Precht, you are currently being criticized a little …
Richard David Precht: Because of the vaccination, you mean?
Exactly. In your last book you talked about the duty of every individual to society. Now you have said you would not vaccinate children against Covid-19. How does that work together?
That goes very well together. We have a duty to protect the vulnerable, i.e. the sick and the elderly. But they are vaccinated if they wanted. I have never claimed a duty to vaccinate against Corona, and it is not given. Of course, it is desirable that many vaccinate, but not mandatory. As far as the children are concerned, I have the same opinion as the responsible vaccination commission in Germany. We don’t know enough about it to be responsible for vaccinating children against Corona.
Well, leading infectiologists vehemently disagree with you. But let’s leave the vaccination question – if you’re talking to a philosopher: What do you think is a good life?
That is a truism – a good life is when one leads a happy, meaningful life and that neither at the expense of others nor too much at the expense of nature.
Do you think that in our time the majority of people in our society manage to lead such a life?
Not at all. We cannot do this in our industrialized countries because we are doing immense overexploitation of nature in order to live our standard of living, which is considered normal and which has a very negative effect on the balance sheet. There is such a World Happiness Index, which always takes into account what the price we pay for our happiness. And, understandably, the industrialized countries are not doing very well.
What do you mean by our “normal” way of life?
We live in a kind of hyper-consumerism. We believe that we have a need for tons of things that we don’t need at all for life, that don’t make us happier at all. That wouldn’t be a bad thing if we didn’t pay for it with an immense overexploitation of nature. We can’t go on like this much longer.
What has to change?
Either we try to reduce our needs or we try to reduce the overexploitation of nature. The option of just reducing demand is not realistic. In democratic societies, no politician gets majorities. But we should urgently do both.
But you said on a TV show recently that people love prohibitions?
Yes, that’s right, kids do that too. In order to be able to develop, people need a regulatory framework. Children who are allowed anything do not become happy people because of it. Example of a ban on smoking in restaurants: a lot of people defended themselves at the time. And today nobody can imagine eating their food in a smoke-filled restaurant. There is a connection between prohibitions and freedom.
You have to explain that in more detail.
A society in which nothing is forbidden, total anarchy, a human life is worthless. Bans protect the freedom of the individual. For example, we are happy to get from A to B safely thanks to traffic bans. Road traffic bans protect the life and freedom of the individual.
Then, shouldn’t it be possible for the state to make sensible bans?
Meaningful bans are not about the state simply saying: I know what is good for you, and I simply determine it. Nobody will accept that. The problem is that many people would be willing to change something, but they simply cannot do it privately. The state would have to intervene.
Can you give a specific example?
Many people would like to do without plastic. But if you try that seriously, life becomes incredibly complicated, if not impossible. And if I then add CO2 would like to save and only want to eat organic apples from the area – I would have to be unemployed to do that. But if the state does not ban recyclable plastic, then anyone who worries will take a load off their hearts. Then I am not burdened with having to solve a problem myself that I cannot solve myself.
Why don’t politics and the state act much more strongly in the environmental sector?
You are afraid of losing your job. Whether it’s the packaging industry or the automotive industry or the aviation industry. It would be very easy to bring about a change, especially in the aviation industry.
How exactly?
For example, domestic flights of less than 500 kilometers could be banned. Nobody has to fly, shall we say, from Zurich to Basel or Geneva. That would save a lot – also because not a single airline makes a profit on such short routes. And the states, Switzerland as well as Germany, subsidize aviation fuel on a large scale and thus artificially keep frequent flying alive. That’s economic and ecological nonsense, everyone can see that. The same goes for cruise ships. There are hardly any bigger polluters that we dump into the sea for our children and grandchildren, that’s a shame.
Again: why does politics not act?
For fear of losing jobs. Using the example of cruise ships, it would be quite simple: States could subsidize the production of ships that take the garbage out to the sea – this would enable the industry to survive without the loss of jobs.
But states cannot subsidize all branches of industry that will lose jobs in the future.
We have to completely rethink this. One way or another, jobs will be lost on a large scale in the course of digitization. As long as politicians are politically threatened by the loss of jobs, no politician will achieve the great ecological turnaround.
How and what exactly do you have to rethink?
The days of almost full employment will soon be over. An unconditional basic income would enhance the state of being temporarily unemployed.
Sounds wonderful – why haven’t we already?
The social pressure must be much greater in terms of climate and environmental protection and the future of work. We see from history: every social achievement has always come about under pressure from the public. Take child labor, for example, since all of us economists have warned: Without children climbing into mines, without orphans weaving textiles, we will not be economically viable. But nobody here wants child labor back today.
But the question arises: Who should pay an unconditional basic income when fewer and fewer people are working?
Everything is affordable if you just want to. Everything. There are two possibilities. One would be a machine tax. This means that every new activity that is carried out by machines and thus saves personnel costs is taxed. A micro-tax would be even better.
Please explain micro tax in more detail.
You could tax every financial transaction with a tiny amount, 0.2 percent for example. When you as an individual have to pay twenty cents for every hundred you spend, you hardly feel it. In the case of large transactions, for example on the stock exchange, billions of euros come together – without seriously damaging trading. This could easily finance an unconditional basic income.
The question remains: what do all the unemployed people do then?
Again, one would have to start with our school system. That too needs to be completely rethought. Our school system dates back to the 18th century and was used at that time to train good commanders in monarchies. Since then, the material and teaching methods have been patched up again and again, but the whole thing has never been rethought. In the future, however, we no longer need recipients of orders, but people who act and think innovatively and in a way that is guided by interests.
What do you think a school should look like?
You have to rely on the own motivation and strength of each individual instead of letting everyone learn the same material and forcing children to socialize, so to speak. To this end, classes could be abolished and replaced by interest-driven learning groups. You would then have those interested in natural sciences together or the theater groups. It would also be good to have healthy competition between the same groups of this kind, a bit like at Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, in which the individual houses compete with one another. Because later, in business and research, teams also compete against each other.
Finally, if you can tell each of our readers something that is important to you – what would it be?
That one asks oneself whether we are happier than the generation before with all the things we think we need to have. I do not think so. Nobody has to travel to Ibiza by low-cost airline twice a year, nobody really needs the latest cell phone, nobody needs jeans that are cut slightly differently every year, nobody needs this hyperconsumption madness. He doesn’t make us happy, on the contrary. If everyone kept thinking about this again and again, a great deal would have been done for the planet.
Richard David Precht gave a lecture at the Swiss science festival “Salon Public” last week. This interview was created afterwards.
The pop philosopher
Richard David Precht (56) is honorary professor of philosophy at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg (D) and at the Hanns Eisler University of Music in Berlin. Since 2012 he has hosted the ZDF talk show “Precht”. His first non-fiction book «Who am I – and if so, how many?», Published in 2007, in which he discusses fundamental philosophical questions in a generally understandable manner, was on the «Spiegel» bestseller list for years. Since then, countless non-fiction books have been created that deal with, among other things, digitization, animal ethics and education. Precht lives in Düsseldorf and has a grown son.
U. Baumgarten via Getty Images
Richard David Precht (56) is honorary professor of philosophy at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg (D) and at the Hanns Eisler University of Music in Berlin. Since 2012 he has hosted the ZDF talk show “Precht”. His first non-fiction book «Who am I – and if so, how many?», Published in 2007, in which he discusses fundamental philosophical questions in a generally understandable manner, was on the «Spiegel» bestseller list for years. Since then, countless non-fiction books have been created that deal with, among other things, digitization, animal ethics and education. Precht lives in Düsseldorf and has a grown son.