Irresponsible Ordoliberalism and the Imperialistic Fantasy That We All Might Become Good Germans One Day

What follows is a reply to the critical responses of Malte Dold and Tim Krieger, Josef Hien, Charlotte Heath-Kelly, Emmanuel Pierre Guittet, Filipe dos Reis and Ben Kamis to my 2016 New Perspectives intervention ‘When One Religious Extremism Unmasks Another: Reflections on Europe’s States of Emergency as a Legacy of Ordo-liberal De-hermeneuticisation’ (hereafter ODH – for “Ordoliberal Dehermeneutisation”). My reply will be divided into two main parts. The first part will focus on what I will call ‘a disciplinary instruction not to think.’ The second will focus on what I will call ‘constructive invitations to think further.’ The first part focuses on Dold and Krieger’s arguments. The second focuses predominantly on those of the rest of the interlocutors listed above. What ultimately emerges out of this second section is a reflection on the need to consider both order and disorder as constitutive elements of human freedom, and to sustain the tension between them. Of concern, here, I argue, is a freedom that refuses to be subjected conclusively to any “order of liberty” that a liberal government in general and an ordoliberal government in particular may wish to establish.