Why troublemakers are needed 

We actually have a lot of crises today – the climate crisis, strikes, migration crises, squats and much more – why are you in favour of even more disruptions?

In periods when there is a flurry of activity and bad news, there is a great desire for calm. In this respect, there are many arguments against considering disorder as desirable. The word “troublemaker”, which is so precious to me, also seems to have a negative connotation at first glance. After all, this word means that there is someone causing trouble. So how can the assessment of the troublemaker lead to anything other than a negative judgement?

So yes, you’re right: my interest in troublemakers is under a certain amount of pressure to demonstrate legitimacy. In my defence, I can say that, in turbulent times in particular, we have to try to not just struggle desperately, but rather to keep an eye on the bigger picture. If we open our wide-angle lens and look beyond the bias of the present, we realise that history is not a bundle of impasses, and, instead, consists of twists and turns, and changing mindsets. This also means that the need for calm, which is triggered by the accumulation of crises, has a counterpart – the need for movement.

Here I like to think of Friedrich Hölderlin, who once wrote: “It almost seems to me we’re in an age of lead. Yet our wish is fulfilled”¹. There are times of torpor when the desire for change arises. This brings me back to the troublemaker: movement always means that something gets mixed up, and perspectives shift. Movement is closely connected to disorder. So the negative meaning of the troublemaker that I just spoke about needs to have a positive meaning added to it. This becomes clear when we consider that there is also false or rotten peace. Someone who disturbs this false peace appears more likeable than they might seem at first glance.

You distinguish between disruptions with productive consequences and those with destructive consequences. With the figure of the puer robustus, you address both aspects. Can you give a brief summary of who the puer robustus actually is? – The figure is not a theoretical construct, it is derived from history.

My reflections began with the discovery that the figure of the puer robustus appears in a huge number of texts by the most important political thinkers of the last few centuries, but today seems to have been forgotten and buried. That was a curious discrepancy. Now my intention is to recall this figure, but not to complete the museum of strange figures from the past. The puer robustus is interesting because, over the centuries, people have used this figure to examine all the advantages and disadvantages of the various forms of order and disorder. The history of this figure began with the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who was a great fanatic of order and a great enemy of disorder. For him, the puer robustus – the “sturdy boy” – was the ultimate evil figure. Why? Because two things came together in the puer robustus: childishness, which for Hobbes was synonymous with a lack of reason, therefore stupidity, and physical strength, the robust. He had something like a big child in mind, lashing out wildly. In this respect, the history of the puer robustus begins with a guy inventing a figure he would prefer to immediately bury and banish from reality. Thomas Hobbes wished for people who obey the law and bow down to the great sovereign, the Leviathan. Although he invented the puer robustus, he did not manage to bury it.

This is because later thinkers – Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Alexis de Tocqueville, Victor Hugo, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and many others – took up the figure of the puer robustus and interpreted it in very different ways, with the childish and the powerful aspects not always being understood negatively. For example, Rousseau understood the childishness as purity and the strength as a force needed to change the world. Karl Marx, in turn, sees the proletarian as a puer robustus. Overall, this figure illustrates how, over the last 500 years or so, we have struggled with the relationship between order and disorder in society. In conclusion, it becomes clear that it would be wrong to take sides with only one perspective. In fact, every social change occurs through movements characterised by disorder and the restoration of order. It has even been said that democracy is disorder that has become order – or order that cultivates disorder so as not to become rigid. It can be worthwhile looking back at the past because we can use it to equip our toolbox for the future.

In your book, you distinguish between four types of troublemakers: the egocentric, the eccentric, the nomocentric and the massive troublemaker. These are driven by different goals and motivations. Can a common characteristic be seen in the fact that they attempt to disrupt or change an established order from the outside, i.e. from the sidelines?

Yes, a troublemaker is someone who stands on the sidelines. Someone who is not in the mainstream but rather moves at the side or in a branch of a river. The big question for the troublemaker is: how does he relate to the centre, to the established order he is grappling with? The marginal position is always viewed with suspicion from the centre of order. The point, however, is that the order suffers from self-deception if it believes that everyone is always already in the mainstream. An order is not a rigid framework, it is something that has to be lived. And it is lived by people who normally abide by the law. However, these people are, to a certain extent, changing personnel. We must not forget that, in the course of history, there has been a constant change of generations. People grow into this society again and again through socialisation processes – or fall out of it again.

So the marginal position is nothing unusual. Basically, every person who is born first enters this world from the sidelines. They have to learn about everything, they are doing everything for the first time. As this type of constant renewal exists in society, the marginal position of the troublemaker is not unusual.

By the way, I do not believe the troublemaker should be glorified. There are terrible examples of the troublemaker: gadflies, criminals, terrorists – that I describe in my typology as massive troublemakers. The term troublemaker is far too harmless for that, but these people are also a nuisance. On the other hand, there are also likeable representatives of this particular species. The crucial question is how the relationship between these marginalised figures and the order is determined.

Can you give an example to illustrate this?

A negative example of a troublemaker is the so-called free rider – someone who hangs on to the tram from the outside to travel for free. He takes advantage of the opportunities offered by a city’s transport system and leeches off others. The free rider behaves in such a way towards the order that he wants to gain a personal advantage without making a contribution himself. The consequences of this individual behaviour have been studied many times in the social sciences, for example in relation to loyalty and solidarity: the free rider has an eroding effect on what is called social capital in sociology or economics. He undermines cohesion in society. This guy who, according to my classification, would be an egocentric troublemaker, only thinks about his own interests. He doesn’t care how the order should be changed, he just wants to exploit it.

This needs to be distinguished from the troublemaker who takes a more constructive approach to society by wanting to change the existing rules. He would not want to travel by tram for free, but would ask himself, for example, how much the season ticket should cost, where the tram goes or how the electricity that powers the tram is generated. This character that I call a nomocentric troublemaker has a precise vision of how the rules should be organised differently. He does not want to abide by the existing rules, but is quite prepared to abide by future rules that are in his favour. Of course, these are harmless examples – there are much more dramatic social challenges.

By the way, thanks to Friedrich Schiller, Switzerland has an excellent representative of the character of nomocentric troublemaker – William Tell.

Tell as someone who came from the sidelines and finally arrived in the centre as a national hero?

Yes, you could say that. The interesting thing about William Tell is that, at first, he acts as a loner and a marginalised figure. His friends ask him to help them in their attempts to get rid of the foreign power, but he refuses. William Tell is content as a loner, which Schiller expresses in the famous line: “The strong man is strongest when alone”. His solitary or marginal position also allows him to be particularly ruthless. In the end, however, he can’t manage on his own, he needs his friends. Unlike other political leaders, William Tell would never think of abolishing imperial rule in order to crown himself emperor. William Tell is not without violence. The decisive factor, however, is that in the end he rejoins the order as one among equals. This makes him a democratic figure. This restraint is crucial for all democratic troublemakers, whether representatives of the American civil rights movement, Nelson Mandela or whoever.

Historical analysis has the advantage that we know what has become of it. The various disruptions and their consequences can be reconstructed. But what about the troublemakers of today? Let’s say for figures that do not have the dimension of historical heroic figures, such as, at the moment, the non-binary author Kim de l’Horizon in the context of the gender discourse: to what extent do such little troublemakers have the potential to change the ways people think and behave?

You are addressing a very difficult problem – the question of evaluating processes of which we are contemporaries. How can we evaluate exactly what someone is doing as long as we don’t know how things will turn out? Such evaluation problems are particularly dramatic when there is a lot at stake and blood is also left on the carpet. If we think of the Russian Revolution, for example, we can imagine how enormously difficult or impossible it would be to reach a historical judgement on this revolution as a contemporary in 1917. It is even more dramatic when we think about the interaction between collective movements and individual figures: who is moving whom? Do individual figures become the figureheads of individual movements – making them interchangeable to a certain extent – or is a charisma, a role model function concentrated in them that cannot be assumed by others in the same way?

This raises two questions. Firstly, a philosophical one, the question of the normative evaluation of change processes. And secondly, there is the question of the interaction between prominent figures and broader movements.

To come back to the current discussion and the example you mentioned: it really isn’t easy to orientate yourself. In the case of the gender debate, we are having such a wide-ranging discussion in which so many different voices interact that it would, of course, be an exaggeration to ascribe a leading role to a figure like Kim de l’Horizon in the same way that we can – with hindsight – ascribe to Martin Luther King, for instance, in the American civil rights movement. In other words, we are not dependent on this figure to have a particular discussion.

Such figures, however, perhaps occasionally have an accelerating effect. As far as the assessment of the shifts in the gender debate is concerned, we can say that a certain opening is taking place today that is struggling to become socially acceptable to the majority of people. It is very difficult to determine whether something like a new consensus is becoming established in society as a whole. As far as the gender debate is concerned, it seems to me that this is far from being achieved. In certain circles, it has become a matter of course to know what is behind the ever-growing list of LGBTQIA abbreviations. For other social circles, however, the same list of abbreviations is not only unknown or incomprehensible, but in some cases also repulsive – because it is based on insider knowledge: either you know it all, or you are really old-fashioned. The proponents and advocates of these complicated acronyms are therefore doing themselves a disservice.

Why?

Because they want to open up society, but at the same time have an excluding effect. They exclude those who do not participate in these insider discussions – which are also tied to certain cultural contexts. This example shows how difficult it has become these days to reach an overall consensus in society. This is connected with the fact that society has become divided – less so in Switzerland than in the USA, for example, where a real culture war is raging on such issues. But here, too, we are far from being able to speak of a newly achieved common self-conception when it comes to the subject of gender.

To come back to the question of the troublemaker or the disruption of order: the classic juxtaposition, according to which there is a ruling order and forces that want to change this order, has changed considerably. Perhaps this one order no longer exists, but only different scenes, spheres, filter bubbles and echo chambers in which people move.

Seen in this light, it is no longer so clear which discourses a person who wants to change something is, ultimately, intervening in. They may achieve a change in one of these circles, but be ignored in others. This means that the patterns of disorder and order in society are changing to the extent that there is either a dispute over opinion leaderships or people ignore each other – meaning certain groups get into controversies with each other or pass each other by in indifference.

Let’s assume that society is not yet so segregated that it only consists of filter bubbles: how do we recognise that a new way of thinking or behaving has actually arrived in society and not just in individual circles?

In some areas, there are clear criteria for whether something has been received and accepted by society as a whole. This question is easy to answer where something requires legalisation. The fact that something has to be regulated – that it is not just a matter of cultural moods – is a criterion for a phenomenon to be widely accepted by society. A prominent example in this context is abortion. People have been – and in some cases still are – fighting for abortion in almost all European countries. There are enormous conflicts at play here. In the USA, this entire discussion is now, in a way, being taken back a few decades.

The moment a common position has been reached after lengthy discussions, which is also to be enshrined in law, the regulation acquires an official status that can no longer simply be wiped off the table. Nevertheless, there may still be people opposing this regulation, of course.

The situation is different for so-called soft issues, which usually do not require legal regulation. However, we should not fall into the trap of thinking that soft issues are less important because of this. Issues that resist legalisation can have a huge impact on the way we all live our lives. For instance, the widespread impact of attitudes and life ideals exemplified by prominent individuals can be considerable. One example of this is Taylor Swift with her millions of followers. The Kim de l’Horizon story mentioned earlier is also in this “soft” area.

We have now talked mainly about individual troublemakers. If we think of collective disruptive actions, which we know from the climate movement, for example: do they really contribute to a change in thinking – or is society simply getting used to the protests?

This again raises the question of the extent to which a contemporary can judge movements that are still in progress. This is particularly difficult to assess in the case of climate protests. Ultimately, there is a tug-of-war taking place: the climate protesters want to force society to rethink and are taking provocative measures to do this. In the end, however, their desire is to become acceptable to the majority of people. They don’t want to remain marginalised figures who are constantly getting into trouble. They want to become role models and get the rest of society on their side. However, if they now glue themselves to roads, the opposite happens: society reacts angrily and possibly uses threatening gestures and criminalisation strategies to calm the people down again. We can’t really speak of a familiarisation effect yet.

Last year, there was an incident at the KKL Culture and Convention Centre in Lucerne in which climate protesters stormed the stage and large sections of the audience reacted angrily to the disruption. The conductor finally found a compromise and let them get their message off their chests, after which the concert could continue. Such stories are liminal experiences: the climate protesters enter the stage, they disrupt this cultural experience and annoy the audience, at the same time they address an issue that these people – if they weren’t sitting in the concert – would also be concerned with. So they are not talking entirely at cross purposes with the people.

In general, it must be assumed that a change in thinking will not happen by itself and that provocative actions are required. This has been the case with every major social change in the past centuries. Perhaps we simply have to experiment with which forms of protest prove to be particularly successful.

As TRANSIT is aimed at education professionals, I would like to take up the question of what role you ascribe to education in connection with troublemakers. Is disruption something that should be learnt and encouraged in educational contexts?

I am also very concerned by this question. And the puer robustus does, indeed, have a connection to education. One of the appearances of the puer robustus in history is due to Denis Diderot. In his dialogue novel “Rameau’s Nephew”, Diderot has a guy appear who is described as a sturdy boy. This guy, a pretty crazy musician, is said to be something like a piece of yeast that sets society in motion. What this crazy musician does is to irritate people, to challenge them with provocative behaviour and to get them out of their rut. Although this is not yet an educational concept, this story found its way into the educational discussion in a next step, through another great philosopher: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel has Diderot’s crazy musician appear in his “Phenomenology of Spirit”, in the chapter on education.

Why does Hegel include this weird guy in his reflections on education? The answer is as simple as it is irritating: for Hegel, education has a lot to do with alienation. However, the concept of alienation has a different meaning for Hegel than we know from Marx and the exploitation of workers, for example. Alienation in Hegel’s sense stands for the temptation and the willingness to leave the familiar, to expose ourselves to an experience that we do not know, in which we are not at home.

Education in the Hegelian sense therefore involves stepping out of ourselves. From Hegel’s point of view, those who are “locked up” in themselves, i.e. who block themselves up in their little house and absolutely do not want to get out, cannot be educated.

In what sense is the experience of unfamiliarity a prerequisite for education?

Firstly, it is about exposing yourself to experiences that are unfamiliar to you. But then you also have to be prepared to make this experience your own, to allow the unfamiliar to become your own – without appropriating it. In an educational process understood in this way, you yourself become someone else. This is also the goal that Hegel pursues with his concept of education.

This little story says a lot about education as well as about order and disorder. Education should not be understood so narrowly that we acquire a certain amount of knowledge. This is because education is not primarily about the objects of knowledge, but rather about the question of how experience is acquired in the first place.

So if we want to think comprehensively about education, we have to think about processes rather than content?

Yes, I would see it that way. When we grow into this world, which is strange to us at first, we have to familiarise ourselves with it. Every child experiences this, and often reacts to this strangeness with fear because they don’t know their way about. But this not knowing our way about is actually the starting point from which two different paths open up: we withdraw and try to isolate ourselves, or we maintain our curiosity and dare to become familiar with the unknown.

Ludwig Wittgenstein said that the starting point of his thinking was the experience of “I don’t know my way about”. This not knowing our way about is also the starting point of educational processes. If we take the first step and – to use Hegel’s words again – summon up the courage to alienate ourselves, the world becomes experienceable and permeable.

Anyone who turns away and takes the position “I don’t want anything to do with that” is building up a boundary that they are not prepared to cross. However, anyone who accepts this “I don’t know my way about” and dares to step into the unknown is not drawing a boundary but, rather, is experiencing the crossing of a threshold.

Isn’t a threshold, ultimately, also a boundary?

Thresholds differ from boundaries in that we can not only cross them, but also stay on them. Like a door frame, where you can stand on the threshold and get used to the view before perhaps taking the step to the other side. A boundary is, in actual fact, inextensible: you are either on one side or the other.

Openness to the unknown and the uncertain, which you see as a prerequisite for educational processes, is also a characteristic of the eccentric troublemaker, your favourite among all the troublemakers. Is this type of troublemaker particularly interested in education?

For me, the exemplary figure of an eccentric troublemaker is Diderot’s crazy musician. The special thing about this type of person is that he does not immediately come with a grand vision for society as a whole. Rather, he is a source of unrest that sets society in motion. The eccentric troublemakers themselves do not know where this movement will lead. They do not even know where their own disruptive lives are leading them.

The eccentric troublemaker therefore assumes that his life is changing, and, to a large extent, this understanding of life as a journey actually corresponds to the concept of education as understood in classical and also modern education theory. Although these educational concepts were and are also about acquiring certain content, education itself is conceived as an open-ended process. The essence of this process is that we allow the world to affect us and change ourselves in the process. It is impossible to predict what the end result will look like.

Doesn’t the emphasis on openness in education also involve the danger of disorientation?

Yes, openness is indeed often associated with indecision or indifference. Openness must be protected against this. I would also say for the educational process: yes, the end is open, but this openness does not mean arbitrariness because the educational process is characterised by great seriousness. We have to get involved with the world, try, with tremendous care, to find out what is actually going on out there. This includes things like dedication, immersion, many virtues that are not compatible with a superficial user perspective.

To quote Hegel again: Hegel says “work cultivates and educates”, which means two things. Firstly, that we change ourselves through the work process by gaining experience and growing through the tasks we complete. Secondly, the expression means that work changes the world; here it is about education in the sense of creating and rebuilding. Immersion in the world is therefore part of the educational processes.

Apart from being a philosopher, I am also a keen craftsman, and as a craftsman you constantly experience that you can only master tasks if you devote yourself to the materials and their special characteristics. This requires a tremendous willingness to slow down and gain experience. Only then will you achieve something in the end. So yes, the process we enter into as individuals or as a society should have an open end, but this openness only becomes attractive if it is linked to a willingness to delve deeper.

1. From the elegy “The Walk in the Country” by Friedrich Hölderlin

Cited literature:

Dieter Thomä (2019): Troublemakers: A Philosophy of Puer Robustus, Polity Press.