Join Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her live dialogue and discuss the issues and solutions that move the world and its people. Send your questions, comments, and reports to questions@schillerinstitute.org or post them in the next live stream.
“The content of policy is the method by which it is made.” That was the idea of statecraft espoused by Lyndon LaRouche, founder of Executive Intelligence Review and co-founder of the Schiller Institute. The question of method in statecraft was the topic of a two-day-plus conference just concluded by the Schiller Institute in Paris. The conference, led by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute, and by Jacques Cheminade, former French Presidential candidate and president of Solidarité et Progrès (Solidarity and Progress), was titled “Emancipation of Africa and the Global Majority, A Challenge for Europe.”
Why, despite the increasing potential for thermonuclear war between NATO and Russia; despite the mounting panic regarding the looming financial meltdown of the hopelessly bankrupt trans-Atlantic system; despite the depopulation of Gaza, and the destruction ongoing in Sudan and several other locations—why was it the self-development of the African continent which was chosen in Paris as the focus of deliberation for the international participants, many of them young people, including from several African nations?
To understand this, contrast two speeches given on Nov. 9. One was by the President of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The other was by Schiller Institute founder and chairwoman, Helga Zepp-LaRouche. Under the guise of commemorating “the significance of the date Nov. 9 in German history—in 1918 (abdication of German Kaiser and proclamation of the Weimar Republic), 1938 (beginning of the Kristallnacht/"Night of the Broken Glass” violence against Germany’s Jewish population and their various establishments), and 1989 (fall of the Berlin Wall), German President Steinmeier chose to stoke fear, claiming that there had been a rise of antisemitism since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. His remarks led to calls for constitutional bans on emerging German political parties and other forms of censorship—the politics of fear.
Fortunately for current history, there are people that actually understand the role of the Classical artist in universal history, and therefore the role of poet Friedrich Schiller in Germany—including in the events of Nov. 9, 1989. Instead of the politics of fear, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, speaking to an audience in Paris, invoked the life, the work and living presence of the poet Friedrich Schiller.
“I can only advise you to read Schiller. Schiller, apart from LaRouche and Cusa and Plato and some others, but Schiller is one of the most important, because he came to the conclusion that in his time, people were already barbaric. He said, why is it that we are still barbarians? He said the most important task of our time—meaning his time—is to develop the Empfindungsvermögen. I have never found a good English translation, because if you just say ‘compassion,’ or ‘empathy,’ it does not quite capture it. What Schiller meant with Empfindungsvermögen is that you have to be able to educate your soul and your mind in such a way that you are able to absorb the world in an all-encompassing manner and feel compassion with the whole world; which means everything. It doesn’t just mean pity or empathy with people who are suffering; it also means to be able to always take in whatever is happening in the world, in your heart and your mind. It’s still not capturing it entirely, but it’s larger than the word empathy.…”
This is the idea that must immediately become the basis and the method of international policy. This is the soul of the idea of “promoting the General Welfare” contained in the United States Constitution’s Preamble.
Show more...