DFG-Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe "Zukünfte der Nachhaltigkeit"
Beschreibung:
Sighard Neckel and Greta Wagner characterise burnout as a form of social suffering generated by the current regime of economic growth. In our competitive society, individuals are compelled permanently to monitor and optimise their own performance. At the same time, they exert themselves more and more in an attempt to achieve professional and personal fulfilment, a process which often results into self-exploitation. Yet, in recent years, the critique of the abuse of subjectivity in contemporary capitalism has become so strong that the discourse of exhaustion might trigger the emergence of a new order of justification which promises to use subjective resources more sparingly. Following Weber and his claim that capitalism has always used external orders of justification, Neckel and Wagner argue that we may be witnessing the emergence of a Buddhist spirit of capitalism. Buddhist practices such as mindfulness that are increasingly being implemented in large corporations are highly individualised strategies for preventing exhaustion.