Konrad Paul Liessmann

He officially retired in 2018, but continued his professorial activities at the University of Vienna on a special contract basis until the end of 2020.

[1] and then studied German language and literature, history and philosophy at the University of Vienna and completed his Magisterium in 1976, receiving his doctorate in 1979 and his habilitation in 1989.

[2] Since 1996 he has been the academic director of the Philosophicum Lech and editor of the book series of the same name published by Paul Zsolnay Verlag.

Liessmann also organised the first international symposium on Günther Anders in Vienna in 1991 and has been leading a research project to index his estate since 2012.

Controversial essays and commentaries in the feature pages of the daily newspapers Der Standard, Die Presse and the weekly magazine profil deal with current issues and discourses on socio-political topics.

[9] As late as the 1980s, Liessmann wrote in 2001 in the Tagesspiegel, in view of various failures (such as the Challenger Explosion) and accidents (e.g. Bhopal or Chernobyl) based on supposed technical achievements, a general technosceptic mood prevailed.

When driving a car, there is a kind of fusion of technical device and human being (who often controls the former himself), and the same can be seen with mobile phoness, which are "almost perceived as a part of the body".

Liessmann concluded that technologies increasingly determine our behaviour, creating an "illusion of freedom" but de facto signifying subjugation.

[11] Liessmann published his critique of the current education system through the capitalisation of the mind primarily in Theory of Uneducation, The Fallacies of the Knowledge Society and in the polemic Geisterstunde.

In Geisterstunde Liessmann argues against the Pisa Study and also attacks the education experts Bernd Schilcher [de], Andreas Salcher, Richard David Precht and Gerald Hüther; their reform proposals would reinforce the errors of the existing education system.

[16][17][18] Barbarians, according to Liessmann, are not to be found on the right-wing fringe, but rather at the "control centres of art and science", in quality media and universities.

Leichte Sprache, he argues, is a pure art product and an attempt at radical reduction, flattening and simplification.