I Owe a Dead Man to the World. Conversations with Heiner Müller

The book I Owe a Dead Man to the World. Conversations with Heiner Müller contains transcripts of talks with Alexander Kluge held between 1988 and 1993. The Cretan king Idomeneus, returning home from the Trojan War, was caught in a violent storm and vowed to Poseidon that, if he survived, he would sacrifice to the god of the sea the first person he encountered on the shore. Idomeneus’s own son came out to meet him, and the king broke his vow. Thus Idomeneus turned out to be owing a dead man to the world.
In six conversations, Heiner Müller and Alexander Kluge reflect on the connections between humanism and barbarism in ancient and modern thought. They strive for an understanding of antiquity and modernity uncorrupted by enlightenment and idealism. As a result, a skeptical position develops, far removed from the «democratic consensus.» These conversations are like a sharp knife piercing the flesh of any thinker and writer.