Background

Srećko Horvat was born on February 28, 1983, in Osijek, Croatia, but lived for the first eight years of his life in exile in Germany.

Education

Srećko received a degree in philosophy and general linguistics from The University of Zagreb.

Career

After graduation Horvat started writing for Croatian magazines such as Zarez. Today he writes regularly for leading media, including The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Der Spiegel and The New York Times. He also has published more than 10 books, which were translated into more than 15 languages, including Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Turkish, German and others. His books and essays mostly deal with capitalism-critical movements, emancipation and the development of Europe. Together with Slavoj Žižek, he published the book What Does Europe Want? The Union and Its Discontents. His most recent work, a radical manifesto for hope in democracy, union and internationalism: Poetry for the Future, was published in May 2019.

In 2008 Horvat co-founded the Subversive Festival, where he served as program director until 2013. It was a forum for socio-political issues in Southeast Europe. The influence and significance of the Subversive Festival was often paralleled to the Praxis School, the Marxist humanist philosophical movement that originated in the SFR Yugoslavia, during the 1960s.

Horvat was the host and author of an intellectual TV show on Croatian National Television called Zdravo Društvo during 2013, which tried to recreate the Balkan cultural space and hosted many intellectuals such as Renata Salecl, Rade Šerbedžija, Andrej Nikolaidis, Viktor Ivančić, and others. But in 2014 he lost his TV show because of his radical views.

In 2014 Horvat launched a project called Philosophical Theatre at Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb. The underlying idea was to reestablish the close relationship between philosophy and theatre. It runs as a monthly series of public debates with thinkers and artists.

Achievements

• Srećko Horvat is a leading European philosopher and "one of the most exciting voices of his generation," according to the German Der Freitag. His best known work is What Does Europe Want? The Union and Its Discontents, which he co-authored with Slavoj Žižek.

Works

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  • The Radicality of Love

    (What would happen if we could stroll through the revoluti...)

    2015
  • What Does Europe Want?

    (To general observers, the European Union's economic woes ...)

    2014
  • Advancing Conversations

    (In a world dominated by capitalism which is dangerously s...)

    2017
  • Welcome to the Desert of Post-Socialism

    (This volume offers a profound analysis of post-socialist ...)

    2015
  • Poetry from the Future: Why a Global Liberation Movement Is Our Civilisation's Last Chance

    (The past is forgotten, and the future is without hope. Dy...)

    2019

Politics

Horvat is regarded as one of the "central figures of the new left in post-Yugoslavia". He has participated in different activist movements across the world, including the 2009 student protests in Croatia, Occupy Wall Street in 2011, and World Social Forum in Senegal and Tunisia. Since 2016 Horvat has been claiming that "the need for a progressive international movement was never as urgent as today." He is actively involved in the Democracy in Europe 2025 movement and was one of its founders along with Yanis Varoufakis in 2016.