The term vivisections refers to interventions on living organisms aimed at gaining more insight into their functioning. In a way, such a procedure is also employed by the theorists portrayed by Axel Honneth here: they intervene in the flow of events with their concepts to extract insights that can be fruitful for their theories. Whether it is Franz Rosenzweig at the beginning of the century, Siegfried Kracauer during the Weimar Republic, or Judith Shklar in the shadow of the Holocaust, they all draw conclusions from their vivisections of the present regarding an appropriate concept of history, society, or politics.