Philipp Mainländer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Philipp Mainländer (around 1867)

Philipp Mainländer (born  October 5, 1841 in Offenbach am Main , †  April 1, 1876 ​​there ) was a German poet and philosopher . Born as Philipp Batz, he later changed his name out of admiration for his hometown in Mainländer. In his main work The Philosophy of Redemption , according to Theodor Lessing “perhaps the most radical system of pessimism that philosophical literature knows”, Mainländer proclaims that human existence has no value and that “from the knowledge that not being is better than being , ignited will [...] the supreme principle of all morality ".

biography

Born on October 5, 1841 in Offenbach am Main, “as a child of conjugal rape”, Philipp Mainländer grew up as the youngest of six siblings in a family of manufacturers that must have had an oppressive climate: three of the six siblings would later commit suicide.

In 1856, on his father's instructions, Mainländer began commercial training at the commercial school in Dresden . Two years later he took up a position in a trading company in Naples , where he learned Italian and familiarized himself with the works of Dante , Petrarch , Boccaccio and Leopardi . Mainländer will later describe the five years in Naples as the happiest of his life:

"As a merchant, I saw the world, gained a comprehensive commercial view, and was spared the poisonous breath of philosophy professors and a dry, worm-like, short-sighted scholarship, the omniscience, as Heraclitus used to contemptuously say."

- Quoted from Fritz Sommerlad: From the life of Philipp Mainländer. Messages from the philosopher's handwritten autobiography.

Mainlander's discovery of Schopenhauer's major work The World as Will and Idea also fell during this Neapolitan period . Mainlander, who was nineteen at the time, would later describe this discovery as a kind of revelation , that day in February 1860 as the "most significant day [of his] life" - and Schopenhauer will actually be the most important influence on Mainlander's later philosophical work.

In 1863 Mainländer returned to Germany and worked in his father's shop. In the same year he also put the three-part poem The Last Hohenstaufen on paper. Two years later, on October 5th, Mainlander's 24th birthday, his mother dies. Marked by this experience of loss, he turned more and more away from poetry and towards philosophy in the following years, studying Schopenhauer, Kant , "not poisoned by Fichte , Schelling and Hegel , but rather critically tempered by Schopenhauer", Eschenbach's " Parzival " , the classics from Heraklit to Condillac .

In March 1869, Mainländer took up a position at the J. Mart bank. Magnus in Berlin . He set himself the goal of amassing a small fortune within a few years, the interest income from which should enable him to lead a modest life in a small village. The crash on the Vienna Stock Exchange on May 8, 1873 ( Wiener Krach ) completely ruined Mainländer and brought these plans to an abrupt end. In 1873 Mainländer resigned his position at the bank without really knowing what was to follow.

Origin of the philosophy of salvation

Although already ransomed from military service by wealthy parents in 1861 , Mainländer undertakes tireless efforts - in accordance with his request, expressed in an autobiographical note, "to be absolutely subordinate to someone else in everything, to do the lowest work, to have to blindly obey" To be able to serve in arms. Finally, on April 6, 1874 - Mainländer is already 32 years old - an immediate request to Kaiser Wilhelm I shows success, and Mainländer is called up to the cuirassiers in Halberstadt on September 28 of the same year . In the four months or so until he took up his duties, he wrote the first volume of his major work The Philosophy of Redemption in a real creative frenzy .

“And now began a magical life, a spiritual blossoming full of bliss and blissful shudder. […] This life lasted four full months; it filled June, July, August and September. My system lay completely clear, consistent and rounded in itself, and a creative frenzy enlivened me, who did not need the whip of the thought that I would have to be finished by September 28; for on October 1st I had to put on the king's skirt - this date could not be postponed. If I had not finished then, I would not have been able to put the finishing touches on my work until after three years. H. I would have seen myself thrown against an abyss into which the furies of a broken existence would have thrown me infallibly. "

- Philipp Mainländer : On the rotten world and other remnants. Manuscriptum, Warendorf 2003, p. 207

Mainländer hands the completed manuscript of the work to his sister Minna so that she can find a publisher for it during his military service. He writes a letter to the unknown publisher in which he asks not to be named as the author under his maiden name, but as Philipp Mainländer, because he shrinks from nothing more “than to be exposed to the eyes of the world”. 

On November 1, 1875, Mainländer - originally committed for three years, but meanwhile, as he noted in a letter to his sister Minna, "used up, worked out, [...] with a perfectly [...] healthy body, unspeakably tired" - prematurely Discharged from military service and travels back to his hometown Offenbach, where, after another creative frenzy, he corrected the rough drafts of the Philosophy of Redemption within two months , wrote his memoirs , wrote the novella Rupertine del Fino and completed the 650-page second volume of his main work .

From around February 1875 Mainlander's mental collapse became apparent - not unlike the collapse that Friedrich Nietzsche would suffer a few years later. Meanwhile, falling into megalomania and believing himself to be the messiah of social democracy, Mainländer hanged himself in his apartment on April 1, 1876. The freshly printed specimen copies of his main work The Philosophy of Redemption had only arrived the day before .

philosophy

Building on Schopenhauer's metaphysics, Mainländer sees the will as the innermost core of being, the ontological archae . However, he deviates from Schopenhauer in important points. With Schopenhauer, the will is a simple unit and transcends time and space. Schopenhauer's transcendental idealism leads him to the conclusion that only through introspective observation of our own body can we access a certain aspect of the thing itself . What we observe as will is all that is to be observed, nothing more. There are no hidden aspects. Furthermore, through introspection, we can only observe our individual will. This also leads Mainländer to the philosophical position of pluralism . The goals he set for himself and his system are reminiscent of ancient Greek philosophy : What is the relationship between the undivided existence of the "One" and the constantly changing world of becoming that we experience?

In addition, Mainländer emphasizes the idea of ​​redemption for all of creation. This is another aspect in which he distinguishes his philosophy from Schopenhauer's. With Schopenhauer the rest of the will is a rare occurrence. The artistic genius can temporarily achieve this state, while few saints have completely detached themselves from will in the course of history. For Mainländer, the entire cosmos is slowly but surely moving in the direction of the abolition of the will to live and "redemption".

According to Mainländer's theory, an original unit disintegrated into multiplicity and expanded into our universe. So he contrasted the immanent world of plurality with a past transcendent unity. This provided a smooth transition between monism and pluralism . Mainländer believed that in time all kinds of pluralism and diversity would return to monism, and that his philosophy had succeeded in explaining this transition from unity to diversity and becoming.

Death of god

Despite his scientific explanations, Mainländer was not afraid to philosophize in allegorical terms. Indeed, it is there that his philosophy is most conspicuous, dramatic, and even theological. Mainländer formulated his own "creation myth" and equated this original singularity with God.

Mainländer reinterprets Schopenhauer's metaphysics in two important aspects. In Mainlander's system there is primarily no "uniform will". The basic unit has broken down into individual wills and every existing subject has an individual will for itself. For this reason, Mainländer can claim that as soon as an "individual will" has been destroyed and dies, it achieves the absolute nothing and not the relative nothing that we find in Schopenhauer. By recognizing death as salvation and through absolute nothingness, Mainlander's system manages to offer "more comprehensive" means of salvation. In addition, Mainländer reinterprets Schopenhauer's will to live as the underlying will to death, i.e. H. the will to live is the means of the will to death or life is the means to the end of death.

"[...] everything in the world is will to death, which in the organic kingdom, more or less veiled, appears as will to life. Life is willed by the pure plant drive, by instinct and finally demonic and conscious, because in this way the goal of the whole, and thus the goal of each individuality, is reached more quickly. "

ethics

For Mainländer ethics are eudaemonics (doctrine of happiness). His philosophy carefully reverses other teachings as well. For example, Epicurus sees happiness only in pleasure and since there is nothing after death, there is nothing to fear and / or no reason to long for death. As a philosophical pessimist, however, Mainländer sees no desirable joy in this life and praises the sublime nothingness of death by recognizing precisely this state of non-existence as desirable.

Mainländer advocates an ethic of egoism. Every human being, because of his instinct for happiness, wants "in every moment of life the full satisfaction of his desires, his inclinations, his desires, in which he puts his greatest happiness". For Mainländer every action is exclusively selfish, since everyone, according to his character and nature, acts according to his happiness, i.e. selfishly. Happiness, however, only provides temporary satisfaction, since every feeling of pleasure has to be bought with a feeling of displeasure "[...] basically, the will has gained nothing with every such purchase". There is no free will at Mainländer. Everyone acts according to his (hardly changeable) character and the corresponding motives. Any action that occurs in accordance with the movement of humanity from being to non-being is moral. From this flow the virtues of patriotism, justice, philanthropy and chastity. In the appendix, Mainländer justifies ethics purely immanently without reference to his metaphysics. Here, as at the beginning of the article, he justifies the foundation of morality with the will ignited by the knowledge that not being is better than being.

"From the thus inflamed will, virginity, holiness, love of enemies, justice, in short all virtue, and the reprehensibility of unnatural lust, flow by itself, for the conscious will to death hovers over the world."

literature

  • Philipp Mainländer: Writings in four volumes. Edited by Winfried H. Müller-Seyfarth, Hildesheim (Georg Olms) 1996-1999
    • Volume I: The Philosophy of Redemption. First volume. Berlin 1876, Reprint: Hildesheim 1996. With a foreword to the new edition by Winfried H. Müller-Seyfarth, ISBN 3-487-09556-4
    • Volume II: The Philosophy of Redemption. Second volume. Twelve Philosophical Essays. Frankfurt / M. 1886, Reprint: Hildesheim 1996. With a foreword to the new edition by Winfried H. Müller-Seyfarth, ISBN 3-487-09557-2
    • Volume III: The last Hohenstaufen. A dramatic poem in three parts: Enzo - Manfred - Conradino. Leipzig 1876, Reprint: Hildesheim 1997. With a foreword to the new edition by Winfried H. Müller-Seyfarth, ISBN 3-487-10551-9
    • Volume IV: The Power of Motives. Literary estate from 1857 to 1875. Hildesheim 1999. With a foreword by Ulrich Horstmann; published and with an afterword by Joachim Hoell u. Winfried H. Müller-Seyfarth, ISBN 3-487-09558-0
  • About the rot in the world and other remnants. A selection of works by Philipp Mainländer, preface Ulrich Horstmann , Manuscriptum-Verlag ISBN 3933497744
  • Winfried H. Müller-Seyfarth (Ed.): What makes Philipp Mainländer. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2002, ISBN 3-8260-2383-8
  • Winfried H. Müller-Seyfarth (ed.): The modern pessimists as decadents - From Nietzsche to Horstmann. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1993, ISBN 3-8847-9852-9
  • Richard Reschika: Schopenhauer's wild sons. Philipp Mainländer - the metaphysician of entropy. In: Philosophical Adventurers. Eleven profiles from the Renaissance to the present. JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck) UTB, Tübingen 2001, pp. 103-141, ISBN 3-8252-2269-1
  • Fabio Ciracì, Verso l'assoluto nulla. La filosofia della redenzione di Philipp Mainländer, Pensa MultiMedia, Lecce (Italy) 2006 ISBN 88-8232-442-7
  • Guido Rademacher: The fall of the world. Phillipp Mainländer. Lived short and long forgotten. The life and work of an optimist. Turnshare Ltd., London 2008. ISBN 978-1-84790-006-7
  • Susanna Rubinstein : An individualistic pessimist. (Leipzig 1894) Reprint: Severus, Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-942382-69-4

swell

  1. ↑ Dreieichpark opened the princely trade show. From: offenbach.de, September 21, 2006, accessed October 28, 2013.
  2. ^ Theodor Lessing: Schopenhauer, Wagner, Nietzsche. An introduction to modern philosophy. Leipzig 1907
  3. ↑ Philipp Mainländer: Philosophy of Redemption. Quoted from Ulrich Horstmann (Ed.): Vom Verwesen der Welt and other remnants. Manuscriptum, Warendorf 2003, p. 85
  4. ^ Fritz Sommerlad: From the life of Philipp Mainländer. Messages from the philosopher's handwritten autobiography. Printed in Winfried H. Müller Seyfarth (ed.): 'The modern pessimists as décadents - From Nietzsche to Horstmann.' Texts on the reception history of Philipp Mainlander's 'Philosophy of Redemption'. P. 95
  5. ↑ ibid, p. 98
  6. ↑ ibid, p. 102
  7. ↑ ibid, p. 88
  8. ↑ Philipp Mainländer: My story of soldiers. Diary sheets. Quoted from Ulrich Horstmann (Ed.): Vom Verwesen der Welt and other remnants. Manuscriptum, Warendorf 2003, p. 211
  9. ^ Walther Rauschenberger: From the last lifetime of Philipp Mainländers. Based on unprinted letters and notes by the philosopher. ' Süddeutsche Monatshefte ' 9 , p. 121
  10. ^ Ulrich Horstmann: Mainländers maelstrom. Via a philosophical message in a bottle and its sender. In Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , No. 508, 1989.
  11. ^ Walther Rauschenberger: From the last lifetime of Philipp Mainländers. Based on unprinted letters and notes by the philosopher. 'Süddeutsche Monatshefte' 9 , p. 124
  12. ↑ Philipp Mainländer: The Philosophy of Redemption Volume 1: Metaphysics, Section 2 . ( archive.org [accessed August 21, 2019]).
  13. ↑ Philipp Mainländer: The Philosophy of Redemption Volume 1: Metaphysics, Section 14 . ( archive.org [accessed August 21, 2019]).
  14. ↑ Philipp Mainländer: The Philosophy of Redemption Volume 1: Ethics, Section 3 . ( archive.org [accessed August 21, 2019]).
  15. ^ Philipp Mainländer: The Philosophy of Redemption, Volume 1: Ethics, Section 12 (p. 103) . ( archive.org [accessed August 21, 2019]).
  16. ↑ Philipp Mainländer: The Philosophy of Redemption, Volume 1: Ethics (Appendix) (p. 308) . ( archive.org [accessed August 24, 2019]).

Web links

Commons : Philipp Mainländer  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Philipp Mainländer  - Sources and full texts
personal data
SURNAME Mainländer, Philipp
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Philipp Batz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German poet and philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH October 5, 1841
PLACE OF BIRTH Offenbach am Main
DATE OF DEATH April 1, 1876
Place of death Offenbach am Main