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Die Kunst, selber zu denken. Ein philosophischer Dictionaire
Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso
- GenresPhilosophy
290 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2002
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November 10, 2017
The book is not titled very convincingly: It's not a manual of learning how to "think by yourself". It's still what good books usually are like: The reader can watch the author think. The title is the book's only flaw. Following the author's thoughts is a great joy.
Andreas Urs Sommer is a young Swiss philosopher who has worked a lot on Nietzsche, which is perceivable throughout the book, not only in those parts where Nietzsche is explicitly quoted. Sommer knows how to write effectively, elegantly, astonishingly. Yet he's not an epigone of Nietzsche, though like Nietzsche a lot of his thoughts are circling around the criticism of religion in general and Christendom in particular. Further favorite topics are mainstream ideologies of current social / public life, the possible role of philosophy as a professional discipline in a world based on the sciences, and self-observation with a sense of ironic self-distance. And last but not least: Opposition to traditional conceptions of romantic love are another red thread throughout the book.
The best impression of the book is probably gained through a few quotes, thus giving examples of Sommer's style. At one point he sums up his poetics - a poetic of the fragmentary: "es fehlt dem Verfasser ganz einfach die Zeit, kurze Sentenzen zu bauen, weshalb er sich mit langen behilft" ["The author is simply lacking the time to construct short aphorisms, so he's building long ones as a makeshift"] is kind of an understatement, because even those unrefined long ones are sparkling and enlightening. At the heart of it is probably a sense of immediacy, even emotionality which is something normally banned from philosophy - or rather hidden, not explicitly stated. Sommer: "Philosophie hätte nicht zuletzt eine Schule des Ingrimms zu sein." ["Philosophy ought to be a school of rage."]
"Authentizität erreicht man am einfachsten und besten, indem man sein Sollen auf das Niveau seines Seins herunterschraubt." ["Authenticity is best achieved by scaling one's duties down to one's level of being."] Now, that was certainly an ironic statement, yet, how to understand ironic statements? "Der Ironiker, namentlich der sokratische, meint mitnichten das Gegenteil dessen, was er sagt. Vielmehr weiß man nur, daß er das nicht meint, was er sagt. Ironie ist daher das, was wahre Auflärung, was Humanismus erst möglich macht. Kaum auszudenken, wie fruchtbar beispielsweise eine ironische Ethik sein könte." ["The ironist, namely the Socratian one, does not mean the opposite of what he says. We only know that he doesn't mean what he says. Irony therefore is the pre-conditition that makes true enlightenment, humanity possible. Just imagine how fertile for instance an ironic ethics could be."]
So, why read a book of philosophical axioms rather than, for instance, a work of fictional literature? "Vielleicht ist Literatur gerade deswegen böse, weil sie Kompensation, weil sie Erlösung im Fiktiven vorgaukelt, aber die Erlösung daran hindert, Wirklichkeit zu werden. [...] Die Literarisierung der Welt ist ein probates Mittel, sich die Welt vom Leibe zu halten." ["Maybe literature is evil because it feigns compensation, redemption in fictional worlds, but at the same time it hinders redemption to become reality. [...] Literarization of the world is a proper means to keep the world at bay."]
Andreas Urs Sommer is a young Swiss philosopher who has worked a lot on Nietzsche, which is perceivable throughout the book, not only in those parts where Nietzsche is explicitly quoted. Sommer knows how to write effectively, elegantly, astonishingly. Yet he's not an epigone of Nietzsche, though like Nietzsche a lot of his thoughts are circling around the criticism of religion in general and Christendom in particular. Further favorite topics are mainstream ideologies of current social / public life, the possible role of philosophy as a professional discipline in a world based on the sciences, and self-observation with a sense of ironic self-distance. And last but not least: Opposition to traditional conceptions of romantic love are another red thread throughout the book.
The best impression of the book is probably gained through a few quotes, thus giving examples of Sommer's style. At one point he sums up his poetics - a poetic of the fragmentary: "es fehlt dem Verfasser ganz einfach die Zeit, kurze Sentenzen zu bauen, weshalb er sich mit langen behilft" ["The author is simply lacking the time to construct short aphorisms, so he's building long ones as a makeshift"] is kind of an understatement, because even those unrefined long ones are sparkling and enlightening. At the heart of it is probably a sense of immediacy, even emotionality which is something normally banned from philosophy - or rather hidden, not explicitly stated. Sommer: "Philosophie hätte nicht zuletzt eine Schule des Ingrimms zu sein." ["Philosophy ought to be a school of rage."]
"Authentizität erreicht man am einfachsten und besten, indem man sein Sollen auf das Niveau seines Seins herunterschraubt." ["Authenticity is best achieved by scaling one's duties down to one's level of being."] Now, that was certainly an ironic statement, yet, how to understand ironic statements? "Der Ironiker, namentlich der sokratische, meint mitnichten das Gegenteil dessen, was er sagt. Vielmehr weiß man nur, daß er das nicht meint, was er sagt. Ironie ist daher das, was wahre Auflärung, was Humanismus erst möglich macht. Kaum auszudenken, wie fruchtbar beispielsweise eine ironische Ethik sein könte." ["The ironist, namely the Socratian one, does not mean the opposite of what he says. We only know that he doesn't mean what he says. Irony therefore is the pre-conditition that makes true enlightenment, humanity possible. Just imagine how fertile for instance an ironic ethics could be."]
So, why read a book of philosophical axioms rather than, for instance, a work of fictional literature? "Vielleicht ist Literatur gerade deswegen böse, weil sie Kompensation, weil sie Erlösung im Fiktiven vorgaukelt, aber die Erlösung daran hindert, Wirklichkeit zu werden. [...] Die Literarisierung der Welt ist ein probates Mittel, sich die Welt vom Leibe zu halten." ["Maybe literature is evil because it feigns compensation, redemption in fictional worlds, but at the same time it hinders redemption to become reality. [...] Literarization of the world is a proper means to keep the world at bay."]
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