Philipp Mainländer (; 5 October 1841 – 1 April 1876) was a German philosopher and poet. Born Philipp Batz, he later changed his name to "Mainländer" in homage to his hometown, Offenbach am Main.

In his central work, (The Philosophy of Redemption or The Philosophy of Salvation) — according to Theodor Lessing, "perhaps the most radical system of pessimism known to philosophical literature" — Mainländer proclaims that life is of negative value, and that "the will, ignited by the knowledge that non-being is better than being, is the supreme principle of morality."

Biography

Early life and career

left|thumb|Mainländer with his sister Minna in 1855

Born in Offenbach am Main, on 5 October 1841 "as a child of marital rape", Philipp Mainländer grew up the youngest of six siblings. One of his brothers was mentally ill, according to Cesare Lombroso in The Man of Genius; as was his grandfather, who died of suicide at the age of 33.

Mainländer attended the Realschule in Offenbach from 1848 to 1856. In 1856, at his father's instruction, he entered the commercial school of Dresden to become a merchant. The following year, his older brother, Daniel Batz, committed suicide, cementing the family history of succumbing to mental illness.</blockquote>Mainländer handed the completed manuscript to his sister Minna, asking her to find a publisher while he completed his military service. The author composed a letter to the as yet unknown publisher, requesting the omission of his birth name and substitution of the pen name "Philipp Mainländer", and stating that he would abhor nothing more than "being exposed to the eyes of the world".

On 1 November 1875, Mainländer – originally committed for three years, but in the meantime, as he noted in a letter to Minna, "exhausted, worked-out, ... at completely ... healthy body ineffably tired" – was prematurely released from military service, and traveled back to his hometown of Offenbach, where he – again having become obsessed with work – within a mere two months, corrected the unbound sheets of Die Philosophie der Erlösung, composed his memoirs, wrote the novella Rupertine del Fino, and completed the 650-page second volume of his magnum opus.

Death

Around the beginning of 1876, Mainländer began to doubt whether his life still had value for humanity. He wondered whether he had already completed the duties of life, or whether he should employ it to strengthen the social democratic movement. He was buried in Offenbach cemetery.

His older sister, Minna Batz, having been charged with writing a memoir of her brother, followed him through suicide in 1891.

Philosophy

thumb|Title page of the second volume of Die Philosophie der Erlösung

Working in the metaphysical framework of Schopenhauer, Mainländer sees the "will" as the innermost core of being, the ontological arche. However, he deviates from Schopenhauer in important respects. With Schopenhauer the will is singular, unified and beyond time and space. Schopenhauer's transcendental idealism leads him to conclude that we only have access to a certain aspect of the thing-in-itself by introspective observation of our own bodies. What we observe as will is all there is to observe, nothing more. There are no hidden aspects. Furthermore, via introspection we can only observe our individual will. This also leads Mainländer to the philosophical position of pluralism.

Death of God

Despite his scientific means of explanation, Mainländer was not afraid to philosophize in allegorical terms. Formulating his own "myth of creation", Mainländer equated this initial singularity with God.

Mainländer reinterprets Schopenhauer's metaphysics in two important aspects. Primarily, in Mainländer's system there is no "singular will". The basic unity has broken apart into individual wills and each subject in existence possesses an individual will of his own. Because of this, Mainländer can claim that once an "individual will" is silenced and dies, it achieves absolute nothingness and not the relative nothingness we find in Schopenhauer. By recognizing death as salvation and by giving nothingness an absolute quality, Mainländer's system manages to offer "wider" means for redemption. Secondarily, Mainländer reinterprets the Schopenhauerian will-to-live as an underlying will-to-die, i.e. the will-to-live is the means towards the will-to-die.

Ethics

Mainländer's philosophy also carefully inverts other doctrines. For instance, Epicurus sees happiness only in pleasure and since there is nothing after death, there is nothing to fear and/or desire from death. Yet Mainländer, being a philosophical pessimist, sees no desirable pleasure in this life and praises the sublime nothingness of death, recognizing precisely this state of non-existence as desirable.

Mainländer espouses an ethics of egoism. That is to say that what is best for an individual is what makes one happiest. Yet all pursuits and cravings lead to pain. Thus, Mainländer concludes that a will-to-death is best for the happiness of all and knowledge of this transforms one's will-to-life (an illusory existence unable to attain happiness) into the proper (sought by God) will-to-death. Ultimately, the subject (individual will) is one with the universe, in harmony with it and with its originating will, if one wills nothingness. Based on these premises, Mainländer makes the distinction between the "ignorant" and the "enlightened" type of self-interest. Ignorant self-interest seeks to promote itself and capitalize on its will-to-live. In contrast, enlightened self-interest humbles the individual and leads him to asceticism, as that aligns him properly with the elevating will-towards-death.

Personality

It was noted by critics that his work reveals a gentle and warmhearted personality. Lucien Arréat expressed that many pages feel warm due to the "generosity of his soul", and as a more general characterization that "Mainländer had a delicate and sincere nature, a truly remarkable individuality."

Central to Mainländer's activism is the belief that a truly pessimistic ethics must advocate for the dismantling of social and political structures that perpetuate inequality and suffering. He argues that the pursuit of social and political equality is a natural extension of the compassion that arises from recognizing existence as fundamentally evil. This perspective leads him to champion communism and a "free love movement" (freie Liebe) as essential components of a just society. Mainländer envisions a political landscape where communal ownership and collective responsibility replace individualistic pursuits, thereby fostering an environment conducive to the renunciation of the will to life.

Through such a free love movement, sexual and marital relations are redefined outside of their traditional constraints, and thus Mainländer argues that by abolishing marriage and traditional sexual roles, individuals can free themselves from the repressive structures that bind them to procreation and societal expectations. This liberation is crucial for both men and women to gain autonomy over their bodies and lives, allowing and empowering them to pursue the path of contemplation, asceticism, chastity, and ultimately, the renunciation of being through suicide.<blockquote>If I am not to seek death with pleasure, after this fruit has ripened, lacking any motive, I must enter into the realm of social democracy, which will allow me to become exhausted and dazed, so as not to listen to the seductive voices of this longing for absolute rest, and to achieve redemption forever. [...] Whether I shall prefer the repose of death to all this [active political life], and seal my doctrine with it, I do not know for the moment.</blockquote>The letters exchanged between them imply that Mainländer was seeking external support in the form of his sister's blessing for his political career, but due to opposing political beliefs, she refused to bestow it. Despite this, Mainländer wrote that he would seek political activism without her blessing, and yet was found dead by hanging within a short period of time, proving that he had gone back on his original decision.

Reception

thumb|Self-portrait of Alfred Kubin in Die Philosophie der Erlösung

Nietzsche immediately read Die Philosophie der Erlösung in the year it was published, before any review had appeared. The work contributed to his final separation from Schopenhauer's philosophy. In his own works, Nietzsche gave no attention to Mainländer until a decade later, that is, in the second, expanded edition of The Gay Science, the same book in which he had introduced the phrase "God is dead" in the first edition five years prior: "Could one count such dilettantes and old maids as the sickeningly sentimental apostle of virginity, Mainländer, as a genuine German? After all he was probably a Jew – (all Jews become sentimental when they moralize)." It has been suggested that Mainländer was more than a mere influence, and was instead plagiarized.

Nietzsche also mentions in one of his letters that he met an adherent of Mainländer's philosophy, "a quiet and modest man, a Buddhist [...], passionate vegetarian." The "modest man" told Nietzsche that Mainländer was, in fact, not a Jew.

In the same period, Max Seiling wrote that he believed Mainländer to be one of the few wise heroes to have walked on this earth. In the German Reichstag, Die Philosophie der Erlösung was brought up to the rostrum on occasion of the Anti-Socialist Laws. Bebel mentions Mainländer's sister in his autobiography. Also Eduard Bernstein wrote that he was "very interested" in Mainländer. Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis (1846–1919), the first prominent Dutch socialist, considered Mainländer's work a "great contribution" for socialism.

Alfred Kubin, one of the founders of Der Blaue Reiter, wrote about Die Philosophie der Erlösung, "this work – which expresses my actual thoughts and steels and strengthens me – this philosophy, forms the consolation of my life and death."

The Japanese writer Akutagawa wrote in A Note to a Certain Old Friend, "I read Mainländer, whose work has become deeply ingrained in my consciousness." He also refers to Mainländer in his novel Kappa.

Emil Cioran was very impressed by the work of Mainländer.

More recently, a number of contemporary pessimists, like Drew Dalton, have drawn from the work of Mainländer in the hopes of developing new models for ethical and political action.

The communist thinker Slavoj Žižek remarked: "Today, in a society in which the striving for pleasure and happiness fully displays their self-destructive potential, only figures like Mainländer can save us."

Works

In English:

  • The Philosophy of Redemption (translation by Christian Romuss; Irukandji Press, 2024)

In German:

  • Die Philosophie der Erlösung (Vol. I: 1876; Vol. II: 1886)
  • Die Letzten Hohenstaufen. Ein dramatisches Gedicht in drei Theilen: Enzo – Manfred – Conradino (1876)
  • Meine Soldatengeschichte [My soldier story]. 1925, Georg Stilke.
  • Rupertine del Fino, first published in 1899 in the Allgemeine Zeitung of Munich.
  • Schriften
  • Band 1 – Die Philosophie der Erlösung. Erster Band, 1876 (Reprint: 1996)
  • Band 2 – Die Philosophie der Erlösung. Zweiter Band. Zwölf philosophische Essays. 1886 (Reprint: 1997)
  • Band 3 – Die Letzten Hohenstaufen. Enzio-Manfred-Conradino. 1876 (Reprint: 1998)
  • Band 4 – Die Macht der Motive. Literarischer Nachlaß von 1857 bis 1875. Mit einem Vorwort v. Ulrich Horstmann u. einem Nachwort v. Joachim Hoell u. W.H. Müller-Seyfarth. 1999

In Spanish:

  • Filosofía de la redención (translation by Manuel Pérez Cornejo; Ediciones Xorki, 2014)

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

  • Beiser, Frederick C., Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860-1900, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
  • The Riddles of Philosophy, Part II, Chapter VI: Modern Idealistic World Conceptions. An essay by Rudolph Steiner that mentions Mainländer.
  • Aleksander Samarin's entry on Mainländer in his Enigma of Immortality.
  • Fabio Ciracì, "La filosofia della redenzione di Philipp Mainlaender", Pensa MultiMedia, Lecce 2006.
  • Extracts from The Philosophy of Redemption translated by Christian Romuss