With this literary contribution by Giulia Romina Itin, we are launching our main focus topic this year. Throughout the year, we will publish several articles dedicated to the topic of “forest” — the forest in its dual meaning as an almost mythological place of encounter with the, sometimes uncanny, sometimes encouraging, primal forces of life, but also, viewed more pragmatically, as the real basis of existence of our civilization that remains decisive but also threatened. We would like to explore this double face together with you this year in order to determine the contours of the forest as a living space in a new way — with Nietzsche and beyond him. We need to see and appreciate the forest in a different way again.

If you would rather listen to this article, you will also find it read by Caroline Will in German on the Halcyon Association for Radical Philosophy YouTube channel (link) or on Soundcloud (link).

This essay opposes the emptiness of a world that has lost its meaning in favor of function. With Nietzsche, Camus and the shadow of Sisyphos behind me, I search for the wild, for the dreamy, for those who do not submit and refuse to remain silent. I'm writing about modern barbarians: about people who see nothing and yet continue to breathe, keep screaming, keep dreaming. This text is my hymn to defiance, to the unformed, to the courage not to fear senselessness. Because even without meaning, I won't be silent. Not now, not in this world. And there is no other.

The essay was written as an answer to the price question of this year's Kingfisher Prize (link). We did not award him, but still publish it as an important contribution to the topic of the “new barbarians” due to its extraordinary literary quality. If you'd rather listen to it, you'll also find it read by Caroline Will on the Halcyonic Association for Radical Philosophy's YouTube channel (link) or on Soundcloud (link).