Forests are trending. And this is by no means contradictory to another, even larger trend of our time: digitalization. In this article, Mandus Craiss demonstrates that the forest is a network. Digitalization also occurs in a network-like manner; both phenomena are therefore characteristic of postmodernism.  

In the first part of the article, the forest is characterized as a non-centralized and thus typically postmodern natural phenomenon. The second part defines "postmodernity" and discusses the extent to which this epochal concept is still, or once again, relevant – a discourse whose very early roots can be traced back to Nietzsche. Finally, the third part explains how the network aspect of postmodernity manifests itself and how the human-forest relationship has evolved recently.

This article is part of our special series this year "the forest as a lifelihood".

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).

Barbara Straka's newly published book Nietzsche Forever? explores the question of how Nietzsche is received in 20th century art, in particular that after 1945. But the reception of Nietzsche's reception raises the question of whether the philosopher's monumentality is lost sight of. Does this reveal a fundamental problem of our age with monumentality? In any case, starting from Nietzsche, Michael Meyer-Albert argues against Straka for a “post-monumental monumentality” as an alternative to aesthetic postmodernism. In the first part of the two-part series, he dedicated himself to her book, and now he is accentuating his opposite position.