The young philosopher Johannes Hansmann has published his monograph Ironie des Schicksals im Einzelnen. Philosophie der Kontingenz bei Marquard und Rorty ("Irony and Fate in Detail. The Philosophy of Contingency in Marquard and Rorty") last year at Karl Alber. It is a remarkable study on two of the most important representatives of existential philosophy in the 20th century, the German Odo Marquard (1928-2015) and the American Richard Rorty (1931-2007). Although Nietzsche only plays a minor role, he deals with highly Nietzschean topics there, dedicates himself to the question of a felicitous — and for him that means in particular: authentic — life in a world after the “death of God,” to which Marquard and Rorty gave very different answers. Natalie Schulte and Paul Stephan present the book to you. A joint summary of the book's most important ideas is followed by an individual statement from each of our authors.

In the second part of his article on hiking through Glasgow’s Muslim-esque Southside, our staff writer Henry Holland delves into Nietzsche’s impassioned yet scattergun engagement with the youngest Abrahamic religion. He investigates how the experimental novel The Baphomet by French artist and theoretician Pierre Klossowski – which got him hooked on the Islam-Nietzsche intersection in the first place – blends Islam-inspired mysticism, sexual transgression and Nietzscheanism itself into an inimitable potion. With insights on Muslim-esque readings of Nietzsche in tow, Holland returns with Fatima and Ishmael to Scotland’s largest city, thus wrapping up his travelogue whence it began.

Link to Part One.

In this two-part essay, the ultimate part of our ‘Hikes with Nietzsche’ series (link) for the time being, staff writer Henry Holland retraces summer rambles around Glasgow’s Southside, the home of Scotland’s most concentrated Muslim population. In this first instalment, Holland introduces the research on Nietzsche’s engagement with Islam and his reception within the Islamic world. He recounts how stumbling upon a lecture by Timothy Winter on the French theoretician and artist Pierre Klossowski and his encounter with the faith of Muhammed made him curious about this subject in the first place. We then launch into a travel diary that leads our writer to the heart of one of the present-day’s most debated topics, the role that Islam plays in modern European societies.

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