I. From Nietzsche via Marquard to Rorty

Hardly any thinker has shaken the intellectual topography of the 20th and 21st century as radically as Friedrich Nietzsche. With the dictum of “death of God,” he marked not only the end of an era, but the collapse of all metaphysical foundations. Where the big “absoluteness programs” break away, people are left behind in existential homelessness — an emptiness that Johannes Hansmann wrote in his book The irony of fate in detail. The philosophy of contingency in Marquard and Rorty makes it the starting point for a successful academic investigation.

Hansmann addresses the basic existential question with which Nietzsche broke up modernity and which cannot be delegated because everyone has to answer it simply by being: How do we want to live when there is no “top” anymore? It is the question of living autonomously in full awareness of both our finiteness (“vita brevis”) and the randomness of living conditions — culture, time and place — into which we are born became, and the randomness of events that still befall us will — Accidents, illnesses, losses.

Nietzsche has critiqued the supposedly eternal, immutable ideals of our culture, in both their platonic and Christian forms. He has thus deprived us of the comfort that our lives have an overriding goal and are embedded in a higher context that gives meaning to our suffering. With his book, Hansmann answers this problem. He describes what a possible life practice could look like following this criticism — and this loss of comfort. He focuses on two thinkers, Odo Marquard and Richard Rorty, who, as witty philosophers of contingency, radically address the consequences of the metaphysical homelessness of humans.

Odo Marquard (1928—2015), a formative figure in German post-war philosophy and a prominent representative of the “Knight School,” developed his ideas in response to the historical-philosophical promises of salvation of his time. As a skeptic and master of subtle irony, he pleaded for a philosophy of human finiteness that does not combat the unavailable of life, but compensates for it through serenity and adherence to tried and tested traditions.

Richard Rorty (1931—2007), one of the most influential American philosophers of the late 20th century, made the journey from an analytical language philosopher to a radical neopragmatist. He adopted the idea that philosophy could discover an “objective truth” beyond our language, and instead relied on the individual's ability to create themselves again and again through creative self-and world descriptions.

Both thinkers are heirs to Nietzsche's skepticism. After his destruction of the traditional metaphysical system of values, they are looking for new ways of thinking and living in the modern age. While Rorty Nietzsche takes up and develops his own ideas of a re-aestheticization of life freed from old burdens, Marquard creates a philosophy of contemporary serenity.

In a fruitful examination of these two approaches, Hansmann shows that the failure of supra-temporal standards does not necessarily have to result in nihilism or limitless arbitrariness. Instead, using Marquard and Rorty, he explores how the unavailable and chance can become the new center of closer reflection. He asks: Beyond the search for the one absolute, are there other paths that give us a foothold in contingency? Instead of regretting the loss of the “absolute,” we should actually welcome it, because only the absence of the absolute gives us the freedom to truly determine ourselves. As part of a philosophy of living art, Hansmann attempts to combine the strengths of Marquard and Rorty with his concept of “authentic autonomy” and to show that even without absolute criteria, the self-choice of the respective individual does not have to sink into arbitrariness.

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II. How Does Hansmann Argue?

Hansmann's concise study begins with an examination of the question “What is contingency? ”. This is done primarily in terms of the conceptual history of the Ritter School, in keeping with the methodological approach of the Ritter School. Here, Hansmann creates a very interesting compilation of the (Western) philosophical debate on the topic from Aristotle to Luhmann, from which it quickly becomes clear how complex this term, which is frequently used in contemporary discussion, actually is. In the basic meaning of the term, “contingency” means that which is neither necessary nor impossible as that which is merely given in fact, which could also be different. But what exactly falls under this category and what internal distinctions does it include — particularly against the background of the theological question of how God had to create the world as he did, or not?

Hansmann's own main point here is to show that there is a small but decisive difference in meaning between the terms “contingency” and “coincidence”, which are also frequently used synonymously in philosophical discussion: They “are not the same thing, because chance loses the action-opening dimension of possibility that the contingency suits it.” (p. 21) He particularly appeals to Marquard's equation of the two terms.

According to Hansmann, contingents and random events differ not so much in their mere existence — they are equally events that neither happened necessarily nor are impossible — but in the perspective that we throw at them in our actions: On the one hand, we regard them as mere coincidences that we have to accept and which are in a certain way factually necessary, but not logically necessary; on the other hand, as opportunities for new options for action that we may or may not seize opportunities for usthat we have to relate to.

You can perhaps illustrate this distinction with the following example: I offer my son to buy him an ice cream; he can choose a type of ice cream and chooses “strawberry.” It's all completely random and I can completely accept it. But this coincidence appears as a contingency when I take my son's choice as an opportunity to ask him why he chose this kind and no other variety, what is his favorite variety in general, etc. The event therefore becomes an opportunity to improve our relationship.

For Hansmann, Marquard tends more towards the perspective of chance — which doesn't ask what new leeway random events open up, but accepts them for now — Rorty tends to the perspective of contingency, which always questions the coincidences about the new opportunities they open up.

The vast majority of the study is then carried out by reconstructing Marquard. This imbalance between the chapters is somewhat surprising, but it may be due to the fact, also marked by Hansmann (see p. 61), that there has been hardly any academic research on Marquard for many years. The philosopher worked primarily outside academia as a highly influential essayist and journalist in the late Bonn Republic, not so much within the Academy. It is therefore understandable to give a somewhat larger space to the reconstruction of Marquard's philosophy, and Hansmann actually succeeded in providing an excellent introduction here, which is worth reading for anyone who wants to learn more about Marquard's thinking.

Marquard's experimental philosophy, which has barely been recorded in monographs but primarily in lectures, essays and other brief forms, revolves around the core idea of an “apology of chance.” This means acknowledging that there is and cannot be absoluteness in the human situation simply because of the individual's mortality (“vita brevis”). We are doomed to improvise and can hardly hope to leave even a tiny footprint in the senseless course of events. Utopian hopes of all kinds — and this is where Marquard's lead against Marxism, the Frankfurt School, but also the existentialism of the French version — should be replaced by compensating stories that make us endure the senselessness of the world without ever being able to change it.

His guiding principle, also repeatedly quoted by Hansmann: “The future needs an origin.” Or even, to put the same idea in a slightly different way: The “burden of proof always lies with the person making the change” (cited on page 150). Criticism, for its part, is criticized and tried to unmask as the figment of vain narcissism by those who want to immunize themselves against any criticism, who, again in Marquard's words, not only have a conscience but want to be a conscience. Marquard therefore does not want to position himself against every change in the world, but pleads not to overwhelm the world with criticism and the urge to change, but to “spare” it.

The “liberal” philosophy of Rorty's contingency sounds completely different from this decidedly conservative approach. Despite their similar starting point — the assumption of a random or contingent world after the “death of God” — both come with diametrically opposite consequences. Rorty calls for people not to accept the world as it is, but to accept its contingency as an opportunity for individual self-creation in the sense of a Nietzschean narrative ethic of authenticity — “but we want to be the poets of our lives”¹ — to understand. The “liberal ironic woman”, who behaves ironically about the world and its values, acts as the heroine of a corresponding utopia (see p. 248) — with Rorty openly saying that he does not want this to be understood as general ethics, but as an attitude that he knows can only ever be that of a small social minority.

It is therefore not surprising that Nietzsche actually plays no role in the Marquard chapter of the study, apart from a few catchphrases and allusions, while he repeatedly serves as an explicit reference figure in the Rorty chapter and also in Rorty's writings. Both are within the spiritual horizon of the modern existential philosophy founded by Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), but while Marquard is more like Kierkegaard's “ethicist,” who comes to terms with what exists and hopes to find his authenticity in it, and Heidegger's teaching of “being to death,” Rorty and Nietzsche are on the path of an, albeit a little, ethos subdued, “aesthetician.”

In his main work Either — or (1843), the Danish thinker presented the aesthetic and ethical worldview as two absolutely mutually exclusive perspectives on the world, between which the individual had to decide. This original dualism of modern existential philosophy remains unresolved even in Hansmann's study and in the end it is up to the reader himself whether Rorty's or Marquards version of it is more likely to convince him.

Kierkegaard himself followed these two “stages” of existence by a third, the religious one, in which the individual transcends both the restrictions of aesthetics and ethics by placing his existence on an absolute basis, unconditional submission to God. Following the mainstream of modern existential philosophy, this is no longer an option for Rorty and Marquard that could be seriously considered. God has just died for them in the modern age, truly died. And yet Hansmann chooses a well-known prayer of all things to outline an attempt to mediate between Rorty and Marquard at the very end of the study:

God, give me the serenity

accepting things that I can't change

the courage to change things that I can change

and the wisdom to distinguish one from the other. (P. 271)

Hansmann himself admits that this conclusion doesn't sound particularly original or profound — but it is true that philosophical insights sometimes seem quite banal once you strip them of their conceptual disguise. In any case, he is also there again with Kierkegaard, who in Sickness to death (1849) defines the communication of possibility and reality as the essential task of each individual, which existence places on him.

In his study, Hansmann thus succeeds in a contemporary continuation of existential philosophical debates in the wake of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. At a time when this way of thinking from the point of view of the individual and their life experience has tended to recede into the background in philosophy and dominate philosophies that emphasize his social integration and moral responsibility — if they do not immediately completely abstract from his existence — this is a bold undertaking. And Hansmann, not least through his pleasantly playful and unacademic language, succeeds in demonstrating that God may be dead, the “paths of freedom” that Sartre once spoke of but are therefore far from abandoning. The question of a meaningful, authentic life in a contingent world continues to haunt us, because we cannot avoid it as the mortal individuals that we are. It remains ours.

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III. Beyond Nihilism — Contingency as Freedom (Natalie Schulte)

Johannes Hansmann's research is particularly impressive due to a quality that is rare in academic writings: she speaks with her own, authentic voice. Far removed from hermetic expert discussion, Hansmann succeeds in developing a sophisticated philosophical panorama that not only informs the reader, but also touches their existentially. In doing so, he covers the spectrum — from the ancient roots of the concept of chance to the post-modern art of living — and shows that the question of contingency is the actual fate of modern people.

Hansmann establishes a distinction that is often lacking in the history of philosophy due to this clarity: contingency versus chance. While “chance” describes what unpredictably comes upon us (birth, illness, loss, death), “contingency” describes the dimension of possibility that opens up action, the knowledge that I could also act in a completely different way.

Hansmann shows in a fascinating way that this term has a specifically Christian origin: Only through the idea of Creatio ex nihilo — creation from nothing — God Could create the world had to But not — existence becomes radically contingent. After the “death of God,” this dimension of possibility is brought back into the individual by the “Creator God” projection screen. People inherit the burden and freedom of having to establish the world and themselves again and again.

In his analysis of Odo Marquard, Hansmann highlights his “Apology of Accidental” as a shield against excessive claims of absoluteness. In a world that has been disenchanted by modern science and harassed by philosophies of history (as heirs to otherworldly promises of salvation), Marquard offers “unagitated existentialism.” In contrast to the heroic pathos of Sartre, Marquard acknowledges with emphasized composure: Death is faster than the absolute choice. Hansmann makes it clear that Marquard's philosophy is not a philosophy of renunciation, but a defense of human dignity in the face of our finiteness. Since our lifetime is the “scarcest of all resources,” we cannot start from scratch every time, but must build on tried and tested traditions. Skepticism becomes a liberating attitude that frees us from the need for unity and allows us to “tell many different stories” in order to make sense of the world again.

Hansmann presents Richard Rorty as a dynamic counterpart. Here, the perspective changes from preservation to reinvention. Rorty's radical insight that truth does not exist in the world, but only in language, becomes a catalyst for the aesthetization of life. With the “liberal ironic” type, Rorty sketches an experimental figure that does justice to the contingency of existence. Being ironic means taking a stance but not being completely absorbed in it, but being able to distance yourself from it at any time and not taking yourself completely seriously in your own convictions.

The aim of Hansmann's journey is the concept of “authentic autonomy.” This is where all the threads come together: From Marquard, we learn skepticism and a productive connection to our origins; from Rorty, the courage to reconfigure the self and irony. For Hansmann, authenticity does not mean an ultimately arbitrary and therefore indifferent decision between two options, but the choice to show yourself as who you essentially are and want to be. The fact that this includes the sometimes painful discovery that being and will do not necessarily fall into one can be an occasion for a reorientation of what you want to achieve instead. Contingency is therefore not seen as a threat, but as a reason for making freedom possible. In doing so, Hansmann is making a plea for an art of living that ironically greets fate instead of despairing under it.

Interestingly enough, Nietzsche is by no means absent from this detailed analysis, although he is only mentioned in passing. The historical and philosophical forays are completely coherent and the Nietzsche-loving reader will feel Nietzsche atmospherically even far away from the “test of God.” What would Nietzsche have said about Rorty and Marquard? That can only be assumed. Even though Rorty might have impressed Nietzsche with the radicalism with which he adopted the concept of truth, the question is whether he would not have been more skeptical of the 'obscurantism, 'which Rorty knowingly or unknowingly opens the door. As far as Marquard is concerned, his orientation towards the existing would probably have been a bit too boring for him. He would probably have maintained the suspicion that it was a philosophy of “surrender.” But if Marquard wrote that only someone who can be an individual learns not to “be bribed by the applause of others,” he would certainly have regained Nietzsche's goodwill. And how could he speak out completely against someone who says about his own philosophical position: “I have no approach at all, or more correctly: I do have an approach, namely a stomach approach; but that is only a philosophical position for overreflected people” (p. 62). In conclusion, it can only be said that Hansmann has written a profound and clever book in which both thinkers, Rorty and Marquard, can shine with their exciting ideas and with their dazzling language.

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IV. “Concrete Possibility” — An alternative? (Paul Stephen)

Hansmann's extremely instructive study taught me in the best sense of the word, but at the same time left me baffled. I have little to do with Marquard's conservative stance. His mantra “Future needs origin” doesn't just sound like a CDU campaign slogan. What I find particularly fascinating about Marquard's thinking is that he consistently attempts to complete a point of view that is so diametrically opposed to the mainstream of modern philosophy, yes: the modern mentality par excellence. In any case, this includes intellectual courage. And he also simply writes well (perhaps not least because he knows that he has to make his thing aesthetically appealing in order to give it the appearance of plausibility in the first place).

Rorty picks me up earlier, but at the same time, his liberal aestheticism seems to me to have lost some of its splendor. He represents more or less exactly the left-liberal image of Nietzsche, common sense-Postmodernism, with which I grew up intellectually, but which seems to me more and more like a dead end of a different kind. He simply fits in too well into a neoliberal society in which permanent creative self-invention becomes a categorical imperative and an ironic distance from everything and everyone to the Anna-normal attitude. Kierkegaard has relentlessly laid bare the aporia of aesthetic existence — Nietzsche not only glorifies them, but also uncovered their abysses. Rorty's cheerful nihilism falls behind them both.

Chance vs. contingency — this convincing conceptual distinction is taken up at the beginning of the book, but the dualism between facticity and possibility, mirrored in contrast between Marquard and Rorty, is not really conveyed at the end. You just need both. That is certainly not wrong, but it is not enough for me as a philosophical position.

One opportunity not taken by Hansmann to overcome dualism lies precisely in Aristotle's concept of possibility, with which his study begins, but only briefly touches on his decisive punchline without drawing the decisive systematic consequences from it. Hegel and in 20th century philosophy in particular the great thinker of utopian hope, Ernst Bloch (1885-1977), who crossed the line between existential philosophy and Marxism, have pointed to Aristotle's greatest philosophical innovation, arguably one of the greatest innovations in the history of philosophy of all (yes: we probably did not get much beyond him in this regard after 2,500 years): Possibility as Dýnamis or, as Bloch calls it, to determine “concrete possibility.”

In our everyday perception, we tend to regard things as coincidence in the sense of Hansmann, in their immediate circumstances. The stone is a rock, the house is a house, the plant is a plant. The Rorty consciousness of contingency is then imposed on this world of cold, immutable facts, which dissolves this facticity into nothing and, at least in imagination, out of things Anything does.

But things are never what they are. The sculptor, who created a beautiful Madonna and Child, did not simply wring off the stone something that was external to its essence. Our Lady has always slumbered in him as a concrete potential that was just waiting to be discovered and actively realized by the artist.

Generally speaking, we live in a world of fields of possibility, not facts. Every thing is a field of opportunity. Actually, there are no things. But this does not dissolve the world into a riot of arbitrariness. We are more concerned with structures that correspond to the clouds of quantum physics, whose shape is not random — the electron cannot be anywhere at any given time, that would be absurd — but also do not obey the strict requirements of classical mechanics, but are subject to certain rules of probability.

The so-called “things” are never defined in this way; they themselves refer to countless ways of “overcoming oneself” (to speak with Nietzsche). A stone is an eternal Madonna, the pillar of a palace, the flow of an ornament, provided that a knowledgeable person enters it who develops and realizes these immanent potentials. But they are therefore also not arbitrary, because the stone could never become an edible scoop of ice cream or a rain cloud in the sky. Practice would then primarily be a study of possibilities in order, through imagination and empirical research, to recognize in things at the same time what they are in their potential and then release this possibility in concrete action, provided that this possibility is in the human interest. You may not want to turn the stone into a murder weapon, at least not under most circumstances.

On the basis of the concrete sense of possibility understood in this way, a world attitude emerges beyond Marquardian resignation and Rorty's irony, which Bloch as”Docta Spes“, taught hope, or also referred to as “militant optimism.” This position is also based on the famous saying of the American theorist and activist Angela Davis (born in 1944): “I no longer accept the things I can't change. I'm changing things that I can't accept.” That's Anti-Marquard at first. I'm not coming to terms with the supposed facticities anymore, I'm looking for ways to change them. But it is also anti-Rorty, insofar as this is not about an ironic game of reinterpretations and relativizations, but the serious confrontation with things in order to change them, which requires first acknowledging and then understanding their inherent necessity in order to debunk in themselves the potential of their own self-overcoming.

Assuming, for example, inhuman situations such as slavery in the 19th century USA, Marquard's position does not appear particularly ironic, but simply cynical. Sure, he wouldn't go so far as to say that nothing should be changed at all, but he would probably be on the side of Southerners, who called for a 'slow process of reform, 'with the ulterior motive of maintaining their extra profits resulting from this extreme form of exploitation for at least a few more years longer. But why artificially maintain a state of affairs which has obviously lost all historical justification, which has actually become impossible in the name of the abstract principle “future needs origin”? Rorty, on the other hand, would probably denounce the contingency of slavery—but what exactly would his argument against Marquard actually consist of? Recognizing mere contingency is not enough; it requires an awareness of the intolerability of certain conditions and of their concrete variability.

In the case of slavery, there were, on the one hand, subjective factors — the growing resistance of slaves and whites sympathising with them, fed by the obvious complete incompatibility of this 'special institution” with the basic values of modernity and the delegimitation of racism as their pseudo-scientific justification (i.e. the recognition of the contigence of the existence of blacks as slaves) — but on the other hand, it was also objective factors that finally brought it down: It was economic It has become pointless and just an obstacle in the development of modern agriculture. Without the unwillingness to continue to accept it, it would not have been abolished any more than without the concrete window of opportunity created by industrialization and the implementation of modern institutions.

We should neither hastily accept things as factual realities nor pretend that we are acting in an unconditional field in which anything is possible. The interplay of possibility and reality is not just a matter of subjective decision, but a dialectic that takes place at every moment in things understood as a process. It is only up to us to give this process direction in our spirit.

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Article Image

Paul Klee: Tightrope Walker (1923) (source)

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Footnotes

1: The Gay Science, Aph 299.