I. Modern life as a journey across the sea of fog

Metaphors of movement have always been used to describe basic modes of existence. In the sense of Hans Blumenberg's concept of “absolute metaphor,” they condense the lifestyle of an entire culture and from them it is possible to see what their approach to the world is. Insofar as people describe their lives in a movement metaphor at all, it would be necessary to differentiate between the goal of the movement and the way in which this goal is achieved. Think of the wanderings of Ulysses or Christ's Way of the Cross as meaningful archmyths, of the medieval ideas of life as a pilgrimage repeating the Passion or as a seafaring which, once through all storms and dangers, will end in a safe haven, the Kingdom of Heaven.

Since the end of the 18th century, in modern times, it has become less and less plausible to interpret life as a movement linked to some goal. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for example, as a precursor of modern world sentiment, presents himself in his writings as a lonely hiker and walker who is thrown back and forth “like a rolling stone” by the coincidences of life without being able to seriously hope of ever reaching a destination — in this world anyway. He only experiences a breather in isolated enjoyment of nature, far away from the developing industrial hustle and bustle of cities; in particular on Lake Biel, where he stays for a few weeks while fleeing from France, and in the The dreams of a lonely walker He tells of how, there, floating aimlessly on the water on a boat, he experiences a brief moment of extreme happiness. Around 200 years later, Adorno appears in the famous aphorism Sur l'Eau — “On water” — take up this metaphor and reinterpret it as a utopian mission statement: The belief of classical modernism in people's permanent progress has turned out to be an eternal hunt, as a senseless “run-up to death,” which the emigrant, in the spirit of the “citizen of Geneva” and very different from Heidegger, no longer wants to heroically affirm for him, but the vision of a Opposes humanity, which no longer has to obsessively chase after anything. The last dream of modern people: simply to relax.

Modernity thus fluctuates between suffering from eternal restlessness and the simultaneous longing for silence and calm guidance on the one hand and various ways of affirming this fate on the other hand; whether as a story of progress — which, of course, is no longer able to proclaim a right “end of history,” but only the permanence of ever new stages — be it as a nihilistic heroism of consistent progress (both versions approach obviously to each other), whether it is finally as an aesthetic-playful affirmation of baseless prancing and wandering around, for example in the figures of the dandy and the stroller, which fascinated artists and writers of the 19th century.

The metaphor of hiking, as a cultural technique only invented in the 18th century, including by writers such as Bergfreund Rousseau, is of decisive importance. Just think of Caspar David Friedrich's iconic painting The hiker above the sea of fog (see article image; around 1818), which adorns the covers of countless statements about existential philosophy. The urban citizen, who has been thrown back to himself, searches for an order in nature that somehow makes him understand the chaos of his existence — but only finds clouds of fog and the bizarre rock formations (presumably) of Saxon Switzerland. Whether there is a whiff of transcendence or the jumble of swirling demons, both interpretations of the painting seem possible, is a question that ultimately leaves the painting itself to the viewer himself. In contrast to landscape paintings of previous decades, the painting is no longer dominated by nature, but by man, for whom it increasingly coagulates into a pure projection surface.

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II. Hikes through Jutland, walks through Copenhagen

Nietzsche's perhaps most important intellectual companion in the 19th century, the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, has in the diary-like novel “Guilty? “— Not guilty? ” With Quidam, perhaps the first “hero”, if you can even call him that, of modern existence was created. An eternally doubting “demonic” person who perishes because he is not sure whether he loves a “girl” or not, who at the same time thinks that he must love her but that he cannot love her. Is he guilty — or not? Similar to K. later in Kafka's Protocols of the Normal Madness of Modern Individuality, he is unable to answer himself and thus circles in the “eagle's nest” of his lost existence. He describes Frederick's Wanderer's gaze into nothingness as follows:

[N] Ah Looking at something sharpens the eye, but looking at nothing makes an effort. And when the eye looks for a long time at nothing, it finally sees itself, i.e. its own vision; in the same way, the emptiness around me forces my thought back into myself.¹

Nietzsche will later write in a very similar way: “Whoever fights with monsters should see that he does not become a monster in the process. And when you look into an abyss for a long time, the abyss also looks into you.”².

But can't this unstable way of life also be enjoyed, unlike Quidam and K., who are desperately looking for a way out? Kierkegaard has in his other great diary novel, the Seducer's Diary, was one of the first to write the phenomenology of such dandytum. His seducer is obsessed with repeatedly experiencing the intoxication of infatuation and stages it as an aesthetic spectacle with ever new “girls” as involuntary extras, whom he captivates with manipulative methods until they fall for him and become bored — the doll has then done its job and is replaced by a successor.

You may recognize yourself in it — or not. The seducer may enjoy his life, but there is reason to doubt whether his drive is in fact much more similar to religious Quidam than he would like. In contrast to the latter, he just doesn't know that he is desperate — in Kierkegaard's analysis, they both are. In the introduction to the diary, the fictional editor of the work, the “aesthetician” A, compares the unsteady existence of this, albeit more subtly acting, prototype of today Pick up artists Not by chance with that of a restless hiker:

Just as he has misled others, I think he will end up going astray himself. He did not mislead the others externally, but internally as to themselves. There is something outrageous when someone steers a hiker who is half clueless along the way down wrong paths and then leaves him alone as a lost person, and how little does that mean compared to leading a person to go astray within himself. The delusional wanderer has the comfort that the area around him is constantly changing, and with every change there is a hope that he will find a way out; anyone who goes astray within himself has no large area in which he can move, he soon realizes that it is walking in circles from which he cannot get out. I think he too will do the same on a scale that is far more dreadful. I can think of nothing more tormented than a scheming mind that loses the thread and now turns all its acumen against itself, while the conscience awakens and has to break free of this mistake. He has many exits in vain at his fox den, at the moment when his frightened soul already believes that it sees daylight coming in, it turns out that it is a new entrance, and in doing so, like a frightened savage, haunted by despair, he always searches for an exit and always finds an entrance through which he returns to himself. Such a person is not always what is called a criminal, for example, he himself is often deceived by his intrigues, yet he is punished more terribly than the criminal; for even the fact that conscience awakens is, said about him, an too ethical expression; for him, conscience merely takes the form of a higher consciousness, which expresses itself in restlessness that does not even accuse him in a deeper sense, but keeps him awake, gives him no rest in his infertile restlessness.³

How to escape this despair in the heart of one's own soul, like modern nihilism? Kierkegaard's solution: The “leap into faith”; become a pilgrim again, learn to see life again as a way of the cross in the footsteps of Christ and the martyrs. It is this affirmation of life as a violent march that could only free Quidam from his desperation; he could then see it as a divine test. But Kierkegaard repeatedly emphasizes that the subject cannot come to faith through his own effort, but can only be called to do so by God himself. — A simple, all-too simple solution. You just have to stop thinking to make life easy. Is this still serious philosophy or is it blunt madness, rhetorically extremely cleverly packaged? No one has argued so cleverly, cleverly and eloquently, like this: modern, for delusion.

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Link to part 2.

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sources

Kierkegaard, Soren: “Guilty? “— Not guilty? ”. Stages on the path of life, Vol. 2. Collected works and diaries. 15th abbot. Transacted by Emanuel Hirsch. Gütersloh & Munich 1994.

Ders. : The Seducer's Diary. Either/Or. First part, Vol. 2. Collected works and diaries. 1st abbot. Transacted by Emanuel Hirsch. Simmerath 2004.

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Source for all images used: Wikipedia

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footnotes

1: P. 379.

2: Beyond good and evil, Aph 146.

3: p. 330 f.