Philipp Mainländer
Encyclopedia
Philipp Mainländer was a German poet
and philosopher
. Born as Philipp Batz, he later changed his name into Mainländer from adoration for his hometown Offenbach am Main.
In his central work Die Philosophie der Erlösung (The Philosophy of Redemption) —according to Theodor Lessing
“perhaps the most radical system of pessimism
known to philosophical literature” —Mainländer proclaims that there is no higher meaning in life, and that “the will, ignited by the perception that non-being is better than being, is the supreme principle of all morality.”
In 1856, on paternal instruction, Mainländer entered the commercial school of Dresden
to become a merchant
. Two years later, he was employed in a trading house in Naples
, Italy
, where he learned Italian
and acquainted himself with the works of Dante
, Petrarca, Boccaccio
, and – most notably – Leopardi
. Mainländer would later describe his five Neapolitan years as the happiest ones of his life.
During this critical period of his life, Mainländer discovered Arthur Schopenhauer
’s central work The World as Will and Representation
. Nineteen years old at the time, he would later describe the event as a penetrating revelation, referring to the month of February 1860 as the "most important of [his] life". Indeed Schopenhauer would remain the most important influence on Mainländer's later philosophical work.
In 1863, Mainländer returned to Germany to work in his father’s business. In the same year, he also penned the three part poem Die letzten Hohenstaufen ("The Last Hohenstaufen
"). Two years later, on October 5, Mainländer’s 24th birthday, his mother died. Deeply affected by this experience of loss, Mainländer began an ongoing turn away from poetry and towards philosophy. During the following years, he studied Schopenhauer, Kant
– "not poisoned through Fichte
, Schelling and Hegel
, but rather critically strengthened through Schopenhauer")”, Eschenbach’s
Parzival
, and the classics of philosophy from Heraclitus
to Condillac
.
In March 1869, Mainländer worked in the banking house J. Mart. Magnus in Berlin
with the declared goal of amassing a small fortune within a few years and then leading a decent life from the interest earnings. However, the stock market crash at the Wiener Börse
on May 8, 1873 (Wiener Krach), totally ruined Mainländer and caused a sudden end to these plans. In 1873, Mainländer resigned from his post at the bank without really knowing what he would do afterwards.
in 1861, Mainländer – according to an autobiographic note – expressed the desire "to be absolutely in all things submitted to another one once, to do the lowermost work, to have to obey blindly" and sedulously undertook numerous attempts to serve with weapons. On April 6, 1874, Mainländer, already 32 years old, submitted a request directly to the emperor Wilhelm I of Germany
which was granted resulting in his appointment to the Cuirassier
s in Halberstadt
, beginning September 28th. During the four months leading up to his conscription, Mainländer, obsessed with work, composed the first volume of his main work The Philosophy of Redemption.
Mainländer handed the completed manuscript
to his sister Minna, asking her to find a publisher while he completed his military service. The author composed a letter to the as yet unknown publisher, requesting the omission of his birth name and substitution of the nom de plume "Philipp Mainländer", and stating that he would abhor nothing more than “being exposed to the eyes of the world” (German: "als den Augen der Welt ausgesetzt zu sein").
On November 1, 1875, Mainländer — originally committed for three years, but in the meantime, as he noted in a letter to his sister Minna, “exhausted, worked-out, […] at completely […] healthy body ineffably tired” (German: „verbraucht, worked out, […] bei vollkommen […] gesundem Körper unaussprechlich müde“) — was prematurely released from military service, and traveled back to his hometown of Offenbach, where he — again having become obsessed with work — within a mere two months, corrected the unbound sheets of The Philosophy of Redemption, composed his memoirs, wrote down the novella
Rupertine del Fino, and completed the 650-page second volume of his magnum opus.
From February of that year on, Mainländer’s mental collapse — which has been compared to the collapse Nietzsche
would suffer only years later — became apparent. Eventually, descending into megalomania and believing himself to be a messiah
of social democracy
, in the night on April 1, 1875, Mainländer hanged himself in his residence in Offenbach. A pile of voucher copies of The Philosophy of Redemption, which had arrived the previous day, had served as a pedestal. He was thirty-four years old.
led him to read writers who were influenced by Schopenhauer. Such writers were Eduard von Hartmann, Julius Bahnsen
, and Mainländer. He did not think that these authors were genuine German pessimists. Nietzsche mentioned Mainländer only once in his works.
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and philosopher
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
. Born as Philipp Batz, he later changed his name into Mainländer from adoration for his hometown Offenbach am Main.
In his central work Die Philosophie der Erlösung (The Philosophy of Redemption) —according to Theodor Lessing
Theodor Lessing
Theodor Lessing was a German Jewish philosopher.He is known for opposing the rise of Hindenburg as president of the Weimar Republic and for his classic on Jewish self-hatred , a book which he wrote in 1930, three years before Hitler came to power, in which he tried to explain the phenomenon of...
“perhaps the most radical system of pessimism
Pessimism
Pessimism, from the Latin word pessimus , is a state of mind in which one perceives life negatively. Value judgments may vary dramatically between individuals, even when judgments of fact are undisputed. The most common example of this phenomenon is the "Is the glass half empty or half full?"...
known to philosophical literature” —Mainländer proclaims that there is no higher meaning in life, and that “the will, ignited by the perception that non-being is better than being, is the supreme principle of all morality.”
Biography
Born "as a child of marital rape" (German: als Kind ehelicher Notzucht) on October 5, 1841, in Offenbach, Philipp Mainländer grew up the youngest of six siblings.In 1856, on paternal instruction, Mainländer entered the commercial school of Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
to become a merchant
Merchant
A merchant is a businessperson who trades in commodities that were produced by others, in order to earn a profit.Merchants can be one of two types:# A wholesale merchant operates in the chain between producer and retail merchant...
. Two years later, he was employed in a trading house in Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, where he learned Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
and acquainted himself with the works of Dante
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
, Petrarca, Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...
, and – most notably – Leopardi
Giacomo Leopardi
Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi was an Italian poet, essayist, philosopher, and philologist...
. Mainländer would later describe his five Neapolitan years as the happiest ones of his life.
During this critical period of his life, Mainländer discovered Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...
’s central work The World as Will and Representation
The World as Will and Representation
The World as Will and Representation is the central work of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The first edition was published in December 1818, and the second expanded edition in 1844. In 1948, an abridged version was edited by Thomas Mann....
. Nineteen years old at the time, he would later describe the event as a penetrating revelation, referring to the month of February 1860 as the "most important of [his] life". Indeed Schopenhauer would remain the most important influence on Mainländer's later philosophical work.
In 1863, Mainländer returned to Germany to work in his father’s business. In the same year, he also penned the three part poem Die letzten Hohenstaufen ("The Last Hohenstaufen
Hohenstaufen
The House of Hohenstaufen was a dynasty of German kings in the High Middle Ages, lasting from 1138 to 1254. Three of these kings were also crowned Holy Roman Emperor. In 1194 the Hohenstaufens also became Kings of Sicily...
"). Two years later, on October 5, Mainländer’s 24th birthday, his mother died. Deeply affected by this experience of loss, Mainländer began an ongoing turn away from poetry and towards philosophy. During the following years, he studied Schopenhauer, Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
– "not poisoned through Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant...
, Schelling and Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
, but rather critically strengthened through Schopenhauer")”, Eschenbach’s
Wolfram von Eschenbach
Wolfram von Eschenbach was a German knight and poet, regarded as one of the greatest epic poets of his time. As a Minnesinger, he also wrote lyric poetry.-Life:...
Parzival
Parzival
Parzival is a major medieval German romance by the poet Wolfram von Eschenbach, in the Middle High German language. The poem, commonly dated to the first quarter of the 13th century, is itself largely based on Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval, the Story of the Grail and mainly centers on the Arthurian...
, and the classics of philosophy from Heraclitus
Heraclitus
Heraclitus of Ephesus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom...
to Condillac
Étienne Bonnot de Condillac
Étienne Bonnot de Condillac was a French philosopher and epistemologist who studied in such areas as psychology and the philosophy of the mind.-Biography:...
.
In March 1869, Mainländer worked in the banking house J. Mart. Magnus in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
with the declared goal of amassing a small fortune within a few years and then leading a decent life from the interest earnings. However, the stock market crash at the Wiener Börse
Wiener Börse
The Wiener Börse AG is the only stock exchange in Vienna, Austria, and one of the most established exchanges in Eastern- and Southeastern Europe.-History:...
on May 8, 1873 (Wiener Krach), totally ruined Mainländer and caused a sudden end to these plans. In 1873, Mainländer resigned from his post at the bank without really knowing what he would do afterwards.
Development of The Philosophy of Redemption
Although his wealthy parents had bought off his military serviceMilitary service
Military service, in its simplest sense, is service by an individual or group in an army or other militia, whether as a chosen job or as a result of an involuntary draft . Some nations require a specific amount of military service from every citizen...
in 1861, Mainländer – according to an autobiographic note – expressed the desire "to be absolutely in all things submitted to another one once, to do the lowermost work, to have to obey blindly" and sedulously undertook numerous attempts to serve with weapons. On April 6, 1874, Mainländer, already 32 years old, submitted a request directly to the emperor Wilhelm I of Germany
William I, German Emperor
William I, also known as Wilhelm I , of the House of Hohenzollern was the King of Prussia and the first German Emperor .Under the leadership of William and his Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Prussia achieved the unification of Germany and the...
which was granted resulting in his appointment to the Cuirassier
Cuirassier
Cuirassiers were mounted cavalry soldiers equipped with armour and firearms, first appearing in late 15th-century Europe. They were the successors of the medieval armoured knights...
s in Halberstadt
Halberstadt
Halberstadt is a town in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt and the capital of the district of Harz. It is located on the German Half-Timbered House Road and the Magdeburg–Thale railway....
, beginning September 28th. During the four months leading up to his conscription, Mainländer, obsessed with work, composed the first volume of his main work The Philosophy of Redemption.
Mainländer handed the completed manuscript
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
to his sister Minna, asking her to find a publisher while he completed his military service. The author composed a letter to the as yet unknown publisher, requesting the omission of his birth name and substitution of the nom de plume "Philipp Mainländer", and stating that he would abhor nothing more than “being exposed to the eyes of the world” (German: "als den Augen der Welt ausgesetzt zu sein").
On November 1, 1875, Mainländer — originally committed for three years, but in the meantime, as he noted in a letter to his sister Minna, “exhausted, worked-out, […] at completely […] healthy body ineffably tired” (German: „verbraucht, worked out, […] bei vollkommen […] gesundem Körper unaussprechlich müde“) — was prematurely released from military service, and traveled back to his hometown of Offenbach, where he — again having become obsessed with work — within a mere two months, corrected the unbound sheets of The Philosophy of Redemption, composed his memoirs, wrote down the novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
Rupertine del Fino, and completed the 650-page second volume of his magnum opus.
From February of that year on, Mainländer’s mental collapse — which has been compared to the collapse Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
would suffer only years later — became apparent. Eventually, descending into megalomania and believing himself to be a messiah
Messiah
A messiah is a redeemer figure expected or foretold in one form or another by a religion. Slightly more widely, a messiah is any redeemer figure. Messianic beliefs or theories generally relate to eschatological improvement of the state of humanity or the world, in other words the World to...
of social democracy
Social democracy
Social democracy is a political ideology of the center-left on the political spectrum. Social democracy is officially a form of evolutionary reformist socialism. It supports class collaboration as the course to achieve socialism...
, in the night on April 1, 1875, Mainländer hanged himself in his residence in Offenbach. A pile of voucher copies of The Philosophy of Redemption, which had arrived the previous day, had served as a pedestal. He was thirty-four years old.
Nietzsche's criticism
Nietzsche's strong interest in SchopenhauerArthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...
led him to read writers who were influenced by Schopenhauer. Such writers were Eduard von Hartmann, Julius Bahnsen
Julius Bahnsen
Dr. Julius Friedrich August Bahnsen was a German philosopher. Bahnsen is usually considered the originator of characterology and a real-dialectical method of philosophical reflection which he laid down in his two-volume Contributions to Characterology and developed forth with his following...
, and Mainländer. He did not think that these authors were genuine German pessimists. Nietzsche mentioned Mainländer only once in his works.
External links
- The Riddles of Philosophy, Part II, Chapter VI Modern Idealistic World Conceptions. An essay by Rudolph Steiner that mentions Mainländer.
- Aleksander Samarin's entry on Mainländer in his Enigma of Immortality.
- http://www.filologia.unisalento.it/centroschopenhauer/pubblicazioni.htmFabio Ciracì, "La filosofia della redenzione di Philipp Mainlaender", Pensa MultiMedia, Lecce 2006.