Philipp Mainländer | The Most Depressing Philosopher
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ส.ค. 2024
- Philipp Mainlander has gained an internet following by being known as one of the most pessimistic philosophers. With the recent release of the first physical english translation of his work, The Philosophy of Redemption, us english readers can finally confirm this.
Perhaps the most pessimistic of his ideas is his will to death. You may be familiar with the will to life, an idea from Schopenhauer that generally states that we have an intrinsic drive to preserve our existence and to keep "existing" through our offspring. Mainlander agrees that there's this will to life, but it ultimately hides a secret will to death.
All life must end. Nature must grow old. For Mainlander, to will life is to will the essential elements of a life: aging, sickness, and death. Someone who decides to take their own life early and someone who ages and dies are on the same path, the difference to Mainlander is just that one path prolongs the inevitable.
Unfortunately, Mainlander took his own life at a young age. By reading his work, we encounter many ideas that might have motivated his decision. The will to death is just one, but in the video I explore two other essential parts of Mainlander that might've also played a role.
#philosophy #existentialism #ethics
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Nice summary of his philosophy.
Unfortunately, the English-speaking world will have to wait a little longer for the more interesting parts of his work: His Critique of Kant and Schopenhauer and the second volume of his Philosophy of Redemption. As far as I know, Christian Romuss is going to take a very long break from Mainländer. Maybe two or three years.
its a wonderful time to be bilingual
Poor guy, I really feel sad for what happened in his tragic life. Goddamn I think it's funny to compare how Mainlander is the other coin of Kierkegaard's Philosophy and they both lead tragic lives and die young
Thank you so much❤❤❤ for considering Mainlander🙏🙏🙏
Mainlander is aware of having obtained many of the things that made him contrast with his surrounding world through birth and ancestry. He traces some of his traits back to his ancestors with the following altered verses of Goethe:
"My father gave a noble heart,
And sympathy for man and creature;
My mother melancholic blood
And joy in speculative venture.
Grandfather brimmed with wild defiance,
This sometimes holds the reins;
Grandmother did love mystic glow,
This might run through my veins."
Thank you for this! I've been looking for recent videos on Mainländer since the translation came out
Assuming he was well read in the sciences, he was a contemporary of early speculation that the universe was trending towards a heat death. So perhaps less philosophy, and more of a fatalist take on a prevailing theory for the course of cosmic expansion.
The best video on Mainländer so far! Very good to understand. Can you make a video on Julius Bahnsen?
Life is the quickest route to maximum entropy.
The part about a utopian State reminded me a little bit of Dostoevsky's observation in "Notes from Underground": that if man had nothing to do but eat and procreate and didn't have to strive for anything, in perfect bliss - he would smash it all to pieces just to reassert his agency in the world; in essence, so that _something_ would happen.
Good connection!
Believe me while Mainlander's ideas initially shook me to my core, discovering Julius Bahnsen's work was a lifeline out of that darkness.
I'll look into him!
How come? If anything Bahnsen is even more pessimistic than Mainländer.
@@paulheinrichdietrich9518 Because my friend 😇Bahnsen advises against succumbing to Mainlander's unredeemed path of redemption.
A Critique of Mainlander's Theothanatology!
@@paulheinrichdietrich9518 Because my friend😇 Bahnsen advises against succumbing to Mainlander's unredeemed path of redemption.
A Critique of Mainlander's Theothanatology!
@@Wahid_4770 Yeah but Mainländer at least offers some solutions whereas Bahnsen doesn't offer any other than catharsis through humour
Tragically beautiful.
For the algorithm
Thank ya
Finally was waiting for this 😊
Hope I delivered!
@@PhilosophyToons You sure did
Such a rapturiously beautiful mind. His Utopia example is essentially the devine state of rest for mortals, meaning that his assessment that God would kill itself rather than remaining in such a state implies that such transcendent restfulness would only logically be rejected out of the overwhelming babble of the tempting whispers of Death, boredom and depression, as we're evolved to avoid pain and persue pleasure, but our brains cannot withstand overstimulation and the over-encumbrance of too much choice; we feel stultified and suffer as a result, seeking distractions up until Death.
Why should a channel with such high quality content have such a small audience? Friend, if it is possible for you, cooperate with other channels in this field. I hope you get the position you deserve soon, don't be disappointed and continue, my friend, I wish you success.❤
The world should me more aware of radical Pessimism. There is no logical reason to completely ignore this side of philosophy!
It took me a lifetime to acquire the knowledge contained within this short video which succinctly express the way I have felt all of my life without having the complete picture, thank you. Philosophically I have forgiven god, he may have been unaware the dissolved multiplicity would cool into a duality of waves and particles which would one day support sentient life with it's guarantee of suffering and certain death. God before his decision to become may have not been aware the speed of light would interfere and slow down the process of entropic heat death stretching out both the trip into nothingness and the suffering of sentient beings for eternity, it may simply have been a mistake of judgment in god's logic.
Great video, bro
This was good!
Buen video
Thank you!
I was about to make a FO4 joke, but this vid seems a bit too serious for that
9:20... as someone who was born into extreme disability and has lived a rather charmed life because of it, I can vouch for the ennui that comes when it becomes apparent that it is unnecessary or even impossible to do ...anything for yourself. The guilt that society has for the disabled coupled with its inability to accept that some lives are not worth living - despite the fact that not a single person would choose to be disabled - has made people such as myself into hostages of society. Forced to be born with disabilities, we are forbidden from taking our own lives because of all the petty abstractions and excuses that give the rest of you a will to live - "God", "Humanity", "The State", etc. - and demand that you force us to live in the same manner as well.
To me, overcoming conflict and hardship give much more meaning to life than any status quo of peace or comfort and taking away the drivers of those things - crime, poverty, illness - and the individual's ability to overcome them in any way that may be damaging or disheartening to others robs existence of meaning, making existence profane and pointless even as society demands that it be seen as sacred or necessary.
The idea of god being the unity or singularity before the Big Bang isn’t terribly abstract, many eastern religions describe god as the “oneness” of existence, most specifically Sikhism. It’s proclaimed that the oneness is still present and it’s the ego which separates us from it and as long as where separate, we suffer.
Book recommendations?
Always start with Plato if you're new to philosophy
@@PhilosophyToons Myth Of Sisyphus is better than that shithead's book
Great video, can you make one about Han Ryner!?
Seems pretty interesting, I see he has a book, Ethical Individualism, in english on amazon. Is that what you'd recommend?
Han Ryner's view appear to be Anti-Kantian !
Yes I recommend that, it’s the most extensive of his works in English.
Do a video about Julius Bahnsen
Very interesting thinker. I wonder what made Mainländer see everything in such irreconcilable extremes, rather than a complex system. Life is indeed suffering, living is dying, but they're both also much more than that. Reminds me of William James' idea that behind most rational thoughts are hidden passions at work which frame reason to see things as they do. Great video, as usual, and good thinking adding the suicide lifeline at the end.
I also thought about which came first, the rational thoughts or the hidden passions
When i was at my most depressed, i had a thought that i followed similar to the 'will to death,' but in the sense that life was an unnatural state and death was the natural; everything humans did was to distract themself from that. To have children, to engage in hobbies, happiness that isn't fleeting, etc. in my view at the time - to take your own life would be the ideal because it was all suffering. So, i think that was his main reason for suicide. He was unable to find joy in life so he made a philosophy that would excuse his death. The god being killing himself is just the icing on the cake
That's not to say that life is suffering is a bad thought to have because life is suffering, but to only see suffering, to think that a will for death is greater than or equal to the will to life is unnatural though
While I enjoyed the video, explaining Mainlander's philosophy in terms of his suicide, his mental illness, is kind of terrible and dismissive.
Psych here, I think he did the right thing. If you're mentally not well such ideas do push you further into a dark place. Let's not forget that this video would be seen by many folks at different times in their life
@@Jabranalibabry And? Psych patient here, I think, while it may have been expedient for those who do have psychological issues, it is also dismissive of his philosophy, which is the point I was making.
If you cannot deal with a video, do not watch it. If someone wants to die, they will find the will and the way to do it regardless of a video on the internet. As someone with severe physical disabilities which have caused a lot of my psychological problems, I cannot be indignant or angry at those who choose to die. I might be upset, I might not like it, but that gives me no right to subvert their decision.
@@John-ir4id things are quite different from the other end. This is your view about it and I respect it but you're projecting it unnecessarily onto the video. I think Philo-T did it justice by clearly stating where he was giving his interpretation and where he was informing us of the philosopher's view. This practice academically is called reflexivity. I mentioned my profession as I wasn't speaking from a purely (academic) philosophy view.
@@Jabranalibabry Agree to disagree. I can acknowledge and take responsibility for my bias. Can you?
@@Jabranalibabry I guess not. This debate is over because TH-cam keeps deleting my responses.
What protects me from the suffering of life, and gives me moments of joy, is not philosophy, which i really like, but something very simple:
Feed the birds, the ants and the other creatures every day, and I start at dawn.
Goodness is the solution to depression and suffering, continued goodness, not philosophy.
. . . . But what goodness is, is a question for both Reason and philosophy.
Life is shit because you dont do good, and charity is not necessarily goodness.
the video is amazing and very useful but the soundtrack beside it is really distracting. I mean the jazz music. I can't focus properly on what you say.
I feel the same.
In italiano per favore😢😢😢😢
If you think this is bad, there’s a Prussia/German guy (it’s always the Germans) named Nietzsche (he is also a philosopher)
You think someone who'd watch a video about philipp mainlander wouldn't fvking know who nietzsche is? You sound like you just discovered him yourself.
@@PrinceTerrien chill
cool video but tree was kind of shit example of demise as they can live for thousand years and whole generations of humans can pass the tree will be there
His philosophy is pretty dumb ngl
How is mainlander's work a "philosophy", its more like an essay. Where is the system?
Said this before on schopenhauers video:
A philosopher who is depressed is a failed philosopher - so don't trust his ideas.
Philosopher: lover of wisdom, and if you are wise you will be happy and joyous.
Wise!
"For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."
Ecclesiastes 1:18
The problem with wisdom is that while it manages ignorance, wisdom does use knowledge.
So for wisdom to beat depression it needs the right knowledge.
The ecclesiastes is incomplete - with the right knowledge comes joy and happiness, there where the knowledge is applied.
Frankly i say that the right knowledge is the knowledge of goodness ( which man, in general, lacks) and that sorrow and dispair are for wisdom that is not good.
Be wise: if sadness and depression grip you, seek the knowledge and behaviour that gives you joy. The unwise stay depressed.
No, no, no, no. If a person can look at billions of animals tortured for science & slaughtered for food, the forests cut down for houses, the fields paved over for highways, the ruins created by bombs, the poisoned water from farms & factories, the raping & murdering, the fraud and lies & be happy, he is a navel-gazing fool.
@@lorenzocapitani8666 You can repeat yourself as many times as you like but until I see anything resembling an argument, you'll have failed to gain my interest.
@@averykral9654 I did not repeat myself I stated a new argument that reinforced the previous one.
The new argument was that wisdom uses knowledge and manages ignorance.
I claim the bible to have stated nonsense, especially in the ecclesiastes, the reason is that the purpose of wisdom is survival and prosperity, and that grief and disharmony go against survival, favouring depression and death, thus going against the purpose of wisdom - thus someone that has grief and sadness goes against wisdom and is not wise - the only excuse is ignorance - through humility a wise one would admit ignorance and seek the knowledge, that if applied, gives him happiness and joy.
If you prefer the ignorance of blind faith in a book that has created misery for centures, and across nations, that is your non wise problem.
Simply put: if not interested don't respond, thus avoiding conflict. WISE.