Читать книгу Narrative Ontology - Axel Hutter - Страница 7

The present enquiry devotes itself critically to the three ideas that have belonged since time immemorial to the heart of philosophical reflection: freedom, God and immortality. Their inherent connection has disappeared from our thought. We barely pay attention to the latter two, and the inflationary use of the first one (as compensation, as it were) has made it as vacuous as the others.

This enquiry’s critical aim is thus to remind philosophy of its genuine task: only in understanding itself as a mode of human self-knowledge that articulates itself in these three ideas will philosophy do justice to its own concept.

For the critical discussion of the central ideas of self-knowledge, the book sees in Thomas Mann an ally whose novel Joseph and His Brothers has more to say about freedom, God and immortality than does academic philosophy of the present era. The enquiry places itself between all positions so that anyone who picks it up can, without difficulty, identify what it is not. The professional philosopher who expects an academic treatise on ontology will find fault in the fact that it deals for long stretches with Thomas Mann’s Joseph novel. The scholar of German studies who expects an academic treatise on Thomas Mann will find fault with the fact that it pursues for long stretches speculative – indeed metaphysical – thoughts.

For these reasons, the present work will deliberately refrain from an explicit treatment of secondary literature. This is because the philosophical enquiry does not aim to talk about Thomas Mann but, rather, in a narrative manner, about that which he himself talks about: the thought that the meaning of human freedom consists in living in similitude.

This thought is admittedly not easy to understand, for understanding it requires having a justified judgement whether it is true or not. Such an insight can be gained, however, only within the framework of a philosophical enquiry.