The Philosophy of Redemption by Philipp Mainländer

Philipp Mainländer—his real name was Philipp Batz, the pseudonym was adopted as a homage to his natal town—is a fascinating case because of the pessimistic interpretation of metaphysics. Although it could be said he is a great exponent of Western philosophical pessimism, in reality, he lacks significant academic recognition and has been relegated to a second or even third place as a philosopher. For all this, it is not surprising that the access to his works is extremely limited, much of which has not even been translated from German. However, it is known he was read by such writers as Nietzsche and Borges, and we might suspect his influence on Cioran. I myself have only read some poems translated by Pérez Conerjo and the current anthology of The Philosophy of Redemption, translated by Sandra Baquedano Jer with the support of the Chilean Economic Culture Fund. This edition has the honor of being not only the first translation of The Philosophy of Redemption in Latin America but also the first for the Spanish-speaking world, belonging to a small print run of only 2,500 copies, of which I have the honor of owning one.

As mentioned earlier, it is clear I have only accessed the “collection of fragments” that comprise the anthology I am going to review. Despite its fragmentary nature, it feels like it provides a carefully curated selection of material holding the main ideas and adding a thoughtful preliminary study that introduces us gracefully to the crux of the matter.

God is dead and his death was the life of the universe

In Die Philosophie der Erlösung—translated as The Philosophy of Redemption or The Philosophy of Salvation—, Mainländer proposes a unique cosmovision of the universe: at the beginning, there was only God as a pre-cosmic, incognizable unit—a super-being—who, at some point, exercised his sole divine will after concluding that non-existence was better than existence. God didn’t want to be. However, due to his divine nature, his essence was an obstacle to his immediate entrance into nothingness—since he is almighty. Therefore, his essence had to disintegrate into a world of multiplicity, where every single individual is willing not to be, fighting each other to weaken the remaining strengths of a God who is no more. In this way, the whole universe—the fragments of God—has a goal: not being, and it is achieved by the continuous weakening of forces to the point of extermination. Borges beautifully captures this idea, describing universal history as “the dark agony of those fragment”.

This weakening of forces/wills is the law that rules the cosmos, and for mankind, it is translated into suffering. We can see in this creational myth parallels with the Big Bang: this God, eager not to be, marks the beginning of time, while the expansion of the universe would be the multitude of wills resulting from the suicidal God. Indeed, Mainländer thought of his philosophical system as a way to reconcile religion with science. Nevertheless, under this paradigm, life is not the result of a conscientious divine creation, but rather an exhaustion of a blind will, where everything is subordinated to the Law of the Weakening of the Force—implying that the ultimate fate of everything is disappearance. The death of God has created life; however, it is only an intermediate step to reach divine disintegration.

This Law of the Weakening of the Force holds that every force—including cosmic energy and the will to live—progressively weakens over time until reaching total extinction. We might compare this law to a sort of thermodynamic entropy, where the energy is the metaphysical will. Thus, existence is reduced to a mere process of wear and tear. This law has profound consequences and responds to a teleology of extermination, where the final destiny of the universe is self-destruction. This destruction is not a failure, but the only possible path to redemption.

It is the movement of complete annihilation, the movement from being to non-being

Mainländer’s teleology of extermination is, undoubtedly, a radical response to the problem of suffering. Facing a universe without a positive purpose that annihilates itself every second led him to develop an antinatalist approach—not only one of ascetic renunciation to weaken the will, but also a certain apology for suicide to maintain the internal coherence of his thinking. However, not everything led him to negative nihilism, as he also considered the reduction of suffering through social structures as a further step toward cosmic redemption.

Schopenhauer’s influence on this work is notable. Nonetheless, despite both of them beginning with similar premises, their conclusions are different. Mainländer, unlike Schopenhauer, does not see the will to live as the blind force that governs existence; rather, he sees the will to die. This will is also universal in Schopenhauer, while in Mainländer, it is a multitude of wills. While Schopenhauer chooses the negation of the will to palliate suffering, Mainländer has transmuted this concept into destruction, where true ascetic redemption is nothing less than annihilation, as he doesn’t believe we can access the artistic and contemplative universe that alleviates existence, as Schopenhauer suggests. In both, we can see the Buddhist influence.

And the consoling answer says: all of you will find extermination and will be redeemed

I think it was Nietzsche who claimed that for a philosopher to be respectable, he had to lead by example. While it is said that Schopenhauer ranted about life with a glass of wine in his hand, we could not say the same about his passionate student. Mainländer’s self-destructive pessimism could not have led him down any other path than a tragic one. Like Dostoevsky’s Kirilov, he was one of those rare individuals who couldn’t say one thing and do another separating beliefs from actions—“when my nostalgia for death increases just a little more, then my confession may have the strength to support any of my fellow men in their struggle against life”.

This “nostalgia for death” became unbearable one day in April of 1876. Before the printing of Die Philosophie der Erlösung, Mainländer took his own life becoming into a deadly testament of his own ideas. He embraced, through his actions, the most extreme conclusion of his philosophy, showing us that the radical rejection of life was not only a theoretical stance, but it was truly a matter of existential need. I believe he could not live in contradiction with its own views, and after offering the world what he considered his most valuable work, he felt like a tree that has given its best fruits draining his life of any value. The logical consequence demanded coherence between thoughts and actions. It wasn’t an act of despair, but his last philosophical gesture, an intellectual exercise of self-redemption. His case is perhaps, as Sandra Baquedano Jer maintains, one of the few deaths in history due to an ontological argument. He was only 33 years old.

Oh, wretched ephemeral race, children of chance and misery, why do you compel me to tell you what it would be most expedient for you not to hear?
— Nietzsche¹

All in all, The Philosophy of Redemption is a stimulating work for those interested in philosophical pessimism. It is a journey where you should not expect to find any relief, and where the question of the purpose of our existence is lucidly answered with a resounding and firm word: death! As Mainländer himself explained, this can serve as either a motive or counter-motive for some people to retreat from the affirmation of the will, while for others, it can powerfully drag them toward the peaceful night of death.