meaning in our lives, an opaque in itself, at best explainable in terms of causal, natural-scientific models. Yet this very worldview raises the issue of how to conceive of our experience of meaning and value that seems to be constitutive of what it is to be someone, a subject or a self.
Axel Hutter’s magnificent book questions this worldview by putting our quest for meaning centre stage. To be someone is not some kind of illusion hovering over the meaningless ocean of physical reality. Rather, being someone, a self, is inextricably bound up with our capacity to tell and understand stories in which we are involved. In short, Hutter rediscovers the depth of narrations without falling into the trap of accepting the meaninglessness of the universe only in order to confront it with the desperate attempt to cover up an existential void with mere myth. In that important sense, Hutter’s narrative ontology resists the romantic temptation of accepting the disenchantment by wishing to re-enchant nature.
His starting point is a precise and astonishingly revealing, innovative analysis of the idea of repetition, so prominent in the existentialist tradition. He bases his insight on a philosophical reading of one of the most difficult modern novels, Thomas Mann’s late magnum opus, Joseph and His Brothers. In Narrative Ontology, he manages to demonstrate how we can overcome nihilism by way of drawing on Mann’s insight that we always have to tell and retell stories that are transmitted to us so as to resonate with the core of human subjectivity, i.e., our capacity to lead a life in light of a conception of ourselves. Subjectivity is the indispensable starting point of every enterprise of making sense of what it means for us to exist, which includes the incoherent attempt to reject the very idea of meaningfulness.
Hutter’s book not only offers a convincing and, in many respects, pathbreakingly novel account of a narrative ontology of the self, but at the same time provides the reader with an account of normative self-constitution, of what we call ‘Geist’ in our neck of the woods. Narrative Ontology is a mature and important piece of contemporary philosophy in Germany, a work that equally addresses issues in the theory of subjectivity, normativity and general ontology.
Given the importance of the issues dealt with in the pages that follow and the innovative way of dealing with them, I hope that the book will receive the reception it deserves also in the English-speaking world.
Preface
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.
The Art of Self-Knowledge
6 The Project of a Narrative Ontology
10 Freedom
Self-Knowledge
‘Know thyself!’ The commandment of the Delphic Oracle has defined the intellectual development of humanity like no other. To be sure, the enigmatic adventure that it calls for has long ago disappeared behind a nearly impenetrable veil of supposed familiarity and self-evidence, such that the commandment was able to sink into a mere facet of general education, into a formula one is fond of quoting.
For this reason, an introductory attempt will be made to regain the original radicality and enigmatic character of the question of self-knowledge, of human beings enquiring into their selves – a character that fundamentally distinguishes this question from all other epistemic questions. Self-knowledge by no means follows the familiar paths of ‘normal’ knowledge, which is at home in our everyday dealings in the world.
Rather, self-knowledge distinguishes itself specifically from our usual knowledge, and the enigmatic singularity of this knowledge is concealed when it is conceived of in analogy to the allegedly familiar knowledge of objects – and thus misunderstood from the ground up. At first glance, nothing appears to speak against grasping the ‘self’ in ‘self-knowledge’ as if it simply designated the object of this knowledge. Just as knowing can aim at a tree, a house or a stone, in the case of self-knowledge it could aim quite analogously at the self. The expression ‘self-knowledge’ would simply pick out a particular piece of knowledge
