Philipp Mainländer (Philipp Batz)
1841-1876 · German Idealism · Known
Mainländer was a German pessimist who took Schopenhauer's blind will to live and turned it into a will to die. A single divine being destroyed itself to make the world, he held, so the universe is the wreckage of God's death still flying apart, and every star burning down is creation finishing its own annihilation. He asked us to help it along by renouncing life, an ascetic ethic of redemption in nothingness.
Signature
The position Mainländer is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Meaning
- leans Constructed
- Theology
- Pandeism / Atheism
Positions on the 3 axes the sources answer
- Meaning
- leans Constructed (13 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- mildly between Unity and Multiplicity (46 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ethics
- mildly leans Means (67 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
17 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Mainländer refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Pandeism / Atheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Good and Evil
- Moral Tragedy
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Annihilation
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Knowledge
- Pure Reason
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Hard Determinism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Causa Sui
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Linear Progressive
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Paradox
- Limit
What is the status of paradox? - Death
- Annihilation
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Obstacle to Reason
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Irredeemably Corrupted / Will-to-Power
What is human nature?