Philipp Mainlander

Philipp Mainländer, born Philipp Batz (Offenbach am Main, German Empire, October 5, 1841-Offenbach am Main, April 1, 1876), was a German philosopher and poet. Being one of the main followers of Schopenhauer's philosophy, he exerted a strong influence on the works of Nietzsche and Cioran.

A radical pessimist, Mainländer maintained that the beginning of time corresponded to the death of God and of spirituality. He supported virginity and suicide as means to minimize the creation of life and new suffering.

His major work, Die Philosophie der Erlösung [Philosophy of Redemption], was published one day before his death. He committed suicide at the age of 34, in 1876.

Cosmogony of the philosophy of redemption

In Mainländer's worldview, God originally existed as a whole and as a primordial unity. The death of that original God is the starting point of universal history, which is characterized physically by plurality and morally by the need for suffering. The history of the universe is thus framed by these fundamental laws.

But the scattered fragments of the primordial God are desperate to be reunited, for which they need to destroy the diversity to resurrect him. Only by such means will they be able to rediscover the original unity, in short, achieve the resurrection of the original God. Jorge Luis Borges poetically describes Mainländer's vision in the following quote:

"...I think of that tragic Philipp Batz... he imagined that we are fragments of a God, that in the beginning of time he was destroyed, avoid of not being. Universal history is the dark agony of those fragments"

Thus, non-existence would be preferable to existence, which in Mainländer's logic justifies one's own annihilation as a form of redemption. The refusal to perpetuate oneself and the search for self-destruction would thus be consistent with the dynamics of Mainländer's cycle of being.