Carlo Michelstaedter and the Metaphysics of Will
1991; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 106; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/2904597
ISSN1080-6598
Autores Tópico(s)Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy
ResumoReason, madness, suicide. What is the relation between these terms? It is certainly a mad logic that leads one to kill oneself, though a logic nonetheless; suicide is a perverse application of practical reason. Or is it the opposite: a rational rejection of perversion and madness? Albert Camus and others have attempted to sort out these problems on a theoretical plane; in the work and life of Carlo Michelstaedter we witness their dramatic entanglement. In the age of high nihilism to which he (1887-1910) belongs, characters both fictitious and real pursue reason to the limits of exhaustion, succumb to insanity, commit suicide with prolific regularity. And yet, with the exception of Otto Weininger, only Michelstaedter enacts the entire plot of the play, fully submitting to the entanglement of the terms.1 By killing himself on the day that he finished his doctoral dissertation in philosophy, the twenty-threeyear-old student insisted on an absolute unity of theory and practice. Having tied a nihilistic knot, he refused to loosen it by means of a last-minute hope or theoretical twist. No, such is the evasion equally shunned, at least in word, by Kierkegaard, Jaspers, and Camus. Once the knot is tied as tightly as Michelstaedter ties it-the
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