My philosophical background and
my idea of philosophical work

I studied philosophy, history and arts history in Heidelberg and Aachen, and during seminars I enjoyed spending a whole semester while not going beyond the first pages of a book. I have experienced the `charm´ of philosophy, and I have admired the depth of considerations as in those days we were made familiar with in a comparably slow pace.

For my Master thesis I laboured through Heidegger´s thought, and I was taught much by his lectures. His achievements were great, and yes, it is a pity that concerning certain things he went so wrong. Yet still, I think: it is deplorable that he has been declared a persona non grata and that there has been the decision not to read him anymore, for this way we defraud ourselves of a very valuable contribution to philosophy. It makes sad to be just able to watch such a self-crippling of philosophy without any possibility to interfere, as also any scientific dealing with this outlaw is immediately disgraced, which is why then, at least for the time being, any relativization or contextualisation is not well possible.

I learned much in the course of my studies and during colloquia; congresses or other big events, on the other hand, have hardly provided me with anything worth keeping in mind for a longer time. It may be that in the latter situations my pace was not adequate. During smaller symposia, sometimes philosophy is still fascinating: in presenting its charm which once made us study all these things and want them, notwithstanding all obstacles and questions about meaning. Thus, it seems as if I rather belong to a past age of philosophy when academia was still unaware of certain, today obligatory, ways of working, of the quantity of publications as today´s common criterion, of today´s general bustling activity, and of the mercantilisation of the scientific `output´ including all those strange effects it produces. For other sciences these habits may make sense – for philosophy they do not. In my opinion, its intrinsic value as a meta-science requires other modes, that is much more cooperation and team spirit as well as much more attention to be paid to communicating philosophical considerations to individual sciences, to business and politics as well as to everyday life.

In view of the publication hype, which in this way was probably not intended by anyone but which we are not going to get rid of, I am of the opinion that the world has been plagued with enough words and sentences, together with those by long deceased authors, that the sum total of what has been said has meanwhile become immeasurable, and that in the future it will even grow exorbitantly. Even now and all the more in the future we will not be able to cope with it, so that philosophy will split up ever more into individual disciplines which are going to be mutually unapproachable. Why all this? Just to build careers? For an objectively measurable formation of elites? I believe the thus connected constraints, this permanent doing things for the sake of things, as well as the pressure to publish as much as ever possible, may come what will, to be hostile to thought and philosophy, and I find it particularly deplorable that these are indeed self-enhancing developments. By the way, the thus connected prioritisation of current authors and the truly distressingly short half-lives of what may be called `current´ produce the result that frequently older contributions are no longer paid the attention they actually deserve.