Die Narbe oder Vom Unerträglichen

Few subjects have been as neglected by philosophical thought as misfortune. It is the repressed aspect of modernity. What should not be, yet proves resistant to all efforts to eradicate it, fades away under the banner of civilizational world optimism through silence. Meanwhile, misfortune is omnipresent. No life remains untouched by it. What philosophy overlooks stirs more intensely in the life-reflecting arts. Thus, Andreas Steffens unfolds his exploration of misfortune primarily through literary testimonies from Ovid, Proust, Perec, Undine Gruenter, Ernst Herhaus, Rilke, and Koeppen. In pain, in the death of others, and in love, misfortune becomes an event of the unavailable. We are neither made for misfortune nor capable of avoiding it. It is the contradiction of life that brings forth the great questions.