Zärtlichkeit

What has happened to tenderness that it has become such an awkward matter? Isabella Guanzini. In the age of coolness, it has become difficult to talk about tenderness without sounding sentimental or cheesy. Tenderness has become a supplement to private life, writes the young philosopher Isabella Guanzini. In her passionate little book, she advocates for the gentle power that we increasingly lack in order to remain human—or to become human at all. We live in a pressured world that demands more and more from us to keep up. Hardness, overstimulation, and exhaustion are the consequences. While everything human becomes petrified, a longing for new air to breathe grows within us. But how can we break the vicious cycle in which we drive ourselves to death? Isabella Guanzini shows, without any romantic sentimentality, that the gentle power that brought us into the world and keeps us alive is underestimated. For tenderness is more than just a feeling of well-being. It is a mental attitude with which we can gently—rather than through hardness—unleash the true potential of human life and at the same time free ourselves from the exhausting mental fatigue of our time.