The Assembly Line of Death

Before I move on to the philosophy of Ulrich Horstmann, another great german pessimistic thinker, I will answer some questions that have come up here, on facebook and other communities, and will go more into detail with some points about Mainländers philosophy I haven't pointed out yet:

"I have a problem with the GOD-part"

Some people seem to be detered by the word "god" so much that this word alone makes them question the entire philosophy of Mainländer. I guess what I didn't point out good enough in the "rotting god"-essay, is that Mainländer only uses the word "god" as another word for "singularity" or "basic unity" or however you want to call it. It is not an actual "god" and that god is also not actually committing suicide - you could also say: The singularity destroyed itself instead of "god committed suicide". So all in all: GOD is just a metaphysic symbol, to make the philosophy more poetic.

"I don't get how the will to die can be the driving force of a universe that created life"

Since entropy seems to be the driving force of the universe, it's actually possible. Like you can say "singularity" instead of "god", you can also say "entropy" instead of "will to die". If you keep the picture of the rotting body of god as our universe in mind for one moment, then all the unorganic individuals (gases, liquids, stones etc) are the dead body parts rotting into nothingness, while WE, living beings, are the maggots in the rotting body of God, which is the world. So yes, we are something special in some way, but we are just rotting to notingness in a different way than the rest of the dead body.

"If god wanted to kill himself, why couldn't he reach his goal, nothingness, immediately"

Mainländer states that the fact, that the world exists, is proof enough that the obstacle for god was his own existence, his essence. He couldn't turn into nothingness just like that, because he was in his way, his own essence was stopping him for leaving his existence without thereby creating a world, that has now to fulfill the will to die. Imagine, that we are not living, but dying all the time. life is just a dying process, but what is in the way of reaching the goal of death right now? Right, we are in the way ourself, our essence is the obstacle of reaching nothingness, which is the goal of every life, immediately. This is representing gods own obstacle before the world was created.

"How is Mainländer a pessimist/antinatalist when there is a meaning in his world"

That's right, in Mainländers world there is a meaning. The meaning however, is solely to die for everything and everyone. The antinatal part develops from his philosophy simply as a consequence, because why create more food for the slaughter machine? You can imagine Mainländers cosmos as a assembly line of death, and the movement of that assembly line is the only meaning there is to it all. All the things that are transported on the assembly line, like stones, plants, animals and humans are absoltely worthless and are only there to be chopped at the end of the line, to reach gods goal of nothingness.

"The ideal state is the absolute utopia. It's beyond pollyanna. How does that fit in"

It fits in perfectly, because it would theoretically be the ultimate goal of humanity, something that has been worked on since the first caves where lightened up by torches. It is, however, just an abstract thought, not something that will ever be reached in reality, at least it's very unlikely. But the ultimate goal of humanties movement would be that state and the only thing left to do after reaching it is indeed to end it all, because 1. life is still pointless and futile, even when it's perfect and 2. the movement of the universe can't be stopped, therefore a stagnation in the ideal state would not be possible for humanity, because it is part of the overall movement of the world.

Some information on the person Philipp Mainländer:

Mainländer was influenced very strong by Arthur Schopenhauer and his will-metaphysic and for someone who isn't familiar with Schopenhauers work, Mainländers "sequel" might seem complete nonsense. I can only suggest anyone who wants to read the actual book of the Philosophy of Reedemption to read Schopenhauers mainwork "The world as will and representation" before that.

Mainländer has also written some dramas, novels and poems. His death wish shines out of all of them here and there, however the creation of "the will to die" is of course the peak of this development. Mainländer joined the army several times, because he wanted to die at the battlefield on purpose to fulfill his death wish. Several attempts failed, before he got to write his 1.300 pages strong Philosophy of Redemption. After doing so, he used a pile of copies of his own books as a pedestal and hanged himself in his residence in Offenbach. He was 34 years old when he left the assembly line of death and entered the eternal kingdom of absolute nothingness.

Entroptimism

Life is Suffering

Life has been defined as suffering by so many different individuals during the history of mankind, from the Veda and Buddha to philosophers like Arthur Schopenhauer, E.M. Cioran, Ulrich Horstmann, David Benatar and countless others, that I don't even know where to start. First of all, every form of life that we know is in itself just a tiny, insignificant individual in a universe of infinite space and time, bound to a body, forced to fulfill desires and urges for a short time, just to keep the need-machine running and fall back to other forms of desire. Furthermore the biggest problem of sentient life in general is the ability to feel pain in all forms and variations from mild mental pain to extreme physical pain and mutilation. "Happiness" can pretty much be defined simply as a state where all the negative aspects, like pain, hunger and desire are absent, a state which usually leads to bordedom (another form of suffering) very fast, so the state that seemed to be the goal and meaning of life turns then out to be a state that can only be maintained a very short time before it gets replaced by boredom which makes new needs attractive or, even if boredom doesn't come up, gets replaced by new needs anyway. All this means that life is an eternal hunt for the ideal state of the individual, which, as soon as reached, turns out to be an illusion or at least a very short period of fulfillment.

Death is Redemption

Death is redemption for one obvious and very simple reason: It ends life. Ironically, the only way to truly fulfill all desires of life is to end it. Of course, nature took care of that and made sure that death, even though it is obviously the solution to all of lifes problems, is the most horrific thing to imagine for living beings and nothing gets feared more instinctively by animals and consciously by humans, then death. It's pretty absurd that the only secure solution for everything seems to be the one thing that has to be avoided at all costs. I'm sure, if there wouldn't be these frightening guardians at the exit door, suicide would be the most common thing on earth, or maybe mankind would even have ceased to exist ages ago. But as it is, for almost everyone even the most awful horrors of life seem to be better than the horror of death.

Affirming the Will to Die

Philipp Mainländer introduced the will to die to the world of philosophy. While his role model Schopenhauer defined the will to live as the driving force of the world, Mainländer stated that in fact the will to live is just a mask for the will to die (this has been pointed out in detail in my essay "The rotting God"). While Schopenhauer only left the options of affirming or denying the will to live, Mainländer introduced another option, which is the affirmation of the will to die. Of course, affirming the will to live automatically comes with denying of the will to die. But denying the will to live does not automatically lead to affirming the will to die. Denying the will to live has been defined by Schopenhauer mainly as living in askesis and reclusion. But Mainländers option of affirming the will to die goes beyond that. It means not only to say no to life by resigning from it, but also to say yes to death by acknoledging suicide as the solution for life and by realizing that death is in fact the meaning not only of life, but of the entire universe (this has also been stated in detail in the "rotting god" essay). So when Mainländer says: "The sign of our flag is not the crucified saviour, but the death angel with huge, calm, mild eyes, carried by the dove of the redemption thought" this is exactly the affirmation of the will to die that he means. This death angel he describes is not a frightening guardian, but a sympathetic redeemer. Mainländer does not order his followers to commit suicide, but he invalidates all arguments that are speaking against it.

Entroptimism

I recently came up with the idea of calling this will-to-die-affirming ideology "Entroptimism" (a combination of the words "Entropy" and "Optimism"), because Mainländers philosophy goes beyond antinatalism and efilism. It doesn't only deal with life, it deals with the entire universe. Like described in the other essay, the whole universe is rotting to nothingness and life is just a worthless byproduct that rots to nothingness in a special, but worse way then the rest, because it is sentient. Since there is absolutely no hope for anything in this entire universe, the only reaction to it is absolute pessimism. But - If "somethingness" means 100% hopelessness, then nothingness means 100% hope. If somethingness is hell, nothingness must be heaven, because it's the opposite of somethingness. Therefore, the only reason to be optimistic in this universe, is the fact that it will turn into nothingness, that every single part of it will be redeemed forever by the universal death angel called entropy.