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Philipp Mainländer (also known as Philipp Batz) was a German pessimist philosopher who believed that the beginning of time corresponded to the death of God and of spirituality. He endorsed virginity and suicide as ways to minimize the creation of new life and new suffering. He argued that, “The world is the means for the purpose of non-being, and it is the only possible means for this purpose." (Die Philosophie der Erlösung)
His masterwork, Die Philosophie der Erlösung (Philosophy of the Redemption), was published on August 1, 1876. On August 2, he shot himself.
Although from a modern-day viewpoint Mainländer seems little more than a minor figure in philosophy, his influence on his contemporaries, such as Nietzsche, was significant (Nietzsche, whose personal library included the Philosophie, actually set out to counter Mainländer's particular type of pessimism).
External links
- The Riddles of Philosophy, Part II, Chapter VI Modern Idealistic World Conceptions (http://wn.elib.com/Steiner/Books/GA018/English/AP1973/GA018_p02c06.html) An essay by Rudolph Steiner that mentions Mainländer.