Ha ha ha, this is absolutely freakin´ ridiculous. Have we found the original Incel? From Gemini AI, but Mainländer is also mentioned in other sources, so this is most certainly a true description!
Can you explain Mainländer´s philosophy and his idea that God committed suicide when creating the universe?
Philipp Mainländer (1841–1876) is often called the "Saint of Pessimism." His philosophy is perhaps the most radical and dark evolution of the thought of Arthur Schopenhauer. While Schopenhauer argued that the world is driven by a blind, irrational "Will to Live," Mainländer reached a much more startling conclusion: the world is actually driven by a Will to Die.
At the heart of his masterwork, The Philosophy of Redemption, lies the strange and haunting metaphysical story of a "God" who committed suicide to create the universe.
1. The Pre-Cosmic Unity (God)
Mainländer begins by imagining a state before the universe existed. He describes this as "The Simple Unity" (God).
This God was an absolute, all-powerful, and singular being.
However, this God realized that "to be" was not as good as "not to be." God desired non-existence.
The Problem: Because God was an absolute unity, he could not simply "vanish." He was too "thick" with being to simply blink out of existence.
2. The Divine Suicide (Entropia)
Mainländer argues that God's only way to achieve non-existence was to break himself apart. * Creating the universe was not an act of "love" or "creativity" in the traditional sense; it was God’s method of self-destruction.
By fragmenting his unified being into a trillion pieces (the stars, planets, atoms, and biological life), God successfully destroyed his unity.
The Famous Quote: Mainländer wrote that "God is dead, and His death was the life of the world." This predates Nietzsche’s famous "God is dead" statement but means something much more literal and metaphysical.
3. The Universe as a Rotting Corpse
In Mainländer’s view, we are not living in a blossoming creation; we are living in the shattered fragments of a corpse. * Every movement in the universe—from the cooling of suns to the death of a cell—is part of God's "decaying" process.
The laws of physics, particularly Entropy (the tendency of the universe to move toward disorder and heat death), are essentially the physical evidence of God’s suicide. The universe is slowly but surely "bleeding out" into nothingness.
4. The Human Role: The Will to Die
Mainländer looked at human biology and saw the same pattern. While we think we have a will to live (to eat, to procreate), he argued that these are just tricks to keep the process of fragmentation moving toward the final end.
Individualism: He believed that as the world progresses, it becomes more fragmented. We become more individualistic and lonely, which eventually leads us to see the vanity of life.
The Goal: The ultimate goal of life is to realize that non-existence is better than existence. This is the "Redemption" mentioned in his title.
5. Virginity and the Final End
Unlike many other philosophers, Mainländer provided a practical "solution" to end the suffering of the world:
Asceticism and Virginity: He believed that if humanity stopped procreating, we would stop "re-fragmenting" the divine energy.
By choosing not to have children, we help the universe reach its final goal of "The Silent Nothing." Once the last bit of energy is spent and the last consciousness dies, God’s suicide will finally be complete, and there will be eternal peace.
The Tragedy of the Philosopher
Mainländer lived his philosophy to its ultimate conclusion. On the day his book was published in 1876, he used a pile of his own newly printed books as a platform and hanged himself. He was only 34 years old. He believed that by ending his life, he was performing his small part in the grand "Redemption" of the universe.
Would you like to explore how his ideas influenced later thinkers like Nietzsche, or perhaps compare his "Will to Die" with Freud’s later concept of the "Death Drive" (Thanatos)?
