Philipp Mainländer Quotes

The plant grows, reproduces (in some way) and dies (after living for some time). Disregarding any particularity, the great and actual fact of death, which could not appear on the scene anywhere in the inorganic realm, comes to light first and clearly. Could the plant die if it did not want to die in the depths of its essence? It follows only its fundamental impulse, which drew all its desire from God's longing for non-being.

Filosofía De La Redención: Antología (2011), trans. Sandra Baquedano Jer, chapter II (La ley universal del debilitamiento de la fuerza), pages 59-60, <small></small>

The first movement and the origin of the universe are one and the same. The transformation of the simple unity into the world of multiplicity, the transition from the transcendent to the immanent realm, was precisely the first movement; all subsequent movements were only continuations of the first, that is, they could not have been anything else than a new disintegration or further fragmentation of ideas. This further disintegration could manifest itself in the early periods of the universe only through the actual division of simple matter and its connections. Each simple chemical force had the urge to expand its individuality, i.e., to change its motion; however, it clashed with all others possessing the same urge, and thus arose the most fearsome struggles of the ideas with each other, in states of maximum impetus and agitation. The result was always a chemical bond, i.e., the victory of the stronger force over a weaker one and the entry of the new idea into the endless struggle.

Filosofía De La Redención: Antología (2011), trans. Sandra Baquedano Jer, chapter II (La ley universal del debilitamiento de la fuerza), page 59, <small></small>

The movement of the cosmos is the movement from over-being to non-being. The universe, however, is the disintegration into multiplicity, that is, into egoistic individualities arrayed against each other. Only in this struggle of essences, which before were a simple unity, can the original essence itself be destroyed.

Filosofía De La Redención: Antología (2011), trans. Sandra Baquedano Jer, chapter I (Sobre el origen del universo), page 57, <small></small>

1. God willed to no longer be;
2. God's essence was the obstacle to his immediate entry into non-being;
3. God's essence had to disintegrate in a world of multiplicity, whose individuals all have the desire to no longer be;
4. in this striving they hinder each other, fight against each other and thus weaken each other's strength; 5. the complete essence of God passed into the world in a transformed form, as a certain sum of power;
6. the whole world, the universe, has one goal, the non-being, and achieves it through the continuous weakening of the sum of its forces;
7. each individual will be carried through the weakening of his strength, in his evolutionary process, to the point where his desire to achieve extermination can be fulfilled.

Filosofía De La Redención: Antología (2011), trans. Sandra Baquedano Jer, chapter I (Sobre el origen del universo), pages 54-55, <small></small>

Why did God not immediately disappear into nothingness, if he wished to no longer be? One must ascribe omnipotence to God, for his power was unlimited; consequently, if he had willed to no longer be, he would have exterminated himself at once; instead, the universe of multiplicity arose, a universe of struggle, which is a manifest contradiction. How does one explain this? ... God existed alone, in absolute solitude and, consequently, it is correct to maintain that he was not limited by anything external; his power was, in this sense, omnipotent, since nothing outside of him limited it. However, his power was not omnipotent regarding himself, or in other words: his power could not destroy itself; the simple unity could not cease to exist by itself. God had the freedom to be as he willed; however, he was not free from his determinate essence.

I felt serene that I had forged a good sword, but at the same time I felt a cold dread in me for starting on a course more dangerous than any other philosopher before me. I attacked giants and dragons, everything existing, holy and honourable in state and science: God, the monster of ‘the infinite’, the species, the powers of nature, and the modern state; and in my stark naked atheism I validated only the individual and egoism. Nevertheless, above them both lay the splendour of the preworldly unity, of God . . . the holy spirit, the greatest and most significant of the three divine beings. Yes, it lay ‘brooding with wings of the dove’ over the only real things in the world, the individual and its egoism, until it was extinguished in eternal peace, in absolute nothingness.

Philosophie der Erlösung, Erster Band (2014), Metaphysik (Anhang: Kritik der Lehren Kant’s und Schopenhauer’s) <small></small>

The kingdom of heaven after death, nirvana and absolute nothingness are one and the same.

Philosophie der Erlösung, Erster Band (2014), Metaphysik, § 21 <small></small>

And who is and should be a pessimist? He who is mature for death and is in no condition to love life, just as the optimist cannot turn away from it. If he does not realize that he will live on in his children, his procreation loses its horrible character; but if he does realize it, he will recoil in horror from it, just like Humboldt when he noticed that the torments that another being must endure for perhaps eighty years are too high a price to pay for a few minutes of pleasure, and will consider the procreation of children, and rightly so, as a crime.

Philosophie der Erlösung, Erster Band (2014), Metaphysik, § 14 <small></small>