Aschenplätze: Eine Theorie dieses Subjekts

by Peter Trawny

Life is inevitably connected to an original philosophic mission - with that for self-knowledge that stands out to the question: Who am I? From Augustine to Nietzsche the philosophers have always faced her in the knowledge that there is only one way to find an answer to it: by tracing one's own life autobiographically, and beyond all illusion and lies. Because learning who you are goes beyond mere reflection. In Scripture alone, the I can give itself a language "that obeys the grammar of the soul" and in which all contradictions, waymarks, contradictions are revealed: the sky in the faceless Ruhrpott, the first sexual experiences, the slow estrangement of family and class, the occupation with and the struggle for university recognition. Starting from the cinder places of his biography, Peter Trawny draws a self-portrait exhibiting the breaking points. On them, action and thinking hardly find each other - but there the light of a new existence ignites.

Like a novel, we follow spellbound the human and intellectual fate of a person who is exemplary yet unique in this period with his life. A radical book for anyone who wants to know what a philosophical life looks like in our time.

Hardcover

Published May 22, 2025