Not
only that, it’s a real achievement that has been rewarded with 700,000
readers in 16 languages. This German bestseller is not exactly based on
the stuff you would think dreams are made of: philosophy.
Richard David Precht has written the most successful non-fiction book on philosophy ever published in Germany. The bestseller Who Am I – And If So, How Many? has already been translated into 16 languages and earned much praise from critics.
Precht acts as your travel guide helping you overcome the otherwise
unwieldy obstacles presented by Kant, Wittgenstein & Co. as he takes
you on his mentally stimulating world trip. He has the gift of
presenting philosophy in a popular idiom, served in concise yet
substantial portions, and able to satisfy the appetites of readers who
don’t happen to spend their professional lives in that proverbial ivory
tower, but nevertheless occasionally ask themselves where they really
come from, where they’re going and what it all means anyway.
It is for these readers that Richard David Precht, who was born in
1964, devised a title that sounds a bit nonsensical but conceals a
subtlety of meaning: Who Am I – And If So, How Many? These are
the nighttime words of a husky-voiced friend reveals the author, who
likes to season his narrative with anecdotes and entertaining
experiences.
Whether wacky poetry or a confidently contrived bestseller title, it
could also be a handicap. After all, buyers who tend to avoid self-help
titles on principle could fail to recognize that the impish cover
conceals a competent story revolving round philosophical questions. The
real appeal lies in the fact that the answers provided by thinkers such
as Descartes, Rousseau, Nietzsche or Sigmund Freud are neatly compared
with the insights of present-day natural sciences. And although the
author’s favorite forays focus on brain research, he always returns to
the safety of Kant.
As a result the book is not only an exhilarating ride through the
history of philosophy, it is also an understandable outline of brain
research, from its curious beginnings to the most recent studies,
including “excitations” and tendencies to arrogance, when
“neuroscientists believe their research is likely to put philosophy and
maybe even psychology out of a job”. Precht knows how to sift through
the arguments and lend clear contours to the struggle for superiority in
our neurobiological times, for instance in the competition between
Freudians and neuroscientists who “would like to delete the ego
altogether”. He also reveals the great forest that can hardly be seen
for trees with his “guide to the jungle of the sciences”.
In Who Am I – And If So, How Many? Precht has created a
three-pronged clearing with Kant’s basic questions: What can I know?
What should I do? What can I hope for?
In the first chapter he illustrates the preconditions for thought,
with the help of such things as the John Lennon song Lucy in the Sky
with Diamonds. And he takes a look at how things may have begun with the
human animal millions of years ago, when the brain rapidly tripled in
size. The precarious borderline drawn between humans and animals is the
theme that lies closest to his heart. He investigates it again in part
two, this time from the classical philosophical perspective of ethics:
Is the human being an animal capable of moral actions? Should we eat
animals? How should we treat anthropoid apes? Sometimes, just to jolt
our minds, Precht paints horror scenarios in which humans are not the
“summit” of creation but merely animal material.
Again with Kant, together with the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, the
book takes a deep look at bioethical questions which are not only an
age-old source of scandal but have long since shaken
legislation
and medical science. In a recent interview with the German magazine
Stern, Precht maintained that particularly neuroscientists have “to a
certain extent seized power”. But in his opinion the natural sciences
and the humanities should be combined again as far as inquiries into the
human being are concerned. In this respect, philosophy should by no
means retire to “refurbish old buildings in the area of the mind”.
Instead it should focus more on contemporary questions: “Philosophy is
empty without the natural sciences, and the natural sciences are blind
without philosophy.”
Richard David Precht creates multiple connections in many respects,
not simply between individual islands of discipline. During the
“philosophical journey” he repeatedly couples the antagonistic concepts
of intellect and emotion. Who rules the world? Does Kant’s exhortation
to goodness still apply? What is fashionable today? The mind is the mere
servant of the will, maintained Schopenhauer. Yes, who’s in command of
the mind? Is the ego merely rooted in materials? Is it just the product
of neurons, biological messengers, hormones? What happens upstairs in
the brain?
Here Precht has to return to the neuroscience laboratory, to the
rational lobe and the mirror neurons.
And he demonstrates his talent by
giving science the pace and excitement of an excellent crime story.
He
narrates with expertise and precision, combined with the courage to
compress, to omit and playfully twist the threads. All of this is
embedded in familiar everyday
language
and developed into an elegant, appealing style. Nowadays there is no
point, Precht reckons, in writing like Kant, who based his
language
on Latin students’ grammar, or like Hegel who was a “lousy stylist”.
Precht says, “Hegel really couldn’t write, and that’s one of the reasons
the texts are so complicated.” He openly admits that his own PhD thesis
about the “gliding logic of the soul in Robert Musil’s work” was the
same sort of “pompous stuff”, but that he managed to free himself again
from the convoluted style of the academic jargon drilled into him at
university.
And what can I hope for? The question in the third part of the
“philosophical journey” links up with
Anselm of Canterbury, Husserl and
Sartre, Luhmann and Epicure to focus on God, freedom and property,
justice, happiness and love. Precht lives with his wife, Luxembourg
television presenter Caroline Mart, in a family with four children.
And this brings us to his next book: Liebe. Ein unordentliches Gefühl (Love. A Disorderly Feeling), which could well turn into another bestseller.
