German literary scholar and writer (born 1949)
Ulrich Horstmann (born 31 May 1949 in Bünde)[1] is a German literary scholar and writer who has also written under the pseudonym Klaus Steintal. Frequently described as a philosopher in the tradition of philosophical pessimism, he is perhaps most notorious for his view, often regarded as extreme even among other pessimist philosophers, that voluntary human extinction ought to be achieved by way of intentional global thermonuclear annihilation.
Life
Ulrich Horstmann finished his studies of English and Philosophy in 1974 with a doctoral thesis on Edgar Allan Poe. He was a lecturer at the University of South Africa in Pretoria. After habilitation in 1983 he lectured at the University of Münster until 1987. Since 1991 he has been a professor of English and American literature at the University of Giessen. He lives in Marburg.
Since 1976 Ulrich Horstmann has published, alongside scientific work, essays, novels and plays of his own, as well as translations from English. In 1983 he became known for his treatise The Beast, in which he promoted a philosophical position which was diametrically opposed to the peace movement Zeitgeist of those years: He advocated a philosophy of "escape of mankind" which aims for an early self-destruction of the human race by means of the accumulated nuclear weapons found in arsenals around the world. He pushed the pessimism and misanthropy of his intellectual forebear Schopenhauer to the extreme. It has been proved by the author's subsequent publications which are written with an attitude of nihilism and extreme distaste for the world, that The Beast was in no way, as suspected by some critics, a particularly bitter satire.
Ulrich Horstmann is a member of PEN Germany and received the Kleist Prize in 1988 after being nominated by Günter Kunert.
Thought
Horstmann puts forth the theory that mankind has been pre-programmed to eliminate itself in the course of history—and also all its memory of itself—through war (thermonuclear, genetic, biological), genocide, destruction of its sustaining environment, etc. “The final aim of history is a crumbling field of ruins. Its final meaning is the sand blown through the eye-holes of human skulls.” Through his analysis of history, he has concluded that our species is engaged in a constant process of armament, with the eventual end goal of wiping itself out through war. History, for him, is nothing more than a slaughterhouse . . . “the place of a skull and charnel house of a mad, incurably bloodthirsty slaughtering, flaying and whetting, of an irresistible urge to destroy to the last.”
Although inspired by the already extreme philosophy of Philipp Mainländer, Horstmann ends up with an even more explicit solution regarding the problem of human existence. In his book The Beast he actually goes so far as to suggest the use of nuclear weapons in order to bring forth the extinction of the human race.
For him only the annihilation of life would give rise to a universal redemption in which we would once again achieve the existential peace of inorganic matter. According to Horstmann’s apocalyptic vision:
The true Garden of Eden is desolation
Die Geschichte des Untiers ist erfüllt, und in Demut harrt es des doppelten Todes — der physischen Vernichtung und des Auslöschens der Erinnerung an sich selbst.
The history of the Beast is fulfilled, and in humility it awaits a double death — the physical annihilation and the obliteration of the recollection to itself.
— Das Untier (The Beast)
