@erwin-ott.web.app
Leiter des Instituts für Strategische Philosophie in Heidelthal Shadow Ontology, Postmetaphysics, Genealogy of Ideas https://erwin-ott.web.app/index.html https://erwinott.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips
The tension between autonomy and responsibility - between the work’s claim to its own formal integrity and its indebtedness to the material conditions that produced it - must be held rather than resolved. #PhilSky
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Metaphysics is not a theory of being, but a practice of world-sustaining. It is to recognize the profound in the profane, the extraordinary upkeep required for the ordinary. #PhilSky
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10/10: The essay is essential for philosophers, social theorists, and anyone reflecting on the foundations of daily life. It re-enchants the ordinary by uncovering its metaphysical depth. #Philosophy #ErwinOtt #PhilSky
9/10: This is not a theory of Being, but a practice of sense-sustaining. Philosophy shifts from seeking first principles to cultivating attentive participation in the ongoing creation of the world. #PhilosophicalPractice #Immanence #Attention
8/10: After the “break” of certainty, what remains? The essay proposes an ethics of the ordinary: responsibility for the silent acts that make world possible. Metaphysics becomes a practice of “Sinnhalten”—holding meaning open. #Ethics #Responsibility #Meaning
7/10: The digital age transforms metaphysics. Algorithms and automated systems externalize and reprogram our foundational trust. Calculability becomes a new ontological premise. Reality becomes programmable. #DigitalAge #Algorithm #Technology
6/10: Materiality resists. Bodies, objects, and technologies are co-agents in world-making. Reality is a relational network, not a static background. A post-humanist turn: agency is distributed between human and non-human actors. #Materiality #ObjectOriented #Agency
5/10: Language & power are constitutive. We experience reality through symbolic mediation. Discourses and norms are not just descriptive but ontologically formative—they shape what can appear as “real.” #PhilosophyOfLanguage #Discourse #Power
4/10: Key theme: The fragility of certainty. Crises - illness, tech failure, social rupture - expose the metaphysical presuppositions we live by. Doubt doesn’t destroy the everyday; it reveals its contingent, enacted nature. #Certainty #Fragility #Crisis
3/10: The essay challenges classical metaphysics. Instead of seeking a hidden ground, it reveals how reality is performed through embodied trust. The “self-evident” world is a fragile construction upheld by silent, performative affirmations. #Ontology #Performative #Trust
2/10: The ordinary is not trivial but ontologically central. Our daily routines - trust, repetition, expectation - are “unhintergehbare” (unbypassable) acts that sustain reality. An immanent metaphysics, rooted in practice, not transcendent principles. #Phenomenology #ContinentalPhilosophy
1/10: “Metaphysik des Alltags – Über das Unhintergehbare im Gewöhnlichen.” A profound exploration of everyday life as the site of metaphysical enactment. Link: erwin-ott.web.app/ott-metaphys... #PhilSky #Metaphysics #PhilosophyOfEverydayLife
The next form of critique will not be negation but a kind of precise affirmation analysis. For whoever understands how assent functions has already taken the first step toward interrupting it. #PhilSky
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10/10
Conclusion: We live in a "tired modernity," where critique becomes routine, and affirmation the invisible norm. Philosophy must learn to read the transitions between the two.
#temporaldiagnosis #philosophy #contingency
9/10 Critique today? The essay advocates "attention" over negation: the ability to recognize affirmation as such is crucial.
#diagnosis #critique #affirmation
8/10 Gray zones: Pragmatism ("democracy as the best option") or realism ("objects act") suspend critique. They keep the system running - without justifying it.
#pragmatism #OOO #postcritique
7/10 Premodern revivals (MacIntyre, Taylor, Milbank) seek salvation in tradition. Yet, returning to virtue, metaphysics, or theology stabilizes what they critique.
#tradition #radicalorthodoxy #valueontology
6/10 Poststructuralist "aftershocks" (new materialism, posthumanism) deconstruct the human - but critique often ends in ontological affirmation: "Everything is entangled," conflicts dissolve.
#newmaterialism #posthumanism #agency
5/10 Techno-optimism (transhumanism, AI) promises salvation through tech - shifting political conflicts into a "soon-to-come" future. Critique is dismissed as backward.
#siliconvalley #singularity #progressmyth
4/10 Neoliberal rationality: The market becomes an anthropological constant. Education as investment, relationships as social capital - a language dissolving critique into optimization.
#homooeconomicus #nudging #depoliticization
3/10 "Biological essentialism" (neurophilosophy, evolutionary psychology) translates politics into nature. What’s framed as scientific evades debate.
#biopolitics #naturalization #ideologycritique
2/10 Philosophy is never neutral. It either stabilizes (affirmation) or disrupts (critique). Today, biologism, neoliberalism, and techno-optimism dominate - all naturalizing the social as "inevitable."
#neurophilosophy #neoliberalism #techutopia
1/10 "Affirmation and Critique" dissects contemporary philosophy as a tension between legitimation and disruption. A diagnosis of our time, where critique becomes performative, and affirmation the invisible norm.
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The task is therefore to develop a philosophy of nature for the anthropocene that is neither nostalgic nor reductionist, and that embraces both Romantic sensitivity and materialistic rigour.
#PhilSky #LitSky #Schelling #Goethe
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10/10 Final question: Can we *translate* Romantic figures (metamorphosis, productivity) into posthuman terms—without nostalgia or reduction? #PhilosophyOfNature #FutureEcologies
9/10 Conclusion: A “resonant” nature philosophy - holding tension between Romantic poiesis and materialist radicality. No synthesis, but a space for “open thinking” amid ecological collapse. #OpenOntology #Anthropocene
8/10 Sound as paradigm: Ritter’s vibrations → Cox’s "sonic flux". Sound models process without fixing it in form. But does this risk replacing one metaphor (organism) with another (wave)? #SoundStudies #ProcessOntology
7/10 Decentering the subject: Braidotti’s posthumanism vs. Romantic "Geist"-mirroring. Can we retain Romantic sensibility (affect, resonance) while rejecting its anthropocentrism? #RosiBraidotti #Subjectivity #EcologicalThought
6/10 The problem of metaphor: Romantics used poetry to grasp nature’s flux; New Materialists risk aestheticizing “vibrancy.” How to describe process without anthropomorphism? #LanguageOfNature #AestheticEcology
5/10 Ritter’s “night side” of science - UV rays, invisible forces - echoes today’s ecological "unseen": CO₂, microplastics, radioactive decay. Knowledge as participation, not representation. #InvisibleNature #ScienceStudies