In an episode of the sitcom “Friends,” Phoebe argues with Joey, who has just landed a job selling Christmas trees, saying, “I’m totally against innocent trees being sawed down. How can you even get a wink of sleep at night?” Joey replies, “You misunderstood. These trees are destined from birth to become Christmas trees.
They fulfill their purpose in life by making people happy.” Phoebe is reassured for the time being, Joey’s argument worked. This is no wonder, because it is not from bad parents, but from Aristotle, who finds purposes everywhere in natural and human life that want to be pursued or fulfilled. Seen this way, there seems to be nothing more terrible than futility – and Phoebe's horror overtakes her when she notices that unsaleable trees that are denied the “Christmas fate” end up in the shredder.
No reason to get depressed
It is unknown whether the “Friends” have found their purpose in life over the course of the ten seasons. In any case, Aristotle would have explained to them that the purpose of man is to act as a rational, thinking or speaking being. This way he is able to make plans and see his whole life as a work (ergon) or project.
But if you had asked Michael Hampe, he would have told you that Aristotle had “led thought in Europe” into a dead end or astray with his purposive thinking. The question about the telos of human life is nonsensical. “My tongue is for tasting, my hands are for touching, and my eyes are for seeing. But me?” “It is considered good to set goals for yourself: 'Have a purpose in life!' Why exactly?”
Hampe would have recommended to the “Friends” a life that is “freed” from “the claim to have a goal, to be a development, an unfolding, a realization (by whom or what?)”. He would have understood that the “idea that life “amounts to nothing” frightens them. But this is no reason at all to become “depressed”. Rather, those who frantically pursue goals and “orientate their lives towards the achievement of finite goods” in order to distract themselves from their own death seemed more desperate.
Don't argue with principles now
Instead of talking to the “Friends,” Hampe wrote the book “What for?” and outlined his “philosophy of futility.” The question cannot be left out as to why he wrote “What for?” The answer is: for the sake of “attention”. It is Hampe's favorite word, which he promotes with Simone Weil, Buddha and others. He understands this to be an attitude towards nature, towards oneself and towards others, which we “shove out” according to our objectives and which is characterized by a disinterested engagement with the world. The adoption of the purposes therefore has the double advantage of practically helping one out of the teleological treadmill and theoretically opening up an unbiased access to the world.
To ensure that the purposelessness is reflected in the form of the presentation, Hampe refrains from clearly lining up information. His book is more like a meditation than a treatise and is esoteric in the best sense. Hampe is suspicious of systems, general terms and scientific methods and, according to him, quickly leads to “rightism” and “ridicule on principles”. As an exception, it is advisable to take off your seatbelt on the flight of ideas to which this book invites you. Only then can one surrender to the pull of Hampe's unusual – and unusually successful – way of thinking and writing.
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