The Wildnerness. The Soul. Nothingness.

Seventeen years earlier, Emerson had introduced his essay on "Nature" with a reflection on his era in American history. He thought that the time in which he was living was a retrospective age, erecting memorials in honour of ancestors, writing biographies, engaging in historical reflections and critical analyses, whereas previous generations had still lived in an immediate relationship with "God and nature." Why, the author asks, "should not we also enjoy the original relation to the universe?" Instead of groping "among the dry bones of the past," Emerson exhorts us to avail ourselves of that "nature whose floods of life stream around and through us and invite us by the powers they supply to actions proportioned to nature." These are words that betray a dissatisfaction with or even a suffering from a life that has been mediated historically. Tradition appears as a burden that makes it impossible to perceive the world with upright honesty and fresh vision. It is no coincidence that in this connection Emerson speaks of the ancestors (he writes: fathers). He propounds the perspective of someone who does not yet feel that he is independent and has grown up. Europe, the continent from which one's mothers and fathers set off for America, continues to define the culture of those who were born in the USA as the children of immigrants. The cultures inherited from the parents' countries prevent the children from living in their own world. They appear compelled to go on looking at their country with the eyes of those who had trained their way of seeing in a different, older culture. The remedy to cure this affliction is envisioned as a return to nature that has not been determined by the history of old cultures, but that renews itself on its own. This return movement is expected to rejuvenate one's perspective and indeed one's whole situation in the world.

Michael Hampe, geboren in Hannover, studierte Philosophie, Literaturwissenschaft, Psychologie und Biologie in Heidelberg und Cambridge. Nach Professuren in Dublin, Kassel und Bamberg ist er seit 2003 Professor für Philosophie an der ETH Zürich. Er lebt in Freiburg und Zürich. Zuletzt erschienen: Tunguska oder Das Ende der Natur (2011), Die Lehren der Philosophie (2014) und Die Wildnis, die Seele, das Nichts. Über das wirkliche Leben (2020).

Hampes Text hilft zu erkennen, wie uns die Unterscheidung zwischen Schein und Wirklichkeit daran hindert, mit unserem Leben wirklich klarzukommen. - Sachbuch-Bestenliste von ZEIT, ZDF und Deutschlandfunk Kultur