Unsterbliche Werte
Über Historizität und Historisierung
[Immortal Values. On Historicity and Historicization]

What does it mean for something to be not just past, but historical? Although seemingly innocuous, this question leads into a labyrinth of different answers where an often claimed but also often disputed relationship between historicity and immortality provides a guiding light. In the 18th and 19th centuries, a rather coincidental constellation of ideas emerged in which the immortality of the human species and of the individual human soul were played off against each other, combined or even dismissed altogether. Reading contributions to the philosophy of history by Leibniz, Nietzsche, Benjamin and others, it appears that this entanglement of assertions of (im)mortality has disappeared in the 20th century. However, it has in fact transformed and shifted place. Most prominently, a widespread modern understanding of moral norms as values transferred into immortality is testament to the subliminal persistence of the older constellation.

This study develops a new conception of historicity, historicization, and their correlations in cultural phenomena such as mortuary care, humanitarianism, and lifesaving. This allows for a novel explication of contemporary interpretations of the world and its crises, up to those of the Anthropocene.