Karl-Heinz Ott

Aristotle is attributed with saying that philosophy begins in wonder. In Karl–Heinz Ott’s new novel, this view is corrected. In this work, philosophy begins not in wonder, but in the madness of a jealous young man who onanistically gets heated up as he broods over a programme to bring joy to the world. This is a book on the grand theme of the birth of philosophy from the furore of jealousy, no less, the presumptuousness of a narcissistic dreamer who styles himself as the world’s redeemer. Karl–Heinz Ott draws a portrait of the brilliant writer and philosopher of education Jean–Jacques Rousseau, whose constant oscillation between missionary zeal and megalomania leads to his downfall. Intellectual history is full of tragedies of brilliant thinkers who translated their teleological visions of liberation into bloody political practice. Few other biographies are such a graphic and drastic illustration of intellectual hubris and self–deception as that of Rousseau, the philosopher of his century.

Michael Braun: „Tragödie eines Meisterdenkers“
© Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 15 October 2011