Sacrificed for the big idea, in the name of good, evil or banality, for religion or science, for love or hate: people die and find redemption in death. But if you listen a little more closely, it becomes clear that people would rather choose to live. Redemption in life? That’s what the West promises. The road there is long and dark, and not everyone has the courage to take it. Where is the West?
Hermann Hesse shows the way to the West in his radical individualistic view of man. There, the individual fights for his own soul and embarks on a personal hero’s journey to heaven. No, heaven is not a gift – it has to be conquered. The great thing is that everyone is allowed to do this. It becomes uncomfortable when the responsibility for personal happiness rests on your own shoulders and threatens to overwhelm your soul. What can you really achieve without the support of other people? Yet it’s you who counts, not what you achieve. It’s your story that makes all the difference.
Hesse writes in 1917 in Demian on page 7f:
What that is, a truly living human being, is known less today than ever before, and people, each of whom is a precious, unique experiment of nature, are shot to death in large numbers. If we were nothing more than unique human beings, if each of us could be completely eliminated from the world with a shotgun pellet, there would be no point in telling stories. But each person is not only himself, he is also the unique, very special, in every case important and strange point where the phenomena of the world intersect, only once like this and never again. That is why every human being’s story is important, eternal, divine, that is why every human being, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wonderful and worthy of every attention. In each one the spirit has taken shape, in each one the creature suffers, in each one a redeemer is crucified.”
There are so many questions but one stands out: the will of nature is what exactly? According to Schopenhauer?