Prometheanism by Christopher John Müller

Author:Christopher John Müller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: National Book Network International

* The source text for the translation is: Günther Anders, ‘Über Prometheische Scham’, die Antiquiertheit des Menschen 1: Über die Seele im Zeitalter der zweiten industriellen Revolution (München: C.H. Beck, 2010), 21–95.

* natum esse: having been born – Trans.

* Molussia is a fictitious land invented by Anders (see the first endnote for further details). – Trans.

† Anders is here playing on the German ‘Dasein’ (existence), which literally means ‘to be here’. This has added (implied) significance because Dasein is the term Martin Heidegger deploys in Being and Time to suggest that humans exist in the sway of an experience of what it means to ‘be’ – Trans.

* Όμολογουμένως ζῆν: to live as one with the gods – Trans.

* imitatio instrumentorum: imitation of instruments – Trans.

† nolens volens: like it or not – Trans.

* In German, the word fatal also carries the meaning ‘really embarrassing’ – Trans.

* déjà vu […] déjà lu: already seen […] already read – Trans.

* summum bonum: the highest good – Trans.

* Rejectio fati: rejection of fate – Trans.

* This distinction is made by Immanuel Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason – Trans.

* As used by Anders, the German hybrid acts as an adjective that can denominate hubristic or hybrid qualities. I have used both words to underline this – Trans.

† Anders is playing on the words for measure and measuring (Maß, messen) that link the words ‘Anmessen’ and ‘Anmaßung’, which otherwise do not share a direct link in meaning – Trans.

* The followers of the early Christian theologian Marcion (AD 85–160) held the belief that because Jesus is the embodiment of love he could not possibly be the son of ‘the cruel and wrathful’ (i.e. Marcionist) god described in the Bible – Trans.

† By stealing fire, Prometheus hubristically refused to honour Zeus – Trans.

* Corinthians 15.55 – Trans.

* Aeternum […] semperitum: ‘something eternal’ […] ‘something that is always’. Anders is here playing on the nuances of these two Latin words meaning ‘always’. The former evokes the eternal realm of the ‘afterlife’ whereas the latter has no such transcendental resonance – Trans.

† numerus clausus: ‘the fixed number of places’ on specific courses, which dictates competition for entry to university – Trans.

* The German is ‘über-antwortet’, again it possible to hear a resonance with Heidegger’s vocabulary. Being and Time presents human existence as unfolding in the space opened by the experience of ‘being delivered over and made answerable’ (Überantwortung) to the inescapable fact that one ‘is and has to be’ (see esp. the discussions of ‘thrownness’ and ‘facticity’; §29ff.) – Trans.

* Moira: The Goddess of Fate; Tyche: The Goddess of Chance and Fortune – Trans.

† The text is here playing on divergent strands of meaning the word ‘rechnen’ can carry: (1) ‘to calculate, count and account’; (2) to ‘anticipate’, to ‘weigh up’, to ‘process’ and ‘work something out’; but also (3) to ‘rely on’ or to ‘count on’. Someone who is ‘unzurechnungsfähig’ is of ‘unsound mind’ and therefore declared ‘not responsible’ and ‘not liable’ for his or her actions.

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