Nietzsche came up with the wonderful insight that, strictly speaking, every person actually has their own philosophy. So it is not so important whether someone sees themselves as a Kantian, an existentialist or a Christian. The individual life decisively shapes the resulting practical philosophy of the individual.
But despite all individuality, I believe that certain philosophical principles can only be understood from the respective cultural area. Hence the fascination and the simultaneous incomprehensibility of Western and Eastern philosophy and vice versa.
But what exactly characterizes the cultural area? Climate, history, social structure…all good and correct answers. But as a native of Mainz, I naturally also think of alcohol in the form of wine.
Just as my compositions are a kind of Mainz wine house turned into music ( you sit down at a table of 6 with complete strangers, drink wine, eat, talk to everyone and have a wonderful evening with new impressions and possibly new friends ) the philosophy of Rhenish Catholicism (“To every animal its own little thing” with a simultaneous well-founded rejection of all radicalism ) is difficult to imagine without the enjoyment of white wine.
This becomes particularly clear on the short journey from the wine-growing Vorderpfalz to the beer-drinking Waldpfalz regions.
While the temperament of the Rhineland Palatinate people seems to be very lively, animated, and leaning towards excitement and liveliness, the Palatinate people of the heights are more leisurely, unexcited and need a lot more time to get excited or agitated.
Accordingly, the philosophy changes with the drugs consumed: Hans-Georg Gadamer fits the much too small glass of red wine. You can literally feel the will of the post-war generation to bake only small rolls. Nothing else fits here: Gadamer originally comes from Wroclaw. But he never mentions anything about the fate of the lost homeland. He seems to have adapted superficially to the Trollinger-like fate of small-scale Baden-Württemberg.
In the time of Hegel, on the other hand, who came from Stuttgart, Trollinger was still a comparatively heavy variety imported from France, which also demanded unusually heavy thinking.
While we’re on the subject of Trollinger: Isn’t there a certain spiritual similarity between the all-crushing Weltgeist of a Hegel and the moral rigorism of the leaders of the RAF who came from the same region: Bader & Ensslin?
A beer drinker from the West Palatinate would never have been open to such ideas: he would have much preferred to remain in the natural musicality of the Kusel region, which developed particularly wonderfully in a talent like Fritz Wunderlich.
The full tragedy of Nietzsche can only be understood if you know his birthplace better:
In the undefined landscape between Weißenfels and Leipzig, nothing gives contour: too cold for wine, too warm for schnapps, you have to dream of foreign, unknown pleasures here, which you can come close to, but which ultimately never become part of your own nature. Whether it’s the extremes of the Swiss Alps or the rich cultural heritage of Italy, everything longs to escape from this landscape of neither fish nor flesh of not-passing and not-being-decided.
Would Nietzsche’s thinking have reached the same extreme if he had been born in Mainz? Certainly not. Goethe, who grew up on cider and spent his time in the Riesling vineyards of Wiesbaden-Frauenstein, would certainly have been closer to him, and he would have remained more in tune with Schopenhauer, the Schoppenhauer and Schopenhauer’s tinker.
Kant, who defies categorization, remains a perennial mystery. But would Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy be conceivable without vodka?
How else can the pragmatism of English philosophy be explained other than by warm beer?
And anyone who has ever appreciated the clearing effect of Japanese sake knows even better how to absorb the seemingly superhuman, floating effect of Zen philosophy.
All in all, however, it turns out that philosophy found its true flowering in the areas of wine, and to be even more precise, in the white wine regions. Whether Albert Schweitzer from the Edelzwicker and Gewürztraminer region, Michel de Eyquem Montaigne from Bordeaux (white and red wine), Rousseau from Geneva (Chasselas), Karl Marx from Trier (Elbling, a kind of original Riesling), white wine apparently tempts and inspires people to promote the western way of philosophizing.
With this in mind, let us raise the next glass of wine to our mouths in the name of philosophy!