As we came down the hill, we heard the sirens, and about half an hour later, we got the news that Juliano Mer-Khamis had been shot, five times, in his car on his way to the theater, his son sitting between his legs.

Of course, there had been threats. Even the project I was in Jenin for had received anonymous letters calling for everyone to leave, or else… In January, when I had been away in Warsaw, chasing a broken heart in the diffuse lights of smoke-filled bars, someone had thrown a Molotov cocktail into the lower window of our guest house. When I returned in February, the dark spots on the wall looked like a painting. The next couple of weeks, a patrol car from the Palestinian Authority kept watch outside our guest house; when I got up late in the night, rain pouring down on the February West Bank hills, through the curtains I could see them out there in their jeep, a small light in the dark, the howling of the street dogs in the distance.

I was most definitely lost at the time, and Jenin had felt like the best place to hide from the realities of my own life. I had spent my time there working with local kids during the day and sleeping on makeshift mattresses on the rooftop of our guest house at night, listening to music that would blend in with the night prayer echoing through the valley. If not on the roof, we slept eight per room, smoked cigarettes in our bunk beds, and sometimes went over to the old cinema — the cinema we were there to rebuild — and watch old movies on the big screen, just for ourselves. Unluckily for me, I had fallen in love with a girl named B. during one of these September nights. I remember taking a photograph, her face resting in her right hand, two dark eyes looking out at the lights in the distance, that shimmering contour of rolling hills. It’s easy to fall in love when you’re lost and far away from home.

It must have been shortly after I’d taken that photograph when I heard Juliano’s name for the first time. It was hard to miss. One of these early days, when my head was still dizzy from the overwhelming bustle of this town, I stopped by his Freedom Theater in the Jenin camp. Jenin was a divided town, as I learned pretty quickly: here, the bustling city center, there, the refugee camp from 1967, where people lived so densely close to one another. I had seen images of how the Israeli army had driven into the camp with tanks during the second intifada, and as I passed the arch at its entry, I remembered seeing a video of someone getting shot in that very place.

Juliano ran the Freedom Theater. When you stopped by the place, you could almost always hear his deep, harsh but sympathetic voice in the air, leading some acting workshop for children or rehearsing a new play with older kids. He had the commanding voice of an army officer, but in that harshness lay a warmth that provided comfort instead of an order. He was clearly probing you to get out of your skin, to make you uncomfortable, to make you take the plunge — but it was for your own good, you’d realize.

The threats to us, that we brushed off with some sarcasm, had a lot more substance for Juliano, and he knew it. I heard his low voice often ruminate on what he called “double oppression.” The kids jumping around the theater, I realized, really faced that: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the one side, but also the strict bounds of their fathers and mothers on the other — a two-layered prison for their bodies and minds, and Juliano’s theater was here to free them from both. He never looked around his back, but it was obvious there were people in this town waiting for his fall. I discovered a video where he predicts his own death, an eerily accurate description.

In a way, he had inherited the courage of his late mother, Arna, whose face I soon saw flickering on the big screen. That night, I had taken B. over to the empty cinema, and we watched Juliano’s documentary, “Arna’s Children.” As I tried to hold onto her hand in the dark, I saw Arna build a theater in the ruins of Jenin; I heard her yell and challenge kids in the same manner her son did now. I saw the faces of those young boys struggling to find an expression for their anger. During the second intifada, some of them had become fighters, some had become suicide bombers; but one face stuck with me particularly: Zakaria Zubeidi, who would go on to lead the Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades in the battle of Jenin, and whose face had been burned by an explosion. He had been one of those shooting salvos of machine gun fire at Israeli tanks.

A couple of days after that cinema evening, B. slipped me a note under the door of the men’s sleeping room. I learned two things from that note: that she was good at writing poems, and that there was another lover, someone she had just met that summer, and she wasn’t going to betray her feelings. To churn my circling thoughts, I started long walks around town, the camp, the hills. On a couple of these walks, I had seen Zakaria Zubeidi, often in the camp, close to the theater. He’d sometimes carry a weapon that seemed slightly too large for his body, and despite the violence written in his face, his eyes were soft and melancholic, and I had caught myself thinking that if he hadn’t picked up that rifle, he might have picked up a pen and written poems instead.

I remembered that we spent the days after Juliano’s assassination close to the guest house, and someone suggested it might have been Zakaria after all who killed Juliano. That notion was — of course — quickly dismissed, but it is a thought that has stuck with me over the years, not because I think it’s true, but it tells me how little I understood of this town, of its politics and violence, after all.

I knew we had to go when more threats emerged after his death. Spring was about to arrive in the West Bank, filling that dried-out land with a wash of green; I remember driving to Ramallah in a small van, breathing in the mild air from the window, and feeling so alive that it hurt. If I’m honest, the fear that my own refuge from the world soon had to end was more threatening to me than the letters we frequently received in the guest house.

Over the years after Jenin, Juliano had become a theme in my life I would revisit, if ever so infrequently. In those ambiguous years after my return, his picture hung on the wall of my cramped student apartment. I remember coming in from smoking in the dim backyard, at night or late morning, and looking at his picture for a moment. It was hard to adapt to the reality of life, after all that had happened — not because it was necessarily bad or traumatizing, but it was so bluntly direct and alive. Anything in these couple of years after Jenin felt like a softened version of life; as if the taupe bricks of this part of town were not entirely real, and didn’t fully count.

I eventually found a direction in my life, a foothold to step on, and with it came a new sense of security. I moved into a new flat with my girlfriend, and without a second thought, the picture of Juliano moved to the cellar. As I built a somewhat stable life through the coming years, I only followed news from Jenin infrequently, read about how his former students pushed for justice, staging protest marches in Ramallah, holding up images of Juliano reading “Who Shot Me?” I read how Zakaria escaped an Israeli high-security prison by digging a tunnel, how he was caught again, and eventually freed in a prisoner deal. I saw his profile appear in the New York Times, a couple of months after my son was born.

Eventually, I stopped reading, just as I stopped thinking about B. In fact, we saw each other not long ago, in Berlin. It was a nice and casual conversation, one that many old acquaintances could have had. On my way back, I realized that I had forgotten where I had put that image of her, the one that was always so dear to me: she, looking into the distance, head resting in her hand, that same melancholy as Zakaria Zubeidi in her eyes. I didn’t mind, I realized now, if I lost it after all.

These days, I get up around 7am. I’m usually one of the first people in the library, where I spend my days writing, watching the cherry tree outside the window turn color through the seasons. Sometime last year, I picked up the habit of stopping by the Jesuit church across the street. I can’t say much about what it did to me, but I feel that when I sit down on the wooden bench and close my eyes, I can feel a deep hum that carries me through any hardship. When I heard about the Israeli army invading and destroying the Jenin camp in the aftermath of October 7th, I realized that I hadn’t thought of that place in a very long time.

Only once a year, around the fourth of April, I think about the sirens, and I think about how they carried Juliano’s coffin across the checkpoint in Jalame, in between barbed wire fences and soldiers with their M16s, shouting that god is greater than anything. I remember how we all formed a convoy, and how the metallic voice of Zakaria Zubeidi rang through a megaphone at the graveyard as he called in from Jenin, in praise of a man who had tried to fight two battles at once, and lost.

And sometimes I think about that video where Juliano predicts his death. I watched it again the other day. His demeanor is jokey — one might even find it cocky — but when you look closely, the gaze in his eyes is vulnerable, a silent sadness. I can see that he had fully understood the imminence of what he was saying; that he, as opposed to me, had entirely understood the logic of hate, love, and death in Jenin — and that he loved these people so much that he even forgave that they’d eventually kill him.

Sitting in church yesterday, the mild April light shining in through the upper windows, I caught myself thinking: Give me that kind of love and conviction of this man, and I should never ask for anything again.

“The eros conquers depression.”
—Byung-Chul Han, Agony of the Eros

The Tinder abyss

If you believe the depths of Reddit (or any of your single friends, for that matter), modern dating has become a true abyss. Ghosting, breadcrumbing, love bombing, orbiting, gaslighting, benching, catfishing — if a future civilization were to excavate our archives, they might think they’d found a modern version of Dante’s Inferno. And yet, we move our tormented bodies through another circle of this hell.

Remember the promise of the Internet? The pioneers who believed in a decentralized, free society, where civilized people joyfully collaborate? Well, with dating apps, it seems like just another digital promise turned sour, despite the best preconditions: Today, we can reach anyone at any time. We can meet more people in a week than previous generations met in a year. And still, we end up in the abyss of Tinder & Co.

Why does love, in an age of limerence, feel increasingly out of reach? And more uncomfortably: why does it feel like we’re losing the ability to fall into it at all?

The marketization of intimacy

A widely accepted explanation comes from sociologist Eva Illouz, who argues that love has adopted the logic of the market. The breakdown of social class boundaries, intertwined with technological progress—especially in the form of dating apps—has dramatically expanded the field of possible partners. What was once shaped by proximity, coincidence, and social circles has become a near-infinite catalogue of profiles.

With that expansion comes a shift in behavior. When options multiply, commitment becomes more difficult. Each decision carries the implicit cost of all the alternatives one is giving up. The result is a subtle but pervasive transformation: we begin to approach love less as something we fall into, and more as something we evaluate, compare, and optimize. Or, to speak with Illouz, we’re witnessing the “penetration of the economy into the machinery of desire.”

Illouz is right about this. Anyone who has spent time on dating platforms recognizes the logic immediately. People blur into each other, conversations become interchangeable, and attraction is filtered through an ever-present sense that something—or someone—slightly better might be one swipe away.

And yet, this explanation, persuasive as it is, does not go far enough. I believe that the difficulty of modern love cannot be reduced to an excess of choice or the domination of an economic mindset within the realm of desire. I believe the Tinder abyss points to a deeper shift in how we relate not only to others, but to ourselves.

The rise of the psychological self

Consider how we talk about relationships today. Concepts like attachment styles, emotional availability, or trauma responses have moved from clinical contexts into everyday language. It is no longer unusual to hear someone explain a breakup in terms of anxious attachment or avoidant behavior. What was once the domain of trained professionals has become part of ordinary self-understanding.

This development is not, in itself, problematic. It reflects a broader cultural shift toward introspection and emotional awareness. The sociologist Philip Rieff described this figure as the psychological man: an individual who understands themselves primarily through their inner life, who seeks not salvation or duty, but well-being and balance.

In many ways, this represents progress. We are better at identifying harmful patterns, more capable of articulating our needs, and more willing to take responsibility for our emotional lives. But something else has changed alongside this: we have not only become aware of our psyche, but we have begun to manage it constantly.

Algorithmic introspection

This management is shaped not only by formal psychology but by a vast, informal ecosystem of advice that circulates through social media. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok have turned psychological language into a kind of everyday currency. Terms like toxic, narcissistic, red flag, or green flag are used with increasing frequency, often detached from their original context.

Some of this content is grounded in legitimate insights. Much of it is simplified, exaggerated, or only loosely connected to established theory. But in practice, the distinction matters less than the effect: we are constantly being trained to interpret and evaluate.

Every interaction becomes a data point. A delayed reply is no longer just a delay; it becomes a signal. A moment of distance is not simply felt; it is categorized. We learn to scan behavior, to detect patterns, to anticipate risk.

The result is a form of algorithmic introspection. We do not simply experience relationships—we monitor them, often in real time, through a framework of learned concepts that promise clarity but often produce anxiety. And within that structure, something begins to recede.

The erosion of the other

The philosopher Byung-Chul Han has argued that the crisis of love today is not only a matter of too many choices, but of a more fundamental loss: the erosion of the Other.

To encounter another person as an “Other” means to face something that cannot be fully predicted or controlled. It involves difference, opacity, and a degree of resistance to our own expectations. Love, in this sense, is not simply about finding compatibility; it is about entering into a relation that exceeds our own frameworks.

But this is precisely what becomes difficult when every encounter is filtered through self-protection. When we meet someone, we do not approach them openly; we approach them with a set of criteria. We assess their behavior, measure it against what we have learned, and adjust our own responses accordingly. We do not meet them as they are, but as a possibility to be evaluated. And in doing so, we remain, in a subtle but decisive way, alone.

The stability paradox

This leads to a more uncomfortable hypothesis: What if the problem is not that we are too broken to love, but that we are too stable?

We have learned to regulate ourselves, to maintain boundaries, and to recognize patterns early. We avoid situations that might destabilize us, and we are quick to withdraw when something feels off. In this sense, we have become highly competent at managing our emotional lives.

But love is not a state that can be fully managed. To love someone is to allow the other to affect you in ways that are not entirely predictable. It involves a degree of exposure that cannot be fully controlled or preemptively secured. There is always a moment in which one steps beyond what is guaranteed.

Increasingly, we avoid that moment. We remain intact, but that intactness comes at a cost. The more we protect ourselves from being overwhelmed, the less we allow ourselves to be moved at all. What disappears is not the possibility of interaction, but the depth of it.

This is what I would call the stability paradox: the more effectively we manage our emotional lives, the less capable we become of entering into experiences that might transform us.

Love as recognition

This shift has consequences that extend beyond individual relationships. Philosophers such as Hegel and Honneth have argued that love plays a foundational role in the formation of the self. It is through being recognized—through being cared for and responded to—that we come to understand ourselves as individuals.

The earliest instance of this is the relationship between an infant and its caregiver. The infant is entirely dependent, exposed in every possible way. It cannot regulate itself, cannot secure its own survival. And yet, through this very exposure, it enters into a relation that allows it to develop a sense of self. Autonomy, thus, does not emerge in isolation; it emerges from a relationship in which one is, at least initially, not autonomous at all, but significantly exposed and vulnerable.

This dynamic continues, in more complex forms, throughout adult life. To love and to be loved is to participate in a process of mutual recognition in which both individuals are, in some sense, changed. It is not merely an addition to an already stable identity; it is part of how that identity is formed and reshaped.

If we lose the capacity to enter into such relations—if we remain at a distance, protected and self-contained—then something essential is weakened. Not only our relationships, but our sense of ourselves.

Breaking the surface

To love someone is not simply to understand them. It is to be altered by them. This is the aspect of love that modern culture tends to sidestep. We are encouraged to stay regulated, to remain within ourselves, to recognize potential harm early, and to withdraw before it can affect us too deeply. These are, in many contexts, valuable capacities. But they also shape how we approach intimacy.

We become careful. We observe ourselves as we feel. We adjust, correct, and, when necessary, retreat. In doing so, we maintain a certain continuity of the self. We remain, as it were, intact. But intactness is not the same as openness.

Without a willingness to be affected—without the possibility of being unsettled, even disrupted—love loses its transformative, its transcendent dimension. It becomes something we can integrate into our lives without being fundamentally changed by it. The more we succeed in protecting ourselves, the less we are touched by others. And the less we are touched, the less we love.

Interestingly enough, at the very bottom of Dante’s hell is not a raging firestorm; its innermost layer is a frozen lake, the entire absence of warmth and feeling. Sometimes I wonder if we’re slowly on our way there, boundary by boundary, green flag by green flag. In these moments, I’d like to say: Let’s break the ice, and fall in love—truly, hopelessly, mad and irrevocably, in such a beautifully messy way that only we humans can do.

Christian Ulmen (für welchen die Unschuldsvermutung gilt) hat mutmaßlich über Jahre hinweg über gefälschte Accounts seine damalige Ehefrau Collien Fernandes impersonifiziert, pornographische Deepfake-Bilder versendet, zu sexuellen Aktivitäten angeregt und sogar explizite Vergewaltigungsphantasien geteilt.

Warum tut ein Mensch seinem eigenen Partner derartige Gewalt an? Warum verletzt er die Würde seiner engsten Vertrauten? Ulmen hat darauf mutmaßlich mit einem Motiv argumentiert: Besitzdenken. Einen ähnlichen Beweggrund schilderte Dominique Pelicot, der über Jahre hinweg seine Frau betäubte und anderen Männern zur Vergewaltigung anbot.

Über den Fall Ulmen oder den Fall Pelicot nachzudenken — und im Allgemeinen über die Gewalt, die von Männern gegen Frauen ausgeht — bedarf zwangsläufig einer Auseinandersetzung mit dem Thema Besitz, insbesondere in Bezug auf männliche Besitzergreifung von Frauen und die damit einhergehende Gewalt.

Der Besitz bedarf Gewalt

Wie eng Besitz und Gewalt miteinander verwoben sind, zeigt uns ein einfacher Blick ins BGB (§ 854), wo Besitz wie folgt definiert wird :

Der Besitz einer Sache wird durch die Erlangung der tatsächlichen Gewalt über die Sache erworben.

Die tatsächliche Gewalt ist also der ausschlaggebende Faktor, der eine Sache zu einem Besitz macht; und Besitzrechte verbürgen auch, dass letzten Endes Gewalt angewendet werden darf, um Besitz geltend zu machen — sei es durch eigene Gewaltanwendung oder durch stellvertretende Gewalt, wie etwa die Polizei.

Das Konzept von Besitz betrifft qua Definition Sachen, niemals Menschen — und dennoch scheinen diese gewalttätigen Männer ihre Partnerinnen wie Sachen zu behandeln, von denen man Besitz ergreifen kann. Dahinter liegt ein tiefer gesellschaftlicher Prozess, der Menschen fortlaufend in Sachen verwandelt.

Die Gesellschaft des Habens

In seinem Werk „Haben oder Sein“ beschreibt Erich Fromm zwei entgegengesetzte Existenzweisen: Haben und Sein. Ein Mensch, der am Haben orientiert ist, definiert sich über das, was er hat — etwa Geld, Macht oder Wissen. Ein dem Seinsmodus verschriebener Mensch hingegen definiert sich durch das, was er ist, kurzum durch das, was er tut.

Der westlichen Industriegesellschaft als Ganzes unterstellt Fromm eine starke Fixierung auf das Haben, da ökonomische Imperative den Alltag der Menschen dominieren. Diese Fixierung führe zu einer Tendenz, Besitzansprüche auch an Mitmenschen zu stellen: „Menschen werden in Dinge verwandelt, ihr Verhältnis zueinander nimmt Besitzcharakter an.“

Fromm untersucht die Partnerschaft, insbesondere die Ehe, als Ausdrucksform dieser sich verbreitenden Art, Menschen einer Besitzlogik unterzuordnen:

„In der Zeit der Werbung ist sich einer des anderen noch nicht sicher; die Liebenden suchen einander zu gewinnen. (…). Keiner hat den anderen schon, also wendet jeder seine Energie darauf, zu sein, das heißt zu geben und zu stimulieren.

Häufig ändert sich mit der Eheschließung die Situation grundlegend. Der Ehevertrag gibt beiden das exklusive Besitzrecht auf den Körper, die Gefühle, die Zuwendung des anderen. Niemand muss mehr gewonnen werden, denn die Liebe ist zu etwas geworden, das man hat, zu einem Besitz.“

Wenn sich eine Partnerschaft in ein Besitzverhältnis transformiert, dann ist Gewalt nicht weit:

„Der Wunsch, Privateigentum zu haben, erweckt den Wunsch in uns, Gewalt anzuwenden, um andere offen oder heimlich zu berauben. In der Existenzweise des Habens findet der Mensch sein Glück in der Überlegenheit gegenüber anderen, in seinem Machtbewusstsein und in letzter Konsequenz in seiner Fähigkeit, zu erobern, zu rauben und zu töten.“

Letztlich kann jedes Femizid als eine Form verabsolutierter Durchsetzung von Besitzansprüchen gelesen werden: Wenn ich dich nicht besitzen kann, dann zerstöre ich dich lieber, als dich ziehen zu lassen.

Fromms Gedanken können grundlegend erklären, warum das Besitzdenken an sich weit in unserer Gesellschaft verbreitet ist. Aber er bleibt uns eine Antwort schuldig: Wenn es die kapitalistisch-industrielle Logik ist, welche die Existenzweise des Habens über die Gesellschaft hinweg fördert, warum sind es dann fast ausschließlich Männer, die Beziehungen in gewaltvolle Besitzverhältnisse wandeln?

Sexualität als Status

Dem Historiker John Tosh zufolge findet Männlichkeit im Westen historisch bedingt in drei Arenen statt: zu Hause, am Arbeitsplatz und in reinen Männergesellschaften. Allerdings wurde diese traditionelle Behauptung der Männlichkeit in der modernen Gesellschaft in allen drei Bereichen geschwächt, wie die israelische Soziologin Eva Illouz feststellt — sie habe sich sogar in ein „entgegengesetztes Statussymbol“ verwandelt.

Durch Rollenangleichungen im Haushalt, die fortschreitende Gleichstellung am Arbeitsplatz und den Schwund der klassischen Männergesellschaften (mit dem Sport als zähe Ausnahme) hat sich mittlerweile die Sexualität zu einem der wichtigsten Statusmerkmale für Männlichkeit entwickelt, wie Illouz bemerkt:

„Die Sexualität ermöglicht Männern den Erwerb und die Behauptung eines sozialen Status — sie ist eine Arena, in der Männer miteinander um die Behauptung ihres sexuellen Status konkurrieren.“

Die doppelte Perversion

Wenn wir die Fälle Ulmen und Pelicot betrachten, sehen wir in ihnen zum einen eine Gewaltausübung gegenüber den Frauen selbst. Hier wirkt Gewalt als Affirmation des männlichen Besitzes, der gerade durch die verübte Gewalt zementiert wird. Die Gewalt verwandelt die Frau in ein Objekt für den Mann und dient dadurch seiner Existenzweise des Habens.

Doch mit dieser Verfestigung eines Besitzanspruchs ist es in beiden Fällen offensichtlich nicht getan. Würde es sich um eine reine Gewalttat aufgrund eines einfachen Besitzanspruchs des Mannes über die Frau handeln, so könnte dies zweifelsohne in einem Kontext stattfinden, der auf beide Personen beschränkt ist. Was die beiden Fälle jedoch auszeichnet, ist — scheinbar kontraintuitiv zum eigentlichen Besitzstreben — gerade das Involvieren anderer Männer.

Genau dieses Involvieren anderer Männer würde ich als doppelte Perversion des männlichen Besitzstrebens bezeichnen. Es reicht nicht aus, die Frau als den eigenen Besitz durch Gewalt zu unterwerfen; die Verfügungsmacht muss zusätzlich noch vor anderen Männern dargestellt werden. Durch das Involvieren anderer Männer wird der eigene Status als Besitzer verfestigt, der über den Gebrauch des Besitzes verfügen und ihn nach Belieben bereitstellen darf. Es ist die reine Zurschaustellung der männlichen Macht in der sexuellen Arena, insbesondere gegenüber anderen Männern.

Femme insoumise

Die Verstrickung von Besitzansprüchen gegenüber Frauen und die Darstellung der sexuellen Macht gegenüber anderen Männern, welche beiden Fälle so eigen sind, bedingen es, dass sich Männer mit ihrer eigenen Rolle in Bezug auf gewaltvolle Besitzansprüche beschäftigen müssen. Denn das Objektifizieren von Frauen und das Darstellen der eigenen Sexualmacht vor anderen Männern beginnen nicht erst bei Pelicot und Ulmen, sondern bereits in alltäglichen Momenten.

Es beginnt in dem Moment, da wir uns vor anderen Männern gerne mit unserer Partnerin zeigen, weil wir für einen Moment stolz darauf sind, so eine Schönheit zu „besitzen“. Es beginnt bei unserem Misstrauen, wenn unsere Partnerin alleine ausgeht, oder wenn wir uns mit anderen Männern anlegen, die Zuneigung zu unserer Partnerin bekunden. Es beginnt bei Ansprüchen an zeitliche, emotionale oder sexuelle Verfügbarkeit, die nach und nach als selbstverständlich gesehen wird.

Männer müssen lernen, jegliche Tendenz zum Besitzstreben gegenüber Frauen abzulegen. Wir müssen jede einzelne Frau — ob Fremde, Freundin oder Ehefrau — als femme insoumise begreifen, wie sie die französische Philosophin Manon Garcia beschreibt: eine Frau, die eben nicht in irgendeiner Weise zur Verfügung steht; die sich in ihrem Sein jedwedem Besitzanspruch widersetzt.

Weniger Haben, mehr Sein

Die Verantwortung der Männer ist es, die Perversionen der instrumentellen Vernunft gegenüber anderen Menschen, insbesondere Frauen, abzulegen; Frauen nicht als Objekte der Zurschaustellung des eigenen Status in der Arena der Sexualität zu benutzen; aus der Existenzweise des Habens in die Existenzweise des Seins zu wechseln.

„In der Existenzweise des Seins liegt es im Lieben, Teilen, Geben.“

Wir müssen uns fragen, wie wir mehr geben können, statt zu nehmen — insbesondere in der Sexualität. Der Orgasm Gap ist schlussendlich auch nur eine Manifestation einer männlichen Haltung, die sich vom weiblichen Sexualobjekt holt, wonach es ihm gelüstet. Stattdessen müssen wir uns fragen, was wir geben können: im Alltag, in der Liebe, in der Sexualität.

Wir müssen lernen, unsere eigenen Beziehungsmuster sowie sexuelle Vorlieben zu hinterfragen und zu analysieren: Die Wirkmacht einer männlich dominierten Porno-Industrie hat uns mit unterbewussten Sex-Skripten versorgt, die eigentlich nur durch die Besitzergreifung der Frau funktionieren.

Vor allem aber müssen wir uns mehr anstrengen, Frauen wirklich zu lieben — nicht trotz, sondern gerade weil sie eigenständig und unverfügbar sind und sich jedem Besitzstreben von Grund auf entziehen.

„Un peu, juste un peu“, wie Manon Garcia sagt.

Vielen Dank an Fatma U. für das ausführliche Feedback zum Text; zum Thema Ulmen und zur Überlagerung von Besitzmacht und Gewalt siehe auch Samira El Quassils wertvollen Beitrag in Der Freitag.

Böckenförde’s spiritual vacuum

For those unfamiliar with the matter, the Böckenförde dilemma states that “liberal democracies rely upon the fertile soil of shared cultural values to flourish, yet they cannot replenish those very values.” In essence, the liberal democratic state relies on moral and social foundations outside of itself, like those emerging from religion, cultural traditions, or families and communities — but it cannot guarantee the ongoing existence of these values.

Following a sharp analysis of the current spiritual vacuum, its devastating effect on liberal societies, and the incapability of proceduralism and pseudo-religions to fill that gap, Jason argues:

“What we need is not necessarily a religion in the traditional sense. Be it a vision of virtue or a new morality, we must admit that certain substantive commitments must take place over mere proceduralism.”

Embracing human inability

While Jason’s piece was a great inspiration, I’d argue that the problem underlying our modern society runs even deeper. I don’t think that it’s merely about visions of virtue or a new morality; I’m convinced that we need to rediscover a lost skill at the root of religion, virtue, or morality, namely: transcendence. Let me explain.

In my view, human nature is defined not by our ability to reason, the ability to craft tools, or the ability to build social structures and use language; the defining feature of our species is actually our inability, paired with our awareness of it. Put differently, being human means being able to understand the limits of one’s existence.

Take death, the most drastic example of our inability. Animals die, but they do not anticipate their own death. Intelligent machines, on the other hand, have no need to confront mortality at all. Human beings, however, face the inevitability of death while possessing the peculiar capacity to grasp this immense limit of their own existence.

Transcendence: climbing beyond

This uncomfortable situation we are thrown into — unable to escape death and yet able to anticipate it — is the birthplace of transcendence, something unique to mankind. One could say that what differentiates humans from animals on the one hand and intelligent machines on the other is the ability to experience transcendence.

Transcendence is the essence of the human tension between ability and inability. The word is derived from the Latin transcendere, meaning “to climb beyond.” The transcendent mode of existence positively affirms our own limits: it acknowledges the separation between the immanent (within our limits) and the transcendent (outside our limits). But, at the same time, it encourages us to climb, to find our own answers in the face of the unknowable.

As such, transcendence necessitates what Søren Kierkegaard has famously described as a leap: a passionate move to accept that there is something we ultimately cannot know, and yet to search for answers — to live these answers — nonetheless. We sometimes forget that the first existentialist was a strong believer, and he based his belief on this precise leap he was taking.

Loving, believing, submitting

Not surprisingly, religion as a main form of transcendent experience strongly resembles this leap. Islam, for example, literally means submission or surrender; the daily prayers of a Muslim begin with the words “God is greater.” Accepting these limits of reason does not mean giving up on life: a believer commits to religious ethics and structures their life around them — a way to face the unknowable.

But religion is only one mode of transcendence. Think about ethics: at the core of each moral system lies a foundation that cannot ultimately be justified by reason alone. Even love — by the way, something that Hegel has termed the basis of all ethical life (Sittlichkeit) — has an element of transcendence. As Byung-Chul Han put it in Agony of the Eros, love is “a powerlessness in which, instead of asserting myself, I lose myself in the other (…), who then raises me up again.”

The lover, thus, is a transcendent being, just as the believer and the ethical person are, because of the passionate acceptance of their ultimate inability.

The illusions of techno-capitalism

The main issue of our current society is not that we’re lacking a specific religion, ethic, or moral structure; it is that we have lost our ability to make that passionate leap of accepting our inability and experiencing true transcendence.

The deterioration of that capacity is all the more devastating as transcendence is so foundational to human nature. A society without transcendence ultimately becomes a passionless, loveless, meaningless society — and mere procedural liberalism will not fill that gap.

But why have we neglected this skill that is so fundamental to our nature? It is because the paradigms underlying our modern form of financial capitalism and the scientific revolution — as ultimately crystallized in Silicon Valley and spread into our everyday lives and culture — have instilled in us the illusion of limitlessness.

Growth has no ceiling; technology can overcome any burdensome human condition; and ultimately, anything can be known. Homo faber, homo technologicus, and homo oeconomicus all claim that there is no limit to human nature — and thus transcendence becomes obsolete.

In a world of absolute reason, religion appears as mere superstition, ethics as an optional add-on, and the lover as a fool.

The rediscovery of transcendence

But we are reaching a point in time where we slowly begin to rediscover the importance and the positive force of accepting our limits. Without transcendence, we cannot build any moral structure capable of sustaining a society, whether through religion, ethics, or love.

In fact, the modern human being might need religion and other forms of transcendence more than ever, because no matter how deeply we are caught up in the illusion of our own limitlessness, the limits of our nature will confront us one way or another — through a simple twist of fate, the nearing of our own death, or the experience of true love.

So for me, the question is not whether we should reintroduce religion or spirituality into our liberal societies to circumvent the Böckenförde dilemma. What it requires from us is a giant, passionate, courageous leap of faith: in a time that proclaims absolute ability — editing human genomes, attaching machine interfaces to our brains, perhaps even circumventing death — we must passionately affirm our absolute inability, our limits, our impossibility: the beautiful impossibility of being human.

We must rediscover transcendence as the driving force of our personal lives and our society as a whole.

In other words: We must take the leap.

I’m grateful to Marius Neuberger for extensive feedback on this post, as well as Jason Zhao for providing the initial inspiration.