30 years “The Blue Rider” – man does not live on the bread alone

Mr. Reusch, what is philosophy?

For me, philosophy is the theoretically questioned question of people. Philosophers are ultimately champions of uncertainty because they have learned to ask the right questions without suggesting specific solutions. Ultimately, philosophy is always a skillful failure. Everyone fails in life, because nobody has survived life yet. But if it was a skillful failure, that is, if you dealt with the important questions of life and found your own way through life, it was a philosophical life. And there are many different approaches and perspectives.

Accordingly, the editorial team of our journal is not obliged to think. We try to understand the entire breadth of philosophy, to show what was thought, what is currently being thought of and what is conceivable. But ultimately the readers have to decide for themselves which of the theories presented they want to follow, or rather they are still looking for their own ways of thinking.

Maybe the famous “meaning of life” is to look for it?

“The way is the goal” would be a possible answer, when asked about the meaning of life, which is particularly popular with thinkers from Asian space and by Buddhists. But philosophy has not been invented to solve people’s practical problems. The beginning of a study of philosophy is usually not the beginning of a great career, but rather the beginning of a personal tragedy.

The question of the meaning of life is the most important business of religions, which mostly shift them to an afterlife that needs to be earned on earth by well -being. According to Friedrich Nietzsche, only weak people need one, for example by priests, specified by others.

Why should life themselves have a meaning? Maybe even a sense that is the same for everyone? When asked about the meaning of life, I would rather answer that the meaning of life is to give one’s own meaning to one’s own life. A successful life does not measure itself on external parameters such as money, celebrity, success, etc., but above all how satisfied someone himself is with what he has made depending on his possibilities, the respective living conditions and the resulting resistances.

They are chemists from their training. How did you get philosophy?

I studied chemistry to understand what the world holds together. That was my very naive question to the studies. At school I always had to do with teachers who didn’t know a lot, and because they didn’t want to give themselves naked, often answered evasively – at least I thought. But the chemistry professors at the university could not answer my basic questions either, simply because you don’t really know many fundamental things. However, they had fewer difficulties to admit.

I studied in Ulm, that was originally a purely medical university. Auxiliary sciences were also taught, physics, for example, or even chemistry. When the shortage of teachers became apparent, the country set up a teaching degree for which Professor Giel came to Ulm as an educator. As a humanities scholar, he was somewhat lost between all the natural scientists and did not want to see that there was a university without a philosophical faculty. He then teamed up with Professor Plauschinger, who taught physiology as a theoretical physicist and founded the Humboldt study center, where you could then study philosophy in Ulm until the pre-diploma, on the condition that you are enrolled in medicine or a natural science. What I did too.

This was all in addition to studying chemistry, i.e. weekend seminars and lectures during the semester break. Special people came together, and the idea for the “blue rider” came up from this circle. We wanted to carry our enthusiasm for philosophy into a wider audience. We then asked Professor Obermeier, who taught philosophy at the Humboldt Study Center, whether he writes us an article on the subject of philosophy as a skillful failure. He wanted to know what we were actually doing and asked me to write him a concept. I did that, and the next time I met him, he presented me with an envelope with DM 10,000, as start -up capital. And then we said: Yes, then we’ll do it right.

And did you skillfully fail with the “blue rider”?

(laughs) You can say that, yes. I am lucky that my wife made a living and I was able to take care of the children during the day, then in the evening, after my diploma in chemistry in philosophy and take care of the journal. It is still the case today that I do not make any money with the “blue rider” – with what we take, I can only pay for administrative activities. For us as a editor, “The Blue Rider” is self -realization, but also an educational program. Nevertheless, the journal is one of the most read philosophy magazines in German-speaking countries.

How did you get this title?

That was basically a student owl, there was no marketing concept in the background. The metaphor naturally played a role: Blue is the color of the spiritual and the rider the metaphor for the fighting with the artist group around Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky. And as a philosopher in a scientific faculty, we needed a little assertiveness – where there is no spirit, you have to fight for it. In addition, we were concerned with failure from the start: and who failed more skillful than Don Quichotte? And so the whole name came together. In retrospect, this was a good decision, the title draws more interest as a “journal for philosophy” or the like.

They can hardly be found in the digital media.

We work quite multimedia, we combine art with texts in the editions, we also make books, we have produced a CD with Nietzsche’s compositions. But it is true that the digital media are not so much. For us, the calm of reading, deep reading was increasingly important: that’s why the journal appears in the print, which is why we deliberately print black and white on the inside, so we do not illustrate the articles with pictures, but work with artists.

I have the impression that space for your own thinking is missing in modern times. However, this is an old lawsuit: Nietzsche also pointed out that dealing with culture is also work, not just entertainment. There is no room for the necessary depth and the necessary seriousness in short video formats. However, philosophy needs a certain slowness: we work on one edition on the three years. You also do not save yourself when you pedule a zeitgeist. You have to know what you are, what you want and what you can do. And if this is due to response and interest, we are happy, if not, then we have to live with it and still follow our interests and inclinations. The following still applies: Man does not live on bread alone.

Do you have the impression that life has become more complicated for philosopher?

I wouldn’t say that. Life has always been difficult for philosophers outside of universities, even in antiquity. Plato, Aristotle, these were all wealthy people. When I visited professional counseling at a young age and said that I was studying philosophy, the consultant said to me that it would be a marriage subject that a reasonable person would only study if he intended to marry someone who exerts a proper job and earn money. For me it even came true. ((laughs) But earning money has always been difficult with this employment, nothing has changed. But there is still a horde of spinner like me who can work beyond the economic constraints.

However, there are people who earn quite well with philosophy, but they are also viewed some Scheel at the same time. Richard David Precht.

Richard David Precht does a very good job when he explains philosophy. It may be that when he conveys philosophy, it sometimes becomes a little flatter, but that also has its justification. He picks up people where they stand. I don’t know what should be bad to present philosophical thinking understandably. Complicated is always easier.

Unfortunately, there is certainly an academic arrogance of the specialist philosophers, not only against very successful publicists such as Precht or Rüdiger Safranski; We also experience this again and again. When we started, we were considered a “Bild newspaper of philosophy” because we also make street surveys and place explanatory glossars next to the texts. In addition, our type of philosophy at universities is not a vogue, the current analytical philosophy is already strongly towards mathematics. However, we are convinced that the so -called big questions always face regardless of the zeitgeist and that the argument is worth it.

What conclusion would you draw for yourself after 30 years of “blue rider”?

I was always concerned with the joy of thinking, and I was able to experience that for many years. Of course, this was also accompanied by victims, a financial nature on the one hand, but also many well -worked nights. I would like to balance it out like this: my path with philosophy has not gave me anything financially, which the tax office even certified in writing every year, but it saved me a lot.