Abstract
The title of this paper conveys two core concepts of contemporary philosophical and socio-political reflection: narrative and sustainability. The possibility of associating the concepts of narrative and sustainability is connected, in strictly formal terms, with their emergence alongside two anthropological cornerstones of contemporaneity. The first cornerstone relates to an existential dimension of human beings within the “Gutenberg galaxy” (McLuhan 1962), cleverly summarised by Marquard in the formula “Narrare necesse est” (Marquard 2004, p. 56), which expresses our need to tell and tell about ourselves, whether it be verbally or on social media.
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Notes
- 1.
The concept was first introduced in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development in the famous “Brundtland Report”. For the full version of the document, see WCED, Our Common Future, Oxford University Press, London 1987.
- 2.
- 3.
“Within this universal history (Weltgeschichte), not only must each ‘I’ have a place inasmuch as it is entangled, but it must also reasonably seep into the whole with its stories. Everything must make as much sense as the single story (Einzelgeschichte). This sense can only be related to the ‘we’ to which each individual belongs. Individuals are not only entangled in the story but also in the universal history as a result of the co-belonging of co-entanglement to a given ‘we’” (Schapp 2012, p. 200).
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According to Marquard, the self is never the sole protagonist; rather, it has a constant passion-action relationship with stories (see Marquard 2004, p. 48).
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The “external world” is one of the most challenging problems for Husserl and his students. Schapp tackles this topic in his doctoral dissertation Beiträge zur Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung (Schapp 2004a, b) defended in 1909. Despite Husserl’s supervision, it already shows features of that phenomenological realism that will have a considerable influence on some of Husserl’s most famous pupils (see Nuccilli 2020).
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“In addition to what is to be ascribed to the tree in a genuine sense, everything that could be called fate of the tree, including health and disease, comes out of the horizon. The carpenter who is already lurking in the background, the insects that make his life difficult, the rain and the sunshine emerge without threatening it. Everything belongs to the tree, whether it be more or less distant. Nothing of the sort acts at the margins. Quite the opposite, everything is constantly there with it and not around it as if it were really inside the tree, but inasmuch as it would be meaningless to represent a tree without all that we could separate from it by resorting to violence against thought. If we mention lightning and thunderstorm, we do it only to point out what belongs to the tree. If we are willing to reject any absolutisation of that sort, we could say that lightning and thunderstorm are part of the weather pattern around the tree, that health and disease are nothing more than mere poles, that the tree is never absolutely sick and never absolutely healthy. If we understand the ‘formation tree’ in these terms, we are therefore already deeply immersed in the stories that enable us to come closer to the tree. The tree is already here before us as entangled in stories. It is entangled in stories of others and cannot therefore emerge as a tree in any other way” (Schapp 2012, p. 154).
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Nuccilli, D. (2023). Narrating Sustainability—Some Insights from Wilhelm Schapp’s Philosophy of Stories. In: Barbagallo, E., Gerhartz, I.W., Thiemer, N. (eds) Erzählhorizonte. Ethik – Mensch –Technik. J.B. Metzler, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-67347-8_5
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