Learning to let go: Why self-control is an art

We live in a time when battlefield “logic of concession” is being exploited politically by left and right: a word that denotes giving up something bad. But is this true? Isn’t it life – whether we like it or not – to make sacrifices? Not a bad idea at all to introduce a little philosophy of restraint in these times, as Otfried Hoff just did.

Compromising means acknowledging the essentials

If you focus on the essentials, you won’t need nearly as many things as you think, says Höffe in an interview with BR. “And if we try to put that aside, we realize we don’t lose anything, we gain something.”

Hof, who worked as a professor at Tübingen until his retirement, is one of the most famous German philosophers. He is someone who always combines knowledge of the classics, from Aristotle to Kant, with his interest in current political and ethical issues. This is also evident in his latest work. Now, just before his eightieth birthday, The Art of Sublime Compassion has been published.

Abandonment comes from within

He knows of only one contemporary writer who has dealt with the subject in much the same way as it has in the recent past, and he says: John von Duville. In his “small and essential” book The Hours, Hoff finds the lines he now quotes in his book: “In a future asceticism / which comes from no religion / and serves no system / It’s not about working without / It’s about realizing / How little I need.”

According to Hoff, thrift and humility always come from within, and cannot be thought of without freedom, without insight into necessity (Hegel). This is the only reason why it is possible to give a moral value to renunciation. This is where the “sweet voice of condescension” comes from, inviting all kinds of imitators onto the scene, Hoff says.

Especially in social media, quite a few people nowadays flaunt their virtues. This phenomenon is called the “virtue signal”. Here, too, Otfried Hof advocates letting go: “Do not celebrate your own lack of needs, nor put them on public display in search of attention,” he wrote.

against the “renunciation regiment”

Conveniently, this book teaches no one. And he certainly does not advocate a “regime of waiver”, as Hans Jonas did in 1979 in his “Doctrine of Responsibility”. Jonas was concerned with the “advantage of full governmental power” when it came to “imposing the unpopular” on the “social body”, i.e. society – for Otfried Hof, an imposed form of condescension in an “ecological dictatorship”.

“We cannot guarantee that the dictatorship will reliably pursue environmental goals,” says the philosopher in an interview. “Even if the right environmental politicians come to power, we cannot prevent them from doing the usual political actions, that is, a certain kind of corruption and nepotism, and abandoning some of their noble goals in order to stay in power.”

occasional waiver

With Immanuel Kant, Hof also rejects any “monastic asceticism” as “unreasonable”: “By that he understands [Kant] Asceticism from the superstitious fear of divine punishment. A concession that does not come from within, and also lacks what belongs to virtuous behavior, that is, a certain amount of indifference and joy that one accepts because one knows: one does it – in the Christian sense – for his own sake for peace of mind and for the sake of others for the sake of a human and sovereign life.

The Fine Art of Compromise. A Little Philosophy of Self-Limitation is published by C.H. Beck and costs €20.