Worldlessness, abstraction and fiction: on Günther Anders aesthetics

• Grant number: 25/28255-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: April 12, 2026
• End date: July 11, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Lucianno Ferreira Gatti
• Grantee: Felipe Catalani
• Supervisor: Micaela Latini
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Università degli Studi di Ferrara, Italy
• Associated to the scholarship: 24/23889-8 - Art without world: Aesthetics and literature in Günther Anders, BP.PD

Abstract

If we attempt to decipher something like an "aesthetic theory" in Günther Anders, a theory that was never formulated as such although an important part of his work is devoted to literature and art, we must turn to certain concepts from his philosophical anthropology, the outlines of which had been presented in the 1920s and which still resonate in the 1980s, when Anders wrote the introduction to his Mensch ohne Welt. Our aim is to understand how "worldlessness," as a fundamental existential condition according to Anders's conception, serves as the key to deciphering what we are calling here his anthropological conception of fiction. The "abstract condition" of the human being, derived from his non-identification with the world, is understood as the presupposition for the human faculty of abstraction, imagination, and fabulation. (AU)