The obsolescence of sensibility: aesthetics and politics in ending time by Günther Anders

Abstract

Günther Anders is still an almost secret thinker, even though his work has been progressively rediscovered in the last two decades. His reflections, moreover, are contained in a dispersed and varied work. That is why the purpose of these pages is the reconstruction of an aesthetical and political notion at the same time, present throughout it, with the aim of contributing to the discovery of a reading key that allows giving a unified image of this sparse set. It is about the idea of ​​the sensible opacity of the contemporary world, which would have been camouflaged in various ways to prevent human beings from becoming aware of their situation as mere co-historical beings with the true subject of history, technique. Through the analysis of its origin in his early writings on the philosophy of particular arts (literature, music, plastic) to its generalization as a critical key to read the dangers of the contemporary world (his and ours), it is our intention to highlight the actuality of a critical and materialistic thought that, arisen in the heat of events, has left a valuable legacy to think about our own present.