Whither Goest Thou? The Present Predicament

This part reflects upon crucial implications of the investigation. What appears is an enduring productive crisis that has spurred not only an ongoing recovery and repossession of the human sciences but also self-affirmation and fertile self-transgression. The genealogy of the human sciences permits a more complex and favourable diagnosis, symptomatology and assessment of the present predicament. The book has examined the workings of an indomitable will to knowledge. This will to cognition can be understood as an expression of the will to power if one follows a Nietzschean interpretation of the syntagma. The will to knowledge articulating itself through the history of the human sciences is not a will to power that primarily expresses itself in domination. It is a will that stands forth in its specificity taken to the most refined, self-evident and self-assertive level, a will that stands out in its characteristic difference, repeating and reasserting itself in a most distinct and intense way. A new context for the reassertion of the human sciences has been established with the recognition that the existence and effects of human beings have acquired a paramount importance for life on Earth. This recognition is signalled in the widespread use of the term ‘the Anthropocene’ as an overarching framework for comprehending the significance of climate change, population growth, environmental strains and other global grand challenges. The crucial importance of the human implies that the field of investigation for the human sciences has become vital for the world at large.