"Write your way out of it." – J.D. Salinger
My brother died the third of October, 1993. Or maybe he died the day after, on the fourth of October. Does the date really matter?
Death is death. It awaits us all.
My brother, whose name was Jesper, died at the age of twenty-six, someday in October, somewhere in Denmark.
Read the rest of the essay in the Foliate Oak Literary Magazine
I’m delighted that my essay, “To Become A Killer,” will appear in the fall issue of Epiphany.
For me, philosophy is a way of living and not an academic discipline that requires you to swallow a certain amount of information to pass. Most great novelists are philosophers. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once said that literature in order to become philosophy must become fiction. I like that. It also shows that the distinction between philosophy and literature is rather new—perhaps stemming from Kant—but does it matter if Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, de Beauvoir, and all the others are classified as philosophers or writers?
Read the rest of the interview in Under the Gum Tree.
I just published the personal essay “My Name Is Finn” in the literary arts magazine Under the Gum Tree.
Et godt spørgsmål kræver en god bog. Netop nu er Hvem myrdede Gilles Deleuze? på gaden, jorden, reolen, nettet …
God læselyst.
Interview in the Spanish paper Expansión … for those who read Spanish. Can be read here.
Den 17. juni udkommer romanen Hvem myrdede Gilles Deleuze?
… Da en ung dansk mand møder den spanske forfatter Rodrigo i Barcelona, bliver han vidne til en firedages intens monolog om eksistensen og dens mulige grænser. Rodrigo gransker en bestemt filosofs selvmord med sådan en iver, som gjaldt det hans fremtidige livsbetingelser.
Se pressemeddelelse.
Philosopher Michael Klenk has written a thorough and clear review of The Happiness of Burnout.
He writes, “Janning’s book stands out because of its unconventional but forceful potpourri of philosophical, psychological, and literary anecdotes added to an emphatically written case-study of Jeppe Hein, a Danish artist of international acclaim, who was diagnosed with burnout at the age of 35. Janning’s focus and grand ambition is to draw a broader lesson from a Hein’s path to recovery. Beyond, say, a mere enumeration of syndromes or recommendations of efficacious therapies, Janning intends the book to serve as an inspiration for people’s “quest toward a happy and flourishing life.”
You can read the rest of the review at Metapsychology.
I just released the essay Inside with illustrations by Jeppe Hein.
The essay is a contribution to Hein’s exhibition, All We Need Is Inside at 303 Gallery, New York, US.
Enjoy.
I just released a new book. It’s called The Happiness of Burnout.
A proper philosophical question is: Which life is worth living? The questions invites a plurality of answers from different perspectives. This plurality leads towards an affirmative practice that asks: How might one live a flourishing and happy life without any transcendent guidance?
The Happiness of Burnout deals with these questions. It tells the case story of the Danish artist Jeppe Hein’s burnout. The material for this book is based on more than 100 hours of interviews with Jeppe Hein.
A book launch will take place the 4th of June in Berlin. For more info see Press Release.
FINN JANNING 