In one of his canonical books, Shipwreck with spectatorsthe German philosopher Hans Blumenberg reflects on the role of people who – even unaffected – watch a catastrophe that is interpreted as a metaphor for natural, social or aesthetic conditions. Whether it’s a sea storm or a civil war, a revolution or a tragedy – the viewer watches, caught up in the perplexity, terror, compassion or, yes, even the happiness of a subject who was able to position himself outside the struggle for survival. If the shipwreck is viewed as a metaphor for internal, existential matters – and life is a disaster anyway – the viewer also becomes a shipwrecked person who repeatedly tries to save himself with bars of language and watches himself fail. The philosopher considers this highly complex metaphor with several thinkers, from Homer to Wittgenstein, whose texts are not always translated into Ukrainian. I’m working on this translation.
