Outsiders are out of fashion. Ralf Konersmann champions thinkers who have defied the mainstream

To put it bluntly: The term "lateral thinker" appears only once in Ralf Konersmann's book about the "outsider." The German philosopher doesn't want to get caught up in debates that are too strident to be useful to his pet project. Those who think outside the mainstream discourse or who don't make their way of life dependent on public approval receive an almost unusual appreciation in Konersmann's long essay. A feat, one might say, because the author completely ignores current politics. But it's not quite that simple. Everything in the book's 160 pages seems to be intended to subtly reference the current situation.

From antiquity to the Enlightenment, Konersmann strung together examples of nonconformists. Their ideas, which fall outside the mold of the times, defy the "master position of the we," as the book puts it. "Those who claim them have different faces. What they have in common, however, is the assumption of an all-encompassing principle and the claim to represent this all-encompassing principle—indeed, to be it."

According to Konersmann, the mainstream excludes dissidents. And he uses the term "thinker" quite emphatically. When Socrates persisted in his philosophy of doubt, he was put on trial and sentenced to death for godlessness and seducing the youth. Socrates' beliefs were outside the common sense of the time, but his handling of the sanctions made him even more significant as an outsider. He accepted death with cheerfulness. His freedom of thought lay in his willingness to give up his life rather than betray his own ideas.

The history of the outsiders, as told by Ralf Konersmann, is a parade of influential taboo breakers. With his philosophy of Cynicism, Diogenes sought to cast all dogmatism overboard, and with his open-minded, world-expanding style of reflection, he alienated his contemporaries. He wanted to undermine the power of habit, just as Nicholas of Cusa and Montaigne later did. Both practice reflection as an act directed against academically educated discourses and dogmas. One as a theologian, the other as a skeptic who, with his essays, delves into the experiential possibilities of language itself. The message of both is that even the layperson has knowledge of the world, and not just the self-proclaimed authoritarian science.

If there is a global trend toward scientific skepticism today, and people feel empowered to question even the most fundamental facts of the world order, then Ralf Konersmann has intentionally omitted something crucial in his book: The skeptic is only an outsider as long as he does not act as a representative of groups that share a common opinion. And not every publicly displayed skepticism is a sign of sound thinking.

The modern German word "Aussenseiter" comes from the English "outsider" and refers to sports. An outsider is someone who doesn't quite fit the mold. As is the case in sports, this lack of fitness is punished with defeat. Society as a whole functions similarly. It assigns a separate place to those who don't fit in, and it excludes them.

These measures became more stringent with the advent of modernity. Before secularization, when heaven was still full of gods, hierarchies were also clear. A person deemed worthless before the higher powers could only exterminate himself through heresy. Feudal social systems further ensured that the role of the individual was tightly regulated.

In modern times, the self had to commit itself to a new savior: the collective "we," which ensures that humanity will one day be better off. Ralf Konersmann doesn't have the best things to say about this collective "we": "This "we" is large, judgmental, and possessive. As an informal alliance of like-minded people, it is avowedly political and claims to decide the question of belonging in its own way."

The insiders, if one can call them that in contrast to the outsiders, have something monstrous about them in Konersmann's work. They are the egalitarian masses against which the philosophical minds he loves must assert themselves. Those exceptional, in the truest sense of the word, who rebel with their unprotected selves against the power of the "we."

When modernity installed a new "we," a French philosopher ceremoniously completed his exit from this community: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In his "Confessions," the "I" as a form of knowledge became radicalized. Ralf Konersmann pays tribute to him in his book "Outsiders." The phrase "If I am not better, at least I am different" comes from Rousseau. What was still a revolutionary statement in the second half of the 18th century has long since become mainstream.

Ralf Konersmann: Outsiders. An Essay. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2025. 160 pp., CHF 39.90.