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Meteor

Joseph Vogl

In the beginning there was a glance at the sky. In ancient Greek, the word ‘meteor’ referred to a large and diverse collection of floating objects, including atmospheric phenomena like clouds and the weather, but also the paths and movements of the stars. Volatile and unfixed phenomena are not only found in the field of meteorology, however. In his brilliant essay, Joseph Vogl explores various contexts – from literature to philosophy to natural sciences – where suspended and ephemeral things are found, where things become light (again), where the weight of the world disappears and opens new spaces of possibility.

Suspended things are a challenge to our processes of perception because they exist in the space of 'no longer and not yet' and thus evade common forms of knowledge and concept formation, and notions of order. Using the example of famous texts – by Kafka and Musil, Goethe and Galilei, Italo Svevo and Jorge Luis Borges – Joseph Vogl, one of the most extraordinary philosophers of our times, explores the relationships of heaviness and lightness. In an era increasingly affected by the gravitational forces of economic, ideological and military powers, Vogl’s text, based on his very well-received farewell lecture in Berlin, is a homage to moments of fluidity in which the freshness of a new beginning can burst forth even from seemingly ossified situations.

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