The history of discoveries has been written countless times as an adventure novel of seafaring, a success and crime story of conquests, a history of jealousy among major imperial powers, as well as a neo-apostolic ecclesiastical history (which was in turn the history of jealousy among the missionary orders and confessions). ‘European expansion’ served as an object of every kind of glorification and condemnation; in the Old World, it became a field on which self-doubt gleaned the remains of its harvest.1
As far as we know, a philosophically thought-out history of discoveries, terrestrial and maritime alike, has never been considered, let alone attempted or carried out – probably mainly because the indispensable central concepts that would form part of a philosophical résumé of globalization processes only play a secondary part in the philosophical vocabulary, and most are missing altogether: distance, extension, externality, canopies, barbarians, becoming-image, density, one-sidedness, disinhibition, dispatchability, capture, inhibition, investment, capital, mapping, medium, mission, ecumene, risk, feedback, debt, obscurity, crime, traffic, interconnection, delusional system, world system, wishful thinking, cynicism. Even as eminent a word as ‘discovery’ is not so much as mentioned in the Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie [Historical Dictionary of Philosophy], edited by Joachim Ritter and Karlfried Gründer, the highest intercultural yardstick for the terminology of the trade.2 We shall touch on the significance of these gaps in the vocabulary of academic philosophy, and the dispositions of which they are symptoms, further below. First of all, however, we will make a sketch showing how a discovery-philosophical theory of globalization should approach its theme, and what problems face a theory of the discovery-dependently globalized commune, also known as mankind. It will hopefully not be considered unseemly if we begin by considering the deliriums of the discoverers.
It seems a trivial observation that the practice of geographical discovery was connected to a very hazardous departure to an un-homelike externality. Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes clear to what extent non-trivial forces drove these enterprises. The Portuguese and Spanish expeditions could never have been undertaken without motivating systems of delusions to justify these leaps into the unclear and unknown as sensible acts. It is in the nature of a well-systematized delusion to be capable of presenting itself to others as a plausible project; a delusion that is not contagious does not adequately understand itself.3 Columbus himself, at any rate, was no longer content in later years to view himself only as the seaman, the conquistador of a new world and its cartographer; rather, he had become convinced that he was an apostle called by the will of God to bring salvation across the water. Encouraged by his incomparable success, he made his first name Christophorus, ‘Christ-bearer’, into his religion, and turned his Hispanicized paternal name Colón, ‘settler’, into his existential maxim – a success-psychological stylization phenomenon that still casts light on the modern entrepreneurial world and its autogenous religions as a whole. In The Book of Prophecies of 1502, he interpreted himself as a nautical messiah whose coming had been foretold since ancient times.4 No project without delusions of success; and without a project, no chance of infecting others with one's own fever. In this, Columbus was an agent of a pan-European willingness to embrace delusion – though it was only psychotechnically perfected by the USA in the twentieth century (and re-imported to Europe through the consultancy industry) – that became workable worldwide through the principle: seek your own salvation by bringing it to others.
This ideal synthesis of selflessness and self-service sums up the Modern Age-enabling psychotechnical figure of ‘self-enthusiasm’ or ‘autogenic mania’ – in due course, German philosophers would mystify it as ‘self-determination’ and generalize it beyond all recognition. If self-enthusiasm has to take on smaller forms, it appears as self-counselling and self-persuasion – those two pragmatic expressions of the new effort of being a subject. Because most actors in the Modern Age were only partly successful in their self-motivation, however, they became dependent on advisers who supported them in their attempt to believe in their mission and their luck. For project-prompters and astrologers, overseas traffic in capital marked the start of the Golden Age – which was still in progress at the threshold of the twenty-first century. With its compulsion to act into the distance, the Modern Age became a paradise for soothsayers and consultants. The concern for capital that was intended for realization on journeys around the world bestows a sixth sense. It would indeed be amazing if people for whom reality is the flow of money and goods did not also believe in subtler forms of inflow and outflow. Flux-based thought (in telepathic, astrophysical, magnetic and monetary forms) broke the hegemony of substance-oriented scholasticism – though it would take everyday Euro-American life four centuries to complete the adjustment.
Anton Fugger, who had become a secret master of the world as a financier of the imperial Spanish colonization of South America, was ensnared during his final years in the nets of an attractive healer, Anna Megerler, who was notorious for sleeping with a priest. She had to appear before the judges of the Augsburg town council in 1564, accused of witchcraft; she was acquitted, however, because the great man's name acted as a legal talisman in her favour after his death. Anton Fugger himself, who harboured parapsychological ambitions, claimed that he had acquired, with Anna's help, the ability to observe his distant agents in a crystal ball. To his displeasure, however, this far-seeing ball showed his employees better dressed than he was – a discovery that, in a time when clothing customs indicated rank and class, inevitably called for sanctions.5
In the years before his murder by terrorists of the Red Army Faction, Alfred Herrhausen, chairman of Deutsche Bank, had, under the influence of the trained Germanist and business consultant Gertrud Höhler, introduced group-dynamic exercises in self-experience for his employees in order to motivate higher performance. His brilliant adviser had recognized the signs of the time, which demanded flexible, emotionally intelligent, team-suited and self-driving (more Protestant, one could say) staff, before many others.6
A continuum that shaped the Modern Age spans the time between these two dates: that of the search for ways to transfer salvific knowledge to unholy practices. What characterizes a substantial part of the current consultancy industry is the adoption of spiritual traditions which are then filtered into realistic business – a paradigmatic example being the adaptation of Zen Buddhism to a decidedly non-meditative clientele.
It cannot be emphasized enough, then, that what was termed European expansion was not originally rooted in the Christian mission idea; rather, expansion and systematized colonial and mercantile risk-taking over great distances triggered proselytization, transmission and bringing as a type of activity in its own right. This type also encompasses general salvific transfer, exportation of advanced civilization, consultation and all procedures for the transference of success and advantage. In this sense, we can say that the Modern Age as a whole is the object of a secular missionary science. The Christian missionaries simply recognized their historical chance early on by jumping aboard the departing ship.7
The group of advantage-bringers in the Modern Age includes conquerors, discoverers, researchers, priests, entrepreneurs, politicians, artists, teachers, designers, journalists – all of them supported by their own advisers and outfitters. Without exception, these factions dress their practices in manic assignments, that is to say secular missions. They constantly attempt to close their depressive gaps and clear away their doubts by insuring themselves through the services of paid motivators. These are meant to show them ways to become a modern subject, that is to say a rationally motivated perpetrator.