I accepted and surrendered myself to the night, being alone I felt absolute incomprehension; despair and hopelessness sheltered me, and like a deep dark veil a raw pessimism gnawed at my bones. …

What’s the point? Why do we live? And what the heck are we doing here anyway? Only a fool waits for an answer! And yet: It is one of the most important questions of life, because it is the question about our life. …

The novel opens with the sudden arrest of Joseph K. in his room on the morning of his birthday. Two guards inform him without explaining the charges against him. Despite his arrest, K. is free to go to work at the bank. In the absence of news from the judicial…

The uniqueness of dying by one’s own hand, was raised by Michel Foucault in a brief interview in 1979. In the transcript, published as “The Simplest of Pleasures,” Foucault argues for the exceptional value of death. While opposing (moral) condemnation of suicide, he argues that recognition of the unique aspect…

The parable “Homecoming” by Franz Kafka was published in 1936. The title of the text comes from Max Brod, the friend and editor of Franz Kafka’s works, who first published the text in 1936 in the book “Description of a Struggle” (expanded editions of it in 1946 and 1954). The…

In the vast majority of homeotherms, birds and mammals, it has become classic to oppose two sleep states that are characterized by different behavioral, electrophysiological and energetic aspects: slow wave sleep and sleep with rapid cortical activity, also called Paradoxical Sleep or Rapid Eye Movement (REM Sleep). The relationship of…

Sleep-Mind! These two phenomena are apparently contradictory. On the one hand, the resemblance of Sleep and Death illustrated by Hypnos and Thanatos, the twin brothers of Greek mythology, on the other hand, the Spirit, this witness of the higher nervous activity during awakening. It is likely that this contradiction is…

Nerval’s poem is placed under the sign of melancholy as shown by the lexical field of sadness: “inconsolable”, “melancholy”, “consoled”, “sorry heart”. The poet is marked by mourning, particularly that of the actress Jenny Colon who died in 1842 and with whom Gérard de Nerval was in love. The metaphor…

Sören Kierkegaard is considered the most important Danish philosopher and has influenced philosophy, theology and literary history in the 20th century. Kierkegaard’s criticism of the media was triggered by a very personal experience. “Most of those who are ashamed to walk with a discarded hat or coat, walk joyfully with…