THE ESSAYISTIC EXPERIENCE

Abstract

In this paper are examined the main qualities of the essayistic naration of Rüdiger Zafransky, one of the best-known modern German essayists and hermeneuticists. Pararticular stress is on two types of Zafransky’s work: his books about problems such as evil, truth, and globalization, and, his hermeneutical biograpaphies of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. Besides describing the elements that constitute the genres in which Zafransky works, and besides establishing some paralallels in his various works, we attempt to reveal the nature of the essayistic experience itself, as seen in the chosen, representative examamples of his naration.