Philosophy emerged from an inherent aspiration – regardless of whether philosophers themselves have acknowledged this throughout history or not – to both feed the goat and preserve the cabbage. In other words, the central question is this: how can we live and experience our lives in such a way that we also preserve them?

What is the essence of this preservation? Philosophy transforms my inherently human effort to preserve my life into the thematisation of the essence of my life. More precisely: our effort to preserve our lives, and the thematisation of this effort, is inseparable from the following questions: what is it that constitutes me in a substantial, metaphysical sense? Does a “hard core” exist within me, in a substantialist/essentialist sense, that I can claim as my own, inalienably and inseparably?