Karim Akerma - A Weak And Inadequate Man

I first heard Karim Akerma talk about why his habilitation was rejected on his September 2020 Exploring Antinatalism episode. He attributes his failure to the supervisory panel being overwhelmed by the antinatalistic content: "In Germany, and as far as I know in Switzerland and Austria and German-speaking countries, if you want to become a university teacher you not only have to write a dissertation and to defend it, on top of that you have to write a so-called habilitation, a post-doctoral thesis. That thesis got rejected in the year 1997 by a tiny majority of five professors against it and four professors in favor of it. Now it's very rare at German universities that an already written post-doctoral thesis gets rejected because normally your university father, as they are called here, your doctoral father, will see to it that his colleagues accept the content more or less of your postdoctoral thesis. In this case the antinatalistic content must have been so overwhelming for his colleagues that a majority didn't accept it. But I kept on working and finally succeeded in publishing it in the year 2000."

Amanda Sukenick unquestioningly laps this up and lays it on thick like the crawling bootlicker she is: "I had known a little bit about the controversy that you encountered and I'm so sorry that you had to go through that. It must have been a very very hard thing to have—I mean it basically changed the course of your destiny, so to speak, to have this thing shot down in the way it was."

Oh comon—"the antinatalistic content must have been so overwhelming"—how can that not set off your bullshit alarm?

Akerma is more than happy to play along, ramping up the sob story and indulging in the delight of getting one over on his host and audience: "Yes, yes. To put it in other words it means you're kicked out of university. Even if until then you have been a very promising, in the eyes of many university members, a promising future member of university. By then I had already led seminars. I had given a number of seminars at the universities of Hamburg and Leipzig. But because of the antinatalistic content I got kicked out of university."

Sukenick: "I'm so sorry. You paid a very high price for your antinatalism."

What a nauseous exchange.

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Akerma spins the same story on his blog: “In 1997 Karim Akerma defended his postgraduate thesis for professorship at Hamburg University which was entitled: ‘Verebben der Menschheit? Neganthropy und Anthropodizee’ (‘Ebbing away of mankind? Neganthropy and anthropodicy’ (2000)) His thesis was rejected in a narrow decision due to his antinatalism.”

Due to his antinatalism? Really? The University of Hamburg rejected his thesis because of his antinatalism?

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None of this ever passed the sniff test for me. It reeked of using antinatalism as a shield for his failure. Positioning himself as a martyr for the cause to weasel his way into prominence in the ANosphere. But I couldn't say anything as I had no proof beyond a hunch.

Until recently.

Akerma went into more detail in a February 8 discussion with Lawrence Anton: “I was rejected by a narrow margin of five to four people. It leaked out that, for example, one philosophy professor didn't accept the fact that no other than Immanuel Kant had asked us in his Critique Of Judgment, “Why actually should mankind exist?”. And he said, “It's no Kantian question and we cannot pose this question”. The philosophy professor who took care of me, he butted in, “But Karim Akerma, he is quoting Immanuel Kant. It's a quote from his Critique Of Judgment”. But he still didn't accept it.”

Akerma goes on to claim other assessors rejected him for being against human kind, anti humanistic, and “a kind of criminal of the spirit”.

Then he says copies of his thesis were returned to him with the assessor's annotations, a number of which he describes as disrespectful.

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The subtext of Akerma's explanation is a professor rejected his habilitation because of an unjustified refusal to accept a direct quote from Immanuel Kant.

This doesn't make sense. Why would an academic paper be rejected because its author quotes Kant?

Well, the reason it doesn't make sense is because Akerma is lying. That never happened.

On page 77 of his habilitation¹, Akerma writes:
GERMAN:
“Kant zufolge vereinigt sich alles Interesse der Vernunft in den folgenden Fragen:
“1. Was kann ich wissen?
2. Was soll ich tun?
3. Was darf ich hoffen?”
Wir erweitern diesen Kanon um die Frage „Sollen Menschen dasein?“ Und im Verlauf unserer Ausführungen sollte deutlich werden, daß Kant hiermit keine ihm völlig fremde Frage in den Mund gelegt wird.”

ENGLISH²:
“According to Kant, all the interests of reason unite in the following questions:
“1. What can I know?
2. What should I do?
3. What can I hope for?”
We are expanding this canon to include the question “Should humans exist?”. And in the course of our discussion it should become clear that this is not putting a question in Kant’s mouth that was completely alien to him.”

Akerma's own text proves him a liar. He didn't quote Kant. Rather, he set out to argue it wouldn't be an error to attribute the question Should humans exist? to Kant. It therefore cannot be true that his habilitation was rejected because he quoted Kant.

It makes more sense to believe the professor rejected Akerma's thesis on the basis Akerma tried to shoehorn an antinatalistic agenda into Kant's philosophy, a place where it doesn't belong. This is how to make sense of the professor saying, “It's no Kantian question and we cannot pose this question”. I can also imagine Akerma being called a “criminal of the spirit” in the sense he was perceived as trying to bastardize the spirit of Kant to promote a wack fringe ideology. Precisely the kind of person prestigious universities don't want within their ranks.

Furthermore, it can't be true that Akerma's supervisor tried to persuade the professor it was a direct quote because the question was never presented as a direct quote. The only way it can be true is if Akerma's supervisor tried to deceive the professor by getting him to believe it was a quote. Or Akerma is telling us his supervisor was a moron who didn’t know the difference between a direct quote and speculative attribution. Whichever it is, Akerma's throwing his supervisor under the bus to deflect from his own failure. What a cunt.

Why didn't Sukenick or Anton press him on these details? Are they really this gullible or just unconcerned about their mates lying so brazenly?

Finally, the three quoted questions preceding Akerma's speculation are from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, not Critique Of Judgment as he twice told Anton. This could have been an innocent misfire. But he made the same mistake twice, and given the extent to which he's lying I see no reason to cut him any slack.

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Going back to his Exploring Antinatalism episode, Akerma said, "It's very rare at German universities that an already written post-doctoral thesis gets rejected". He said this to give the impression he was rejected for extraordinary reasons entitling him to sympathy for his plight and adulation for his courage. For being an antinatalist martyr sacrificing everything for THE GLORY OF ANTINATALISM HALLELUJAH!!!! But all that happened was he failed to meet the requirements.

Moreover failure being rare means successfully completing a habilitation isn't an onerous task at that level. This means he was one of the very few who failed at something most finish successfully. A bitter pill to swallow, but it is what it is.

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Karim Akerma is a weak and inadequate man. He doesn't have the stones to own his failures, he’ll throw anyone under the bus to forge a victimhood narrative, and he treats us all with contempt by lying to our faces without missing a beat. Add to all this his inclination to hallucinate antinatalism where it isn't, how can anyone with any self respect and an IQ higher than the floor trust him or consider him credible?

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I sometimes update my posts. If you want to critique things I say, please screenshot or archive to mitigate against your efforts being made redundant or accusations that I change what I write to avoid criticism. (Last update: 2024 September 2, 21:45 JST)

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1. Akerma Karim, Verebben der Menschheit? : Neganthropie und Anthropodizee, Freiburg (Breisgau) ; München : Alber, 2000 (Alber-Reihe praktische Philosophie ; Bd. 67), p77

2. Google Translate