Svend Brinkmann, psychologist: ‘If you place conditions on forgiveness, love or freedom, you have already destroyed them’

Svend Brinkmann, 50, admits that he has a tendency toward nostalgia. The psychologist and philosopher, who teaches at Aalborg University in Denmark, has spent years pushing back against one of contemporary culture’s fixations: the constant quest to become the best version of yourself. He says we live in a society that values everything — work, education and even personal relationships and leisure — only insofar as it brings us closer to personal success, turning every aspect of life into an instrument for self-improvement.

As an alternative, he proposes recovering principles with intrinsic value and using them as guiding lights in our lives. In his book, Standpoints: 10 Old Ideas in a New World, Brinkmann draws on thinkers such as Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Hannah Arendt, and Albert Camus to champion enduring goods such as dignity, freedom, forgiveness, and love.

The book urges readers to stop constantly asking themselves, “What do I get out of this?” and instead to commit to others through meaningful bonds that often have no immediate practical value. Brinkmann is aware of the irony that his book is typically sold in the self-help section of bookstores.

Question. You began discussing these topics more than 10 years ago. Since then, the personal-development business has grown exponentially on social media. Where does it come from and why is it so successful?

Answer. I see several cultural forces converging. One is individualization, even atomization. We have given up on improving society collectively and instead try to improve ourselves individually. That is a great loss for a social species. We are not built to live as atoms, side by side, but to cooperate and develop good lives together. When I wrote Standpoints more than 10 years ago, I criticized a stereotypically feminine ethos: connecting with emotions, self-care. But that kind of self-improvement has largely been displaced by a more masculine ethos — strong, independent, “looksmaxing” — especially after Trump’s second electoral victory. I would write the book differently today because the spirit of the age is changing very quickly. But at the bottom, I see them as two sides of the same phenomenon: both tell the individual they do not need to think about others or relationships, only about themselves. It is the same atomization with two different reactions.

Q. In your book you talk about philosophers and classical values that these male influencers also invoke — dignity, keeping promises — but with a “every man for himself” tone.

A. Stoicism in particular has become very popular in those circles, and this contemporary version has little to do with the original Greek and Roman ideas. Today dignity and responsibility are instrumentalized. Their value becomes relative to what they can do for you, and that is exactly the opposite of what I argue in my book. I criticize the tendency to instrumentalize love, forgiveness, dignity, freedom. These phenomena are not valuable because they help you; the question should not be “what do I gain from this?”. They do not exist to make you successful; they exist as important traits in their own right. We make a grave mistake by turning them into tools of personal development, and that is what I see in these influencers who are emerging everywhere.

Q. Why revive these ideas now, if in principle everyone agrees with those values?

A. We are obsessed with the new, with innovation and disruption. I try to counter that by saying: we have old ideas, and they aren’t bad just because they’re old; they can be very good precisely because they’ve survived for millennia — they’re almost timeless themes of human existence. We can engage in a conversation with those who came before us. And I think those ideas unite us. Whether you are atheist, Christian or Muslim, whether you live today or 200 years ago, these are basic human themes. I know it sounds naive given the times we live in, but we need some kind of unifying human framework because there is so much division. If we do not identify common ground, I do not know how we can continue living together.

Q. You cite Hannah Arendt: if we do not share a common understanding of what is true and what is false, we cannot live together. Today, perhaps more than ever, a politician who respects another person’s truth loses ground to one who does not. How can respect for truth be demanded under those conditions?

A. What you describe is what the philosopher Harry Frankfurt called bullshit. It is not even lying; it is a complete disregard for the difference between true and false. It would be a nightmare for someone like Arendt to witness this: people who do not care about the truth and say whatever suits them, an instrumentalization of truth that helps win elections. But what I find inspiring in her is the idea that, even if there is no truth, we can be truthful; even if there is no reliable certainty, we can be reliable. It is demanding, and you may not even be rewarded, because someone trying to be truthful can lose out to someone who does not care about the truth. But that does not matter, because being truthful has inherent value. It is an unconditional moral imperative, necessary to counter this instrumentalization. The goal is not to gain something by doing it; it is to do it because it is right in itself.

Q. But then, do people actually live better by following these principles, or do they end up becoming a kind of martyr?

A. You live a much better life, although not in the simple sense of feeling good all the time — the subjective well-being we measure in psychology. A good life is doing something with meaning: loving, forgiving. Speaking of forgiveness, for example, the typical question is “what do I gain by forgiving?”. The moment you ask that question, you can no longer forgive, because you turn it into a transaction. Forgiveness is unconditional. As Derrida said, forgiveness forgives only the unforgivable. If something is forgivable, there is no reason to forgive it, so forgiveness is only possible when it is impossible. It is a profound paradox that implies that the moment you place conditions on forgiveness, love or freedom, you have already destroyed them. I know everyone will ask “but what do I gain?”, and simply asking is proof that we no longer understand these phenomena. I am not pointing at individuals but at a culture that has lost the sense that something can have intrinsic value. We should tell the truth because it is intrinsically right, not because it will make us rich or happy.

Q. When you say something is inherently good, where does that come from? God, evolution?

A. I do not think it comes from a god, although I respect those who interpret it that way. I see it as part of the nature of reality, like 2 plus 2 equals 4. It does not come from anything; it simply is. You do not need a god to explain it. Likewise, some human actions justify themselves. If you help someone who has fallen in the street, the reason for helping is that you’re helping the other person, not that it makes you happy. These are phenomena that do not demand explanation. Yes, they have an evolutionary background because we evolved to be able to love and help, but evolution does not explain why they are valuable, just as it does not explain why 2 plus 2 equals 4. It is part of the fabric of the world, ontologically true.

Q. Couldn’t you be accused of being nostalgic? After all, Aristotle defended slavery, and the past is full of atrocities.

A. I tend toward nostalgia; I admit it. But nostalgia is also useful: it reminds us that things can be different, because they were once, for better and worse. We should not take Aristotle literally, but keep the essence of his thought. For him, the essential point is that humans can be rational beings. Today we know that women are as human as men and that slavery is intrinsically wrong. Those are incidental features of his philosophy that we should leave behind.

Q. One of the chapters of the book mentions that real love requires accepting the other person as they are. Nowadays, we see people, such as the singer Rosalía, turning to religion because men disappoint them and God never does. What do you make of that?

A. I understand it. If I look at my algorithm, it is easy to conclude that humans are worthless. But we deceive ourselves by telling ourselves we are terrible. We do terrible things from time to time, but they are exceptions, and that is why they are discussed. In crises, people tend to behave very well; they help without selfish motive, even sacrifice their lives for others. I am frightened by the cynicism that says “others are selfish, so I will be too.” It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We are a basically altruistic species. As [writer Ernest] Hemingway said, there is only one way to know if you can trust someone: by trusting that person. We are disappointed sometimes, but this withdrawal from humanity — and from the opposite sex — is sad and risks becoming a self-perpetuating cycle.

Q. Living by these values is difficult, and it can’t be done alone. It requires social support, yet we’ve come out of a long cycle of growing individualism and distrust. How do we break out of it?

A. We can only break these vicious circles with social support, although tightly knit communities can also be oppressive and leave no room for individuality. As I said before, you break it by breaking it. If you spend your life preparing to forgive, love and live with dignity, you may end up never doing it. And if the community around you is not good in itself, we can belong to several communities instead of just one. Today, thanks to technology, we are not trapped in a single bubble. As a psychologist, I come from a discipline that says the solution to almost everything is other people, even though humans are often very annoying. That is why I believe the key is not just being with others but doing something with others: engaging in local politics, a common cause. That makes us happy, in the simplest sense as well, because we are made that way. But watch out for the paradox. If we seek to do something with others to be happy, it stops working, because we’re turning what’s important into a means to an end. We do not make ourselves happy by seeking happiness, but by doing something meaningful with others.

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