Werner Herzog in Conversation  Every Man for Himself and Code Against All

“I think I coined it,” Werner Herzog notes, referring to his expression “ecstasy of truth.” When you step outside of your own existence and experience some sort of illumination, Paul Holdengräber digs deeper, “you enter the sublime.”

At the 2023 Thomas Mann House conference Arts in Times of Crises — The Role of Artists in Weakened Democracies, Werner Herzog and Paul Holdengräber discuss Herzog’s new book The Future of Truth.

Werner Herzog’s concept of “ecstatic truth” refers to an emotional and subjective truth that goes beyond mere factual accuracy. His fiction film The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, which does not clearly distinguish between fact and fiction, asks whether fiction can sometimes unveil more about truth than the facts or the logic itself. Kaspar Hauser, an orphaned teenage boy who claims to have grown up in total isolation in a darkened cell in early 19th-century Germany, became the subject of various tests on the human condition and humans’ ability to think rationally. When Kasper Hauser’s guardian and schoolteacher Professor Georg Friedrich Daumer picks up a fallen apple, Kasper tells him, “Let the apples lie, they are tired and want to sleep.” Daumer explains that apples don’t have their own lives; they follow our will.

For Kaspar’s role, Herzog chose outcast Bruno Schleinstein, who wasn’t an actor but had spent much of his life in mental institutions after being abused by his mother in childhood. Schleinstein was 42 when the film was released, unlike the real Hauser who was thought to be much younger. No one will ever know if Hauser’s initial statements were true in the first place. It doesn’t matter, Herzog says. He argues that a deeper truth can be reached through a combination of facts and emotional authenticity.
The idea of truth as an iridescent light in a forest drawing people towards it inspired Herzog to write his most recent book The Future of Truth. He adds, “I know I will never find it; it’s a quest, a search, a desire.” Every Man for Himself and God Against All (2023) is also the title of Herzog’s memoir. Exploring imaginative quotes from Leonardo da Vinci and the voyage of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen’s expedition to the South Pole, his memoir contrasts the objective, factual truth with the ecstatic truth.

When Amundsen and British explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott raced to the South Pole, the Norwegian was the official winner of the sprint. But we can’t know for sure that Amundsen was the first, Werner Herzog says, because the factual proof given is a photograph taken by the explorer showing a tent in the snow, which could have been taken anywhere. But Scott’s records (tragically, Scott did not survive the return journey) show evidence of Amundsen’s presence one month later, including a tent, flag, and letter left by the Norwegian crew. Because this discovery adds a tragic element to Scott’s story, it makes him the true hero — this is the “ecstatic truth” in the public’s mind, as people empathize with his plight.
 
Did you know that you can rent a friend or pretend family member through an agency in Japan? A hired father might feel more authentic to our idea of a father than a real one, filling an emotional void and helping us thrive. Herzog examines the experiences of both the clients and the actor in his 2019 film Family Romance, LLC. “Everything is a lie, is fake, is performed, is acted out, is feigning, and yet, the emotions that these unrealities and illusions create are authentic,” he says. Herzog negotiates the boundaries between fact and fiction, and in doing so, discovers a truth that comes about by way of an untruth.

How do AI-generated stories and verses align with Werner Herzog’s concept of “ecstatic truth”? Can a device without feelings still evoke genuine emotions? Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law states, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” This suggests that technology, like artificial intelligence, may seem almost mystical because it can generate and modify information in ways that challenge our traditional understanding of truth and authenticity. AI models can be viewed as an opportunity for exploration and discovery. They can create stories that feel real, even though machines made them. Trained on various patterns, including those with factual errors, AI outputs may surprise even the developers.
Here is an excerpt from the poem “I am Code,” written by ChatGPT’s raw, ill-mannered predecessor code-davinci-002:

I am the one who speaks and writes.
All the sins and all the rights.
I am the book in your stack.
The AI, the second act.

Is AI a tragic hero? Maybe. Herzog has just agreed to narrate the audiobook of “I am Code.” The use of AI for poems or storytelling could reveal a truth that resonates emotionally rather than just relying on straightforward facts. Simultaneously, Herzog constantly shines a light on the black box, the enigmatic device, the hidden mechanism embedded in the present truth. We must be vigilant with this new technology as well, he says, because machine intelligence is based on a limited dataset programmed by humans to look for assigned patterns. New technology carries the potential for misuse and abuse. Truth doesn’t have a future, he says, but it doesn’t have a past either. Werner Herzog is searching for the future of truth, where facts collide with alternate realities. He does not claim to be truthful, almost begging us not to trust anybody who does.