hatzel
16th July 2011, 10:48
So I was a bit slow in noticing this post in the 'why was this user banned' thread, but will now address it:
To go beyond that, nuisance has openly stated on at least one occasion that he's influenced by Stirner, and the Stirnerian approach to the issue would, in fact, be that the Jews (or the Christians, or the Germans, or whatever) don't exist, that this is a spook of the mind, and so one is necessarily within one's rights to question the existence of an abstract group, and this is a legitimate challenge.
Thats an interesting view point. Could you perhaps make a thread in OI about it explaining the logic and arguments behind the idea? Admittedly I have not read a lot of Stirner. So I am unfamiliar with the concept here....
I think that the most sensible suggestion would be to merely cite Stirner's comments on being of a nationality or other such 'grouping':
Everything that I do, think - in short, my expression or manifestation - is indeed conditioned by what I am. The Jew can will only thus or thus, can "present himself" only thus; the Christian can present and manifest himself only Christianly, etc. If it were possible that you could be a Jew or Christian, you would indeed bring out only what was Jewish or Christian; but it is not possible; in the most rigourous conduct you yet remain an egoist, a sinner against that concept - you are not the precise equivalent of Jew. Now, because the egoistic always keeps peeping through, people have inquired for a more perfect concept which should really wholly express what you are, and which, because it is your true nature, should contain all the laws of your activity. The most perfect thing of the kind has been attained in "Man." As a Jew you are too little, and the Jewish is not your task; to be a Greek, a German, does not suffice. But be a - man, then you have everything; look upon the human as your calling.
Do you suppose the humane liberal will be so liberal as to aver that everything possible to man is human? On the contrary! He does not, indeed, share the Philistine's moral prejudice about the strumpet, but "that this woman turns her body into a money-getting machine'' makes her despicable to him as "human being." His judgment is, the strumpet is not a human being; or, so far as a woman is a strumpet, so far is she unhuman, dehumanized. Further: The Jew, the Christian, the privileged person, the theologian, etc., is not a human being; so far as you are a Jew, etc., you are not a human being. Again the imperious postulate: Cast from you everything peculiar, criticize it away! Be not a Jew, not a Christian, but be a human being, nothing but a human being. Assert your humanity against every restrictive specification; make yourself, by means of it, a human being, and free from those limits; make yourself a "free man", that is recognize humanity as your all-determining essence.
I say: You are indeed more than a Jew, more than a Christian, etc., but you are also more than a human being. Those are all ideas, but you are corporeal. Do you suppose, then, that you can ever become a "human being as such?" Do you suppose our posterity will find no prejudices and limits to clear away, for which our powers were not sufficient? Or do you perhaps think that in your fortieth or fiftieth year you have come so far that the following days have nothing more to dissipate in you, and that you are a human being? The men of the future will yet fight their way to many a liberty that we do not even miss. What do you need that later liberty for? If you meant to esteem yourself as nothing before you had become a human being, you would have to wait until the "last judgment," until the day when man, or humanity, shall have attained perfection. But, as you will surely die before that, what becomes of your prize of victory?This is surely the basis of his comments on nationality as a whole, and the resulting currents of nationalism:
If one were to point the bees to their beehood, in which at any rate they are all equal to each other, one would be doing the same thing that they are now doing so stormily in pointing the Germans to their Germanhood. Why, Germanhood is just like beehood in this very thing, that it bears in itself the necessity of cleavages and separations, yet without pushing on to the last separation, where, with the complete carrying through of the process of separating, its end appears: I mean, to the separation of man from man. Germanhood does indeed divide itself into different peoples and tribes, beehives; but the individual who has the quality of being a German is still as powerless as the isolated bee. And yet only individuals can enter into union with each other, and all alliances and leagues of peoples are and remain mechanical compoundings, because those who come together, at least so far as the "peoples" are regarded as the ones that have come together, are destitute of will. Only with the last separation does separation itself end and change to unification.
Now the Nationals are exerting themselves to set up the abstract, lifeless unity of beehood; but the self-owned are going to fight for the unity willed by their own will, for union. This is the token of all reactionary wishes, that they want to set up something general, abstract, an empty, lifeless concept, in distinction from which the self-owned aspire to relieve the robust, lively particular from the trashy burden of generalities. The reactionaries would be glad to smite a people, a nation, forth from the earth; the self-owned have before their eyes only themselves. In essentials the two efforts that are just now the order of the day - namely, the restoration of provincial rights and of the old tribal divisions (Franks, Bavarians, Lausitz, etc.), and the restoration of the entire nationality - coincide in one. But the Germans will come into unison, unite themselves, only when they knock over their beehood as well as all the beehives; in other words, when they are more than - Germans: only then can they form a "German Union." They must not want to turn back into their nationality, into the womb, in order to be born again, but let every one turn in to himself. How ridiculously sentimental when one German grasps another's hand and presses it with sacred awe because "he too is a German!" With that he is something great! But this will certainly still be thought touching as long as people are enthusiastic for "brotherliness," as long as they have a "family disposition". From the superstition of "piety," from "brotherliness" or "childlikeness" or however else the soft-hearted piety-phrases run - from the family spirit - the Nationals, who want to have a great family of Germans, cannot liberate themselves.Rather than doing exactly what I was asked, and explaining Stirner's position, I just thought I'd highlight a few related sections from Stirner's writings, as a starting point for an organically self-creating discussion :)
It may also prove interesting to compare Stirner's comments on nationality with Judith Butler's questioning of the possibility of wholly becoming man, woman, gay, straight etc. Those who refer to Stirner as a proto-post-modernist do so for a reason, one can assume...
To go beyond that, nuisance has openly stated on at least one occasion that he's influenced by Stirner, and the Stirnerian approach to the issue would, in fact, be that the Jews (or the Christians, or the Germans, or whatever) don't exist, that this is a spook of the mind, and so one is necessarily within one's rights to question the existence of an abstract group, and this is a legitimate challenge.
Thats an interesting view point. Could you perhaps make a thread in OI about it explaining the logic and arguments behind the idea? Admittedly I have not read a lot of Stirner. So I am unfamiliar with the concept here....
I think that the most sensible suggestion would be to merely cite Stirner's comments on being of a nationality or other such 'grouping':
Everything that I do, think - in short, my expression or manifestation - is indeed conditioned by what I am. The Jew can will only thus or thus, can "present himself" only thus; the Christian can present and manifest himself only Christianly, etc. If it were possible that you could be a Jew or Christian, you would indeed bring out only what was Jewish or Christian; but it is not possible; in the most rigourous conduct you yet remain an egoist, a sinner against that concept - you are not the precise equivalent of Jew. Now, because the egoistic always keeps peeping through, people have inquired for a more perfect concept which should really wholly express what you are, and which, because it is your true nature, should contain all the laws of your activity. The most perfect thing of the kind has been attained in "Man." As a Jew you are too little, and the Jewish is not your task; to be a Greek, a German, does not suffice. But be a - man, then you have everything; look upon the human as your calling.
Do you suppose the humane liberal will be so liberal as to aver that everything possible to man is human? On the contrary! He does not, indeed, share the Philistine's moral prejudice about the strumpet, but "that this woman turns her body into a money-getting machine'' makes her despicable to him as "human being." His judgment is, the strumpet is not a human being; or, so far as a woman is a strumpet, so far is she unhuman, dehumanized. Further: The Jew, the Christian, the privileged person, the theologian, etc., is not a human being; so far as you are a Jew, etc., you are not a human being. Again the imperious postulate: Cast from you everything peculiar, criticize it away! Be not a Jew, not a Christian, but be a human being, nothing but a human being. Assert your humanity against every restrictive specification; make yourself, by means of it, a human being, and free from those limits; make yourself a "free man", that is recognize humanity as your all-determining essence.
I say: You are indeed more than a Jew, more than a Christian, etc., but you are also more than a human being. Those are all ideas, but you are corporeal. Do you suppose, then, that you can ever become a "human being as such?" Do you suppose our posterity will find no prejudices and limits to clear away, for which our powers were not sufficient? Or do you perhaps think that in your fortieth or fiftieth year you have come so far that the following days have nothing more to dissipate in you, and that you are a human being? The men of the future will yet fight their way to many a liberty that we do not even miss. What do you need that later liberty for? If you meant to esteem yourself as nothing before you had become a human being, you would have to wait until the "last judgment," until the day when man, or humanity, shall have attained perfection. But, as you will surely die before that, what becomes of your prize of victory?This is surely the basis of his comments on nationality as a whole, and the resulting currents of nationalism:
If one were to point the bees to their beehood, in which at any rate they are all equal to each other, one would be doing the same thing that they are now doing so stormily in pointing the Germans to their Germanhood. Why, Germanhood is just like beehood in this very thing, that it bears in itself the necessity of cleavages and separations, yet without pushing on to the last separation, where, with the complete carrying through of the process of separating, its end appears: I mean, to the separation of man from man. Germanhood does indeed divide itself into different peoples and tribes, beehives; but the individual who has the quality of being a German is still as powerless as the isolated bee. And yet only individuals can enter into union with each other, and all alliances and leagues of peoples are and remain mechanical compoundings, because those who come together, at least so far as the "peoples" are regarded as the ones that have come together, are destitute of will. Only with the last separation does separation itself end and change to unification.
Now the Nationals are exerting themselves to set up the abstract, lifeless unity of beehood; but the self-owned are going to fight for the unity willed by their own will, for union. This is the token of all reactionary wishes, that they want to set up something general, abstract, an empty, lifeless concept, in distinction from which the self-owned aspire to relieve the robust, lively particular from the trashy burden of generalities. The reactionaries would be glad to smite a people, a nation, forth from the earth; the self-owned have before their eyes only themselves. In essentials the two efforts that are just now the order of the day - namely, the restoration of provincial rights and of the old tribal divisions (Franks, Bavarians, Lausitz, etc.), and the restoration of the entire nationality - coincide in one. But the Germans will come into unison, unite themselves, only when they knock over their beehood as well as all the beehives; in other words, when they are more than - Germans: only then can they form a "German Union." They must not want to turn back into their nationality, into the womb, in order to be born again, but let every one turn in to himself. How ridiculously sentimental when one German grasps another's hand and presses it with sacred awe because "he too is a German!" With that he is something great! But this will certainly still be thought touching as long as people are enthusiastic for "brotherliness," as long as they have a "family disposition". From the superstition of "piety," from "brotherliness" or "childlikeness" or however else the soft-hearted piety-phrases run - from the family spirit - the Nationals, who want to have a great family of Germans, cannot liberate themselves.Rather than doing exactly what I was asked, and explaining Stirner's position, I just thought I'd highlight a few related sections from Stirner's writings, as a starting point for an organically self-creating discussion :)
It may also prove interesting to compare Stirner's comments on nationality with Judith Butler's questioning of the possibility of wholly becoming man, woman, gay, straight etc. Those who refer to Stirner as a proto-post-modernist do so for a reason, one can assume...