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nonser14
non serviam #14
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Contents: Wm. Flygare: "To My Sweetheart"
Svein Olav Nyberg: The Choice of a New Generation
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"TO MY SWEETHEART" - With an Addition to Bartlett
Wm. Flygare
On this 150th birthday of The Ego and His Own (1844, dated 1845),
what intrigues me is the dedication. What was Mary's contribution to
John-n-Mary's only issue - a book?
Stirner (42.2; p358) speaks of using life up like a burning candle.
In the John-n-Mary romance - a roman candle - their wedded life
(1843-1846) ended in her long-life life-long rancour against a "sly"
man whom she "neither loved nor respected." In affairs of the heart, as
well as in practical affairs, both were losers, the woman more than the
philosopher who had two worlds to live in.
It would seem, then, that the inspiring young Mary deserves a
gratitude that the older embittered one would be loath to accept, her
wound a secret she would not tell.
The Ego and Hos Own appears a vast commentary to the Goethe poem
alluded to at the beginning and end. Its absence in publications of The
Ego is unfortunate. In Stirner's time this poem was "a favourite with
everyone" (Schopenhauer's Councels and Maxim #5) but it is little known
now. Like Smith, Stirner is "in love," certainly with the "tyranny of
words" (43.3; p.389). Unlike elsewhere in his work, there are poetic
parallels and flights, external pattern, redundance, etymological
word-play, elations, and hyperbole, his pen often shouting as if
against the loud-voiced among "The Free Ones". These features have made
the work most variously read and can detract. _Parler sans accent_. But
as to the diagnostic content: Stance is circumscribed by circumstance.
In their desperate drive for impossible certainty and acceptance, and
hope to qualify, the driven drive the driven, mental straight-jackets
nicely laced. In adolescence, the rarely curable brain-smudge received
in childhood festers into visions and conversions that lead to "normal"
madness and its "stealthy malice" (7.2; p.46). Now instead of talk
_about_ the prophylaxis and solace offered by The Ego and His Own,
Stirner himself: I have tried to ferret out his key observations in
sober and concise form as "an addition to Bartlett" since Bartlett's
"Familiar Quotations" is one of a number of well-known reference works
which neglect this exorcist of "spooks", some of whose phrases deserve
to be "familiar." Reference is to a yet unpublished paragraph-numbering
system and to pages in Reclam 3957(6), the only currently stable
publication:
What have we gained, then, when for a variation we have transferred
into ourselves the divine outside us? Are we that which is in us? As
little as we are that which is outside us. I am as little my heart as I
am my sweetheart, this "other self" of mine. (4.20; p.34)
... out of confidence in our grandmothers' honesty we believe in
the existence of spirits.
But had we no grandfathers then, and did they not shrug their shoulders
every time our grandmothers told about their ghosts? (5.1&2; p.36)
... over each minute of your existence a fresh minute of the future
beckons to you, and, developing yourself, you get away "from yourself,"
that is, from the self that was at that moment. (5.13; p.39)
Man, your head is haunted ... You imagine ... a spirit-realm to
which you suppose yourself to be called, an ideal that beckons to you.
You have a fixed idea! (7.1; p.46)
... it is only through the "flesh" that I can break tyranny of
mind; for it is only when a man hears his flesh along with the rest of
him that he hears himself wholly, and it is only when he wholly hears
himself that he is a hearing (vernehmend) or rational (vernunftig)
being. (10.12; p.68)
Because the revolutionary priests or schoolmasters served Man, they
cut off the heads of men. (14.24; p.68)
Many a man renounces morals, but with great difficulty the
conception, "morality." (15.12; p.96)
... every effort arrives at reaction ... a _new master_ set in the
old one's place, and the overturning is a - building up. (17.32&35;
pp.120&121)
... if a "tie" clasps you, you are something only _with another_,
and twelve of you make a dozen, thousands of you a people, millions of
you humanity ... I answer, only when you are single can you have
intercourse with each other as what you are. (21.34&36; p.148)
I do not want to have or be anything especial above others, ... but
- I do not measure myself by others either, ... The equal, the same,
they can neither be nor have. (21.52; p.152)
It is not thinking, but my thoughtlessness (lit.,
thought-rid-ness), or I the unthinkable, incomprehensible, that frees
me from possession. (23.15; p.169)
What the craving for freedom has always come to has been the desire
for a _particular_ freedom ... The craving for a _particular_ freedom
always includes the purpose of a new _dominion_. (24.13&14; p.176)
But the habit of the religious way of thinking has biased our mind
so grievously that we are - terrified at _ourselves_ in our nakedness
and naturalness; it has degraded us so that we deem ourselves depraved
by nature, born devils. (24.21; p.178)
I am present. (24.22; p.180)
Thousands of years of civilization have obscured to you what you
are ... Shake that off! ... and let go your hypocritical endeavours,
your foolish mania to be something else than you are. (24.30; p.181)
You want to be "in the right" as against the rest. That you cannot;
as against them you remain forever "in the wrong". (26.12; p.207)
What is the ordinary criminal but one who has ... sought despicable
_alien_ goods? ... You do not know that an ego who is his own cannot
desist from being a criminal, that crime is his life. (28.6; p.221)
Everything sacred is a tie, a fetter. (31.24; p.239)
For only he who is alive is in the right. (31.24; p.239)
I never believed in myself; I never believed in my present, I saw
myself only in the future ... a proper I ... a "citizen," a "free or
true man" ... an alien I ... An I that is neither an I nor a you, a
_fancied_ I, a spook. (31.5; p.247)
But I love ... because love makes _me_ happy ... because loving is
natural to me, because it pleases me. I know no ''commandment of love."
(39.15; p.324)
I sing because - I am a singer. But I _use_ (gebrauche) you for it
because I - need (gebrauche) ears. (39.37; p.331)
That a society (such as the society of the State) diminishes my
_liberty_ offends me little. Why, I have to let my liberty be limited
by all sorts of powers and by every one who is stronger; nay, by every
fellow-man; and, were I the autocrat of all the R..... , I yet should
not enjoy absolute liberty. But _ownness_ I will not have taken from
me. And ownness is precisely what every society has designs on,
precisely what is to succumb to its power. (41.7; p.342f)
We are equal _only in thoughts_, only when "we" are _thought_, not
as we really and bodily are. I am ego, and you are ego: but I am not
this thought-of ego; this ego in which we are all equal is only my
_thought_. I am man, and you are man: but "man" is only a thought, a
generality; neither I nor you are speakable, we are _unutterable_,
because only _thoughts_ are speakable and consist in speaking. (41.15;
p.348)
Henceforth, the question runs, not how one can acquire life .. but
how one is to dissolve himself, to live himself out. (42.6; p.348)
Possibility and reality always coincide. (42.3; p.368f)
No sheep, no dog, exerts itself to become a "proper sheep, a proper
dog". (42.47; p.372)
I receive with thanks what the centuries of culture have acquired
for me; I am not willing to throw away and give up anything of it ...
But I want still more. (42.53; p.372)
All truth by itself is dead, a corpse; it is alive only in the same
way as my lungs are alive - to wit, in the measure of my own vitality.
[...] The truth is a - creature. (43.64; p.398-399)
No idea has existence, for none is capable of corporeity. [...]
What, am I in the world to realize ideas? (45.5&13; pp.408&411)
____________________________________________________________________
THE EGO AND ITS OWN - The Choice of a New Generation
Svein Olav Nyberg
"Knowledge must die, and rise again
as Will and create itself anew each
day as a free Person."
The False Principle of Our Education
Those of us who have reached adulthood during the eighties have
not avoided noticing all the literature and the ideas about self-
love that has been around. Even the nursery-eyed girls with the
concerned looks sometimes stutter that they think you should be
allowed to love yourself as much as you love your neighbour. Most of
this literature and most of these ideas come from psychology. Wayne
Dwyer reasons that since loving your neighbour as yourself will not
amount to much love of the neighbour unless you love yourself first,
you should therefore love yourself. Psychologically, the link is
claimed that other-love is impossible without self-love. So we
should think we are at a magic time in history; the omni-present
Society gives us permission to love ourselves.
But there are those of us who are not such well-bred rats
conditioned to do whatever we are told benefits our neighbour. We do
not love ourselves to please our abstract or concrete neighbours,
but just love ourselves, plain and simple. Our kind of people see
these trends as nothing other than the old hogwash in a new
disguise. Not only shall you sacrifice yourself to the good of your
neighbour, but you shall do so under the illusion that you do it for
yourself. We penetrate deeper, we go into philosophy.
Philosophically, also, it has been a decade of praising the self.
Why, has not the notorious Ayn Rand sold more books and increased
her organized following more than ever? Has not the libertarian
community accepted selfishness as a rule? Again, ever more illusion!
Randian self-love is the love of Man your Essence within you, and
the hate of the Evil un-Man in you, lurking at the boundaries of the
Omni-Good Rational Thought. Libertarian ideas, furthermore, are in
this respect nothing more than the ghost of departed Objectivists.
It is amidst all this confusion that a young man of today will
find himself as he picks up his first copy of The Ego and Its Own.
Usually, as in my case, he will have a background in libertarian
thought, and smile at the thought that "Here we have the guy who is
even more consistent than Rand. Wow, these ideas will be useful for
my libertarianism!" As the reading of the book proceeds, the young
libertarian will look at the pages in amazed horror; is not this
Stirner guy just picking libertarianism logically apart before his
very eyes? Oh horror! No, this must surely rest on a
misunderstanding. Stirner never knew modern libertarianism, did he?
So, he is really running loose on something else. Yes? But, no,
realisation dawns that libertarianism - after all a very logical and
aesthetic system which even works - given a faint "best of society"
premise - is without the foundation our young libertarian wants.
Rights are spooks, his head is haunted and his pride is hurt.
There are now two possible lessons to learn; either to learn from
Stirner to speak to others about selfishness - universalize that we
are all (and implicitly _ought to be_) selfish, and to use this as a
new basis for libertarian idealism, or - to delve into oneself to
find one's _own_ cause.
Now, what is not supposed to be my cause! From society we learn
that selfishness consists in filling your wallet and emptying your
balls as best as you can. From religion we learn that our _true_
interest lies in the contemplation of ideas and renunciation of the
body. But these are both very one-sided goals, and do violence to
_me_. They are both follies of one and the same type - formal egoism.
Formal egoism is what arises when you conceive of yourself as an
object, a sum of predicates, and not as beyond predicates - as an
Einzige. Modern man hypostatizes - makes objects of - everything,
including himself. For a modern man the choice is only _which_ object
among the objects is to be chosen as the ultimate value. So why not
the object he knows as "me"? But when you serve the interests of an
object, you need a recipe, a guideline - some rules. These might be
explicit, or they might be, as for most people, implicit. The formal
egoist then serves the himself-object as best he can according to
the predications of what selfishness means - and, mind you, he might
even have so much success as to attain some predicated goals that he
thinks a selfish man should attain - but he never gets to the bottom
of _his_ interests. He is formally indistinguishable from the selfish
man, but in reality never attains anything more than being a boy-
scout at satisfying the himself-object.
Stirner is a good teacher of lessons. In A Human Life he shows the
dialectical development towards a full understanding of one's own
cause. One starts out as a child who thinks that all that matters is
- matter. Thereafter the procession goes to the realm of the Mind -
ideas - where all importance and values are to be found in the
relation to the idea. Only thereafter does it dawn that there is
something beyond all the material and spiritual objects, yet more
immediate, namely _I_, myself.
It is easy to come to the protest "Now _what_ is the I?" As Stirner
answers, I am not a "what" but a "who". Grasping this distinction,
and why Stirner emphasises it, is essential to understanding
Stirner, and is why The Ego and Its Own is so different from any
other book about selfishness.
A question that seems to have puzzled both the older and the
younger generation is "If Stirner was such a self-loving man, why
did he bother to write a book that gave him so much trouble and so
little reward?" I do not propose to answer this question in
specifics, but instead look at how he has developed his theory of
relations to other people.
Stirner has been described as a man who has taken the full
consequence of being-alone in the world, and sometimes even a
solipsist. I take these descriptions as coming from people not fully
knowledgeable about Stirner. Stirner does not advocate the life of
the Sole Ego on the hill, out of contact with other people. Rather,
he seems to derive much enjoyment from the company of his peers, and
even babies with their competent smiles. But it is easy to be
intoxicated by a book such as Stirner's, and fail to read what is
written. What Stirner actually writes about, is that there are
basically two (opposite) forms of interaction, namely that of
standing as an _I_ against a _You_, versus meeting one another qua
predicate-filled objects. The understanding of this demands that one
understands the difference between the Einzige that one is, and the
objects we are conditioned by culture to see ourselves as.
The meeting of the I against the You actually comprises more than
half of Stirner's book. This, I propose, is the key to why he wrote
the book. All around him he saw, and met, people whose only mode of
interaction was qua object-to-object. He met "good citizens",
"Christians" and even "Humans", all playing out a social role
according to the predicate of the day. But meeting one another with
that veil of predicates removed was a scarcity, as it is today.
Meeting Einzig to Einzig is scary. The you stand there all for and
by yourself with no predicate to hide behind. That is why people
continually choose to interact via predicates - object-to-object.
But this is nothing different from the mad-man at the asylum who is
unable to face the world as anyone but "Napoleon". We live, as
Stirner put it, in a mad-house among mad-men.
This is why Stirner wrote his book: It is a therapy for all of us
who out of the fear of seeing ourselves as pure and nakedly
ourselves. A therapy so that he might speak and otherwise interact
with us as the Einzige we are, and not as a thousand "Napoleon"s.
Do you dare accept the therapy offered by Stirner?
