Nietzschean political philosophy in a nutshell.

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21

That reminds me of Moody. Once, when he had several pseudonyms on the same forum, he said “I” when he should have said “you”. I pointed out his mistake, and he replied, unfazed, that he meant “I” in the sense of “you”. I then told him that, as I was no native English-speaker, I wasn’t aware of that sense of the word. (He was a British nationalist who prided himself on writing “high English”. In fact, he was more England-centric than Great Britain-centric. Still, he was rather a good European than a good Brit; rather a Cultural Socialist than a National Socialist–though of course he was well aware culture is rooted in nature. (He also thought my “Lampertian” turn was a mistake. That was around the time when our paths really diverged: I’d found a rationale for my views, whereas he remained more of a mystic. Perhaps my recent conversion to Value Philosophy would have agreed with him. I’m reminded of his namesake, William Blake.–“If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.” (Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.)–And indeed, it was Picht, whom Lampert had personally recommended to me, who opened my eyes to VO. Picht says that the God whose death Nietzsche proclaimed was the God of the Philosophers, the God of Reason, and not the God of the Bible, who as Pascal puts it, in the manuscript page he kept hidden in his cloak, is “FIRE”. Blake says that “the Jehovah of the Bible” is “no other than [t]he [Devil] who dwells in flaming fire” (Blake, op.cit.; compare BGE 37). Dasein is, as Moody put it, “a Heraclitean wading in the river”–a river of fire. A self-valuing is simply such a wading that is not dissolved by the pull of the river; a wading with ample willstrength to stay relatively the same. Compare also Heidegger’s concept of “dwelling”.))

Nope. I don’t know where he is now. I may have ways of contacting him. But first you’d have to give me a reason to introduce you to him. I’ve given you enough info to find more of his writings. Check those out first. Then, if you’re still interested, get back to me.

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Max Stirner, in 1844 wrote a treatise titled The Ego and Its Own. Stirner’s thinking on quite a few subjects appears to ‘anticipate’ some of Nietzsche’s most famous declarations. R Hinton Thomas concludes in his Nietzsche in German Politics and Society 1890-1918 that Nietzsche’s first German devotees were actually radical anarchist feminists and anarcho-syndicalists within the Wilhelmine SPD. Nietzsche never claims for himself a clear positive political preference in the conventional sense, so he would have been unlikely to support any such party. Yet, there is a starling similarity in the basic outlook of Stirner and Nietzsche, which has on occasion, aroused suspicions of ungentlemanly conduct. The Polish scholar Leszek Kolakowski has hinted at something unsportsmanlike with reference to this alleged continuity of radical ideas: “a link between Stirner and modern existentialism through Nietzsche, who had read Stirner’s work though he nowhere expressly refers to it”. (excerpt from Did Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) Plagiarise from Max Stirner (1806—56)
by John Glassford)

“Like Nietzsche, Stirner is of the opinion that the motivating forces of human life can be looked for only in the single, real personality. He rejects all powers that wish to form and determine the individual personality from outside. He traces the course of world history and discovers the fundamental error of mankind to be that it does not place before itself the care and culture of the individual personality, but other impersonal goals and purposes instead. He sees the true liberation of mankind in that men refuse to grant to all such goals a higher reality, but merely use these goals as a means of their self-cultivation. The free human being determines his own purposes. He possesses his ideals, he does not allow himself to be possessed by them. The human being who does not rule over his ideals as a free personality, stands under the same influence as the insane person who suffers from fixed ideas. It is all the same for Stirner if a human being imagines himself to be “Emperor of China” or if a comfortable bourgeois imagines it is his destiny to be a good Christian, a faithful Protestant, or a virtuous human being, and so on, or is caught and held captive in orthodoxy, virtuousness, etc.”

Steiner says:

One cannot speak of Nietzsche’s development without being reminded of that freest thinker who was brought forth by mankind of the new age, namely, Max Stirner. It is a sad truth that this thinker, who fulfills in the most complete sense what Nietzsche requires of the superman, is known and respected by only a few. Already in the forties of the nineteenth century, he expressed Nietzsche’s world conception. Of course he did not do this in such comfortable heart tones as did Nietzsche, but even more in crystal clear thoughts, beside which Nietzsche’s aphorisms often appear like mere stammering.

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Yes, and how can mankind see it any other way? Mankind is bound to the perspective that what he sees in the world is a reality unto itself–not a perception, not a subjective way of seeing things (we’ve only recently come up with that idea in the past 500 years which they call “modernity”)–but reality; so how can he see the world other than something apart from himself? Therefore, impersonal goals and purposes make total sense to mankind since, well, that’s where his personal thought and subjective experiences lead him.

It’s true that mankind can take the perspective that all his experiences and subjective perceptions are an artifact of his own mind and inner being, but this is not the natural way, the default way, for mankind to engage in the world. And mankind will typically act naturally and by default.

Mankind is bound to the conviction, whether he likes it or not, than his experiences are, by default, real–and this includes impersonal goals and purposes.

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I am aware of Stirner. I skimmed through The Ego and Its Own a couple of years ago.

Apparently, he is an egoist and an anarchist. I am still not sure what to make out of this.

It’s necessary to make it clear that egoism isn’t a good thing because in its desperate attempt to combat conformism it ends up rejecting external standards.

In conformism, the individual adopts foreign ideas. In egoism, the individual comes up with his own ideas. That’s the only difference. Whether these ideas actually match reality is never addressed.

Making your own judgment is different from adopting someone else’s judgment. This is the real distinction between non-conformism and conformism.

Making your own judgment, it must be emphasized, does not mean rejecting external standards. This is where egoism makes a mistake: it goes too far when it rejects external standards.

Egoists pay too much attention to their oppressors. They observe that their oppressors use empty ideas, so they think to themselves, why not create our own empty ideas? It’s silly.

What happens when you reject external standards?

You become self-referential and rigid. You choose a goal, or a belief, and stick to it no matter what.

It would be like me choosing to be a ballerina, then striving to be a ballerina, then becoming ballerina, then using this achievement to reinforce the validity of my choice to be a ballerina.

With enough willpower, I can become a ballerina, there is no doubt about that, but that does not change the fact that my choice to become a ballerina was an unrealistic one.

A goal is said to be unrealistic only if its achievement is unlikely. This is how people who do not priorize realism think. From my point of view, a goal is said to be unrealistic only if it misrepresents one’s lack. Whether its achievement is likely or unlikely is less relevant (if achievement is unlikely, one’s lack is redefined, and the individual has to adapt accordingly.)

Egoists prioritize rigidity (non-reality) over fluidity (reality.) Altruists are no different, they too are egoists. They are inverse egoists (you can also call them extroverted egoists.)

What does it mean to be realistic in the world where the only truth is that there are no truths?

Though there are no truths, there is change, and being realistic means absorbing change rather than rejecting it (egoism) or surrendering to it (conformism.)

There is no direct perception of reality that is flux, unless we take the perception of change to be so. The individual perceives reality by arresting the flux which necessarily falsifies it.

It is often said that we live by “necessary illusions”.

Since reality has no pattern, and the individual cannot perceive absence of pattern, in order to perceive reality the individual has to impose his own pattern onto the reality itself.

Which is why it is often said that we interpret reality in terms of ourselves.

This, however, does not mean that there is no difference between more realistic and less realistic interpretations of reality.

Being realistic means imposing as little pattern on reality as possible. It means being flexible and that means being strong enough to accept chaos without becoming chaos.

The mistake that egoists make is that they take what we consider to be a flaw and glorify it into a virtue.

They think that rigidity is a good thing, not something that has to be overcome . . .

So, my question to you: is Stirner an egoist? is he a proto Value Ontologer?

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Stirner writes:

[size=95]“Man with the great M is only an ideal, the species only something thought of. To be a man is not to realize the ideal of Man, but to present oneself, the individual. It is not how I realize the generally human that needs to be my task, but how I satisfy myself. I am my species, am without norm, without law, without model, etc. It is possible that I can make very little out of myself; but this little is everything, and is better than what I allow to be made out of me by the might of others, by the training of custom, religion, the laws, the State.” (The Ego and Its Own 2.2, trans. Byington.)[/size]

Those who think this is Nietzschean avant la lettre just don’t know Nietzsche very well. Against this, I present BGE 188: http://nietzsche.holtof.com/reader/friedrich-nietzsche/beyond-good-and-evil/aphorism-188-quote_74fc6a9c7.html (Note though that the final s should not be there; den Menschen is accusative singular here, not dative plural.)

And, for God’s sake, why did Stirner write?

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Discipline isn’t enough. Egoists can be disciplined as well, provided they invent an ideal toward which they can discipline themselves. Though it seems to me that Stirner, at least according to Deleuze, has no ideals whatsoever, is merely preserving himself and not striving to overcome himself.

What is necessary is that the ideal is grounded in reality and not merely invented by the subject. This is the only proper way to understand the meaning of “overcoming”. Everything else should be understood as “preservation”.

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Sauwelios wrote:

I dont dispute his prowess as a writer and he has today become rather fashionable. One thing is clear, N preached the destruction of traditional values. If one is to take into consideration all the liberation movements for example, women’s liberation, gay liberation, the black revolution, all these people wanted to break loose from society and tradition, which may be one of the reasons to explain N’s burgeoning popularity of today, but the ambiguity and misunderstanding of N’s writings have created many different interpretations, hence the list of people influenced by N is seemingly endless and in reality N would have had no interest in any of these movements.

What is certain is N wished to destroy Christianity and replace it with another religion. Science and with it the correct philosophy would enable human beings to become as master and possessors of nature but to do so, the previous master, which is God, must be thrown out. In order to produce a superior human being N recognises that he has to destroy what has already been produced. In other words by exemplifying the value of N’s morality, this would replace Christ’s morality.

The last work he wrote was Ecco Homo, which is a biblical expression meaning, ‘behold the man’.

N saw himself as a great rival to Christ.

Simply put, he was preaching the replacement of one religion for another. His.

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How “imprint his word”? Backwards or forwards? Is his word also backwards?

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=D> :wink: :laughing:

Or is it WHAT IS NOBLE 262??? - The MEDIOCRE MORALS?! Christianity!

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Sounds good, and its even better if there are no leaders et al. So this ‘superior human being’ could be interpreted as the freer human being, rather than having or being an overlord. But I get a whiff of the notion pertaining to humans as the replacers of God, as opposed to being deniers of his or any other authority, including ones own. Power surely originates in weakness, one would only want power over e.g woman [gf], if you were afraid of losing them or something you get from them etc.

Is my assumption true, or are his words misleading to the casual observer?

N reminds me of my old punk beliefs when I were young, something of his philosophy was in there I think.

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Westerners usually mistake Christianity with traditional values. It would be much clearer if they, once for all, understand that all Europeans are incapable - through history - of any moral values, such as presented in Aristotles Ethics, and all they can do is strive for honor which isn’t a moral value at all.

Not even heroism or bravery are handled as traditional value, but only as exception and probably by higher races who have dwelled into their territory.

For the majority of Westerners adventure is all they got. Or as Vollgraff says “Odyssey didn’t look for adventures, he simply fell into troubles on his way home” … on the other side the Crusades were a purely adventurist undertaking.

So, by “destroying traditional values” not new values will emerge but most probably nomadism, barbarism and all that women prefer, because women are most close to the brutality of the middle eastern nomads and bedouins.

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Indeed, Stirners me-at-all-costs is the opposite of Nietzsche’s cultivating ethos. To N the individual as such is ‘less than a worm’ if I remember that phrase correctly. It could also be as much as a worm.

Stirner is evidently an antipolitical anarchist, Nietzsche a political aristocrat.

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That is all modern egoists do: under-mee-ne Nietzsche.

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The egoist however is a parasite. Watch them in billions how they steal from noble men through universities.

Never take anything from somebody and call yours if you cant give the same amount in return of what is really yours. (therefore I always quote everything in original).