straightjacket of humanity
(2001) by morten blaabjerg – The Straitjacket of Humanity – A discussion of the philosophical argument between Max Stirner and Ludwig Feuerbach, in the wake of Max Stirner’s “Der Einzige und sein Eigentum” (Leipzig 1844) – via 22 page kindle version from anarchist library [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/morten-blaabjerg-the-straitjacket-of-humanity]
notes/quotes:
7
The spirit of history is an objective force, which steadily preserves the best of the old, and by the negative critique contributes the *new and better, expanding our horizons of understanding and, accordingly, improving society’s institutions.
*maybe better but not new.. not if still basing on old.. which critiquing/creative-refusing et al.. still is based in and so perpetuates same song
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Stirner terms the resultant predomination of ideal concepts, spooks. *Through its upbringing, the child learns to strive for the ideal and beware of the evil. The spook comes into existence, in that not only the “essential” qualities are made to appear desirable, like when the child is praised for “being good”, but the undesired, “unessential” qualities are set forth as frightening and dangerous. The child learns to nurse the aspects of itself which matches the ideal, and to fear and suppress those that do not. This quickly becomes a splitting in the human individual. The ideal becomes an obsession, a so-called spook or fixed idea, which will enforce itself on the individual. But the suppressed feelings and qualities will still be there, and will haunt the individual, with fear and powerlessness as direct consequences..t
*yeah.. all that.. from not yet scrambled ness to maté parenting law et al.. supposed to’s of school/work.. safety addiction.. et al
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According to Stirner, we could therefore say that Feuerbach, with his concepts of “man” and “humanity”, creates a straitjacket of humanity: Not only must modern man fight his inferiority to Christian ideals and morals, as he had to do when God was established as en entity outside man; he must now even contain these concepts as his own essence, inside himself. “If Feuerbach goes on to destroy its heavenly dwelling and force it to move to us bag and baggage, then we, its earthly apartments, will be badly overcrowded.
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Stirner describes the development in a human life, from the first steps of the child, eager to explore the world in a material-sensible phase, through the youth’s spiritual attempts at “getting behind” and changing the world in an idealist phase, to the adult recognition of one’s own interest in using the world, the final, egoist phase.
oi
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But also on a purely practical level do humans need each other; like the child needs its father, the sick needs a doctor, and the poor man depends on the charity of the rich
oi oi
Some of Feuerbach’s points are thought-provoking, as they anticipate a socialist way of thinking. We are in fact witnessing here the theoretical shaping of socialism. Frederick M. Gordon is highly critical in his analysis of Feuerbach’s argument. He points out that Feuerbach leaves his initial thesis which is based on the “spontaneous” feeling which originally is supposed to be the essence of man. Instead, “the essence of man” becomes a doctrine, which is supposed to “save” man from the alienation .. t of religion. And from there, there’s not a great distance to a Lenin or Stalin.
yeah.. oi.. graeber unpredictability/surprise law et al
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He doesn’t have the wit or sharpness of a Stirner, but there’s a lot in Feuerbach’s thinking that actually makes sense on a practical level. And the more disturbing is his claim that men simply cannot live as unique individuals without some kind of substitute for religion. Is this void, the “nothing” of Stirner, of such an incomprehensible, terrifying oblivious nature that we simply cannot cope facing it?
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The Swan Song Of The Concepts
Stirner addressed the critique in an essay entitled “Recensenten Stirners” (Stirner’s Critics). Here he elaborated on the concept of “The Unique One” in particular, and argued that precisely this concept and the self-interest of the individual, in all ways stands in opposition to religion.
“Stirner speaks of the Unique and says immediately: Names name thee not. He articulates the word, so long as he calls it the “Unique”, but adds nonetheless that the Unique is only a name. He thus means something different from what he says, as perhaps someone who calls you Ludwig does not mean a Ludwig in general, but means you, for which he has no word. (…) The Unique One is the straight-forward, sincere plain-phrase. It is the end-point of our phrase.world, of this world in whose “beginning was the Word”.”
The concept of “The Unique One” is in contrast to the concepts of man, spirit, essence, etc., an empty concept, because it doesn’t imply anything except saying “you are you”. It does not imply an ideal, as Feuerbach accused Stirner of, but is a plain empty phrase, which it is up to the individual to fill out. It is simply the indefinable self, which can only be expressed by its own presence, its own subjective existence, not by any kind of absolute definition. It is impossible to base a definition of the “essence of man” on referring, as Feuerbach, to the properties which two or more people have in common. That two people both are animals, does not mean that the animal is the definition of a man. Stirner firmly rejects Feuerbach notions of the “universal human being”, sarcastically referring to the fact that prisons for centuries have been full of “in-humans”, which did not find themselves comprised by “humanity”.
marsh label law and naming the colour ness et al
“The reviewers show still more anger to the “Egoist” than to the “Unique”. Instead of trying to get close to the meaning of egoism as Stirner understands it, they stick with their customary conception of it that they’ve had since childhood, and read off the list of sins familiar to all. See here Egoism, the ghastly sin—that’s what Stirner “commends”! (…)
Does Feuerbach live in some other than his own world? (…) Isn’t the world, just because Feuerbach lives in it, the world that surrounds him, the world that is thought, experienced, contemplated by Feuerbach? He lives not merely in the middle of it, but is its middle himself, is the middlepoint of his world. And as with Feuerbach, so no one lives in another than his own world; as with Feuerbach, so everyone is the center of his world. World is really only what one is not oneself, but what belongs to one, what stands in relationship to one, what is for one. (…) Your world extends as far as your power of conception, and what you grasp is your own by your mere grasping. You, Unique One, are Unique only together with “your Property”.
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The End Of Philosophy?
Stirner’s dialectical critique of the absolute concepts leads him to a vacuum, void of language. A nothingness. This creates the utter need for an expression, a consciousness, a self. This unique self can then build its world in its own image. Applying Hegel’s dialectics, it became possible for Stirner to reach an unspeakable endpoint of not only Hegel’s philosophy, but of philosophy and language as such.
Stirner does not have any rational explanation of this “creative nothing”, which seems to be the end point of his thinking. Feuerbach’s accusations of Stirner placing his “unique one” as “holy, unapproachable” is largely left unanswered, except for Stirner’s remarks on “the holy” as noted above. Stirner may in fact do precisely what Feuerbach claims. When Stirner claims the undefinablity of the self, and “names name thee not”, one could justifiably say that he takes the attributes of God as his own, and becomes “unreachable” by others. But it seems to me that this is exactly the point. He is unreachable, undefinable, incomprehensible. If people believe otherwise, they’re fooling themselves. He takes God’s attributes as his own. But **he might throw them away again the next minute.
*the it is me.. paul know\love law.. et al
**find the bravery to change your mind ness et al
It seems that in the utter ability of change, of creation, of one thing being fitting at one time, and restraining the next, there is no room left for something sacred.
again.. the it is me ness.. graeber unpredictability/surprise law et al
And it seems evident, that Feuerbach misses this point entirely. The philosophical argument between Stirner and Feuerbach is, in Stirner’s terms, the struggle between a stagnant, if not slowly dying, Christian idealism, and the incipient, ever adaptable, modern egoism.
Feuerbach’s ideas of a “brotherhood of mankind” gave nourishment to not only the socialist thought and movement, but has been profoundly influential to the humanist basis of “man”, which can today be found in science, society, the church, legislation, and not the least, in the UN and modern “holy” wars for human rights. Stirner died in 1856 in the shade of Marxism, but the force and cogency of his words hardly ever die. The notion is no longer possible, that one should ever be able to define, and thus subdue the single, unique individual.
yet.. we live it.. everyday.. need global detox leap
But if philosophy in fact does draw to an end with Stirner, because one can no longer base reason and argument on absolute concepts and definitions, but on the individual’s own interest alone, what is left then?
“One has always flattered oneself that one was talking about the “actual, individual” man when one spoke about man. But was that possible so long as one wanted to express this man through something general, through a predicate? Doesn’t one have to, in order to indicate a thing, instead of taking refuge in a predicate, rather rely on pointing, whereby the intention, i.e. what is unexpressed, is the main thing.”
Here we get close to an explanation of the powerful philosophical argument of an American blockbuster movie like The Matrix. Film can reach beyond language, in a manner that closely resembles Stirner’s notion of “pointing”. With the camera, one cannot define any truth, only record a certain intent, when you point the camera at an object. There is always a subject in a film, namely he who gets to decide the object of the camera, its framing, and the direction of its movement. This subject is indefinable, ever changing and recreating itself, as Stirner has shown. One realizes the strength of this indefinability, this “creative nothing”,.. t when one sees that when these motion pictures are shown, this subject is handed over to the audience.
society of spectacle (book) et al
The indefinable self becomes the essence of man..t
yeah.. that.. rather.. becomes the freedom of man.. to get back his essence..
again.. graeber unpredictability/surprise law.. graeber can’t know law.. et al..
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be you. 