Conservadurismo revolucionario frete a neoconservadurismo

 CONSERVADURISMO REVOLUCIONARIO FRENTE A NEOCONSERVADURISMO

ReCons versus NeoCons

 Ex: http://imperium-revolucion-conservadora.blogspot.com/

SEBASTIAN J. LORENZ

Bajo la fórmula “Revolución Conservadora” acuñada por Armin Mohler (Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschlan 1918-1932) se engloban una serie de corrientes de pensamiento contemporáneas del nacionalsocialismo, independientes del mismo, pero con evidentes conexiones filosóficas e ideológicas, cuyas figuras más destacadas son Oswald Spengler, Ernst Jünger, Carl Schmitt y Moeller van den Bruck, entre otros. La “Nueva Derecha” europea ha invertido intelectualmente gran parte de sus esfuerzos en la recuperación del pensamiento de estos autores, junto a otros como Martin Heidegger, Arnold Gehlen y Konrad Lorenz (por citar algunos de ellos), a través de una curiosa fórmula retrospectiva: se vuelve a los orígenes teóricos, dando un salto en el tiempo para evitar el “interregno fascista”, y se comienza de nuevo intentando reconstruir los fundamentos ideológicos del conservadurismo revolucionario sin caer en la “tentación totalitaria” y eludiendo cualquier “desviacionismo nacionalsocialista”.

Con todo, los conceptos de “revolución conservadora” y de “nueva derecha” no son, desde luego, construcciones terminológicas muy afortunadas. Por supuesto que la “revolución conservadora”, por más que les pese a los mal llamados “neconservadores” (sean del tipo Reagan, Bush, Thatcher, Sarkozy o Aznar), no tiene nada que ver con la “reacción conservadora” (una auténtica “contrarrevolución”) que éstos pretenden liderar frente al liberalismo progre, el comunismo posmoderno y el contraculturalismo de la izquierda. Pero la debilidad de la derecha clásica estriba en su inclinación al centrismo y a la socialdemocracia (“la seducción de la izquierda”), en un frustrado intento por cerrar el paso al socialismo, simpatizando, incluso, con los únicos valores posibles de sus adversarios (igualitarismo, universalismo, falso progresismo). Un grave error para los que no han comprendido jamás que la acción política es un aspecto más de una larvada guerra ideológica entre dos concepciones del mundo completamente antagónicas.

Tampoco la “nueva derecha” representa un nuevo tipo de política conservadora frente a la ya tradicional economicista, gestionaria y demoliberal, sino que se sitúa en algún lugar “neutro” (no equidistante) entre la derecha y la izquierda (extramuros de la política), como se desprende inmediatamente de la antología de textos de Alain de Benoist publicada por Áltera (“Más allá de la derecha y de la izquierda”). Recordemos que, cuando a Drieu La Rochelle le preguntaron por su adscripción política, jugando con la posición que ocupan en los parlamentos los distintos grupos políticos a la derecha o a la izquierda del presidente de la cámara, el pensador francés se situaba, precisamente, justo por detrás de éste. Toda una declaración de principios.

El propio Alain de Benoist, en la citada antología, se pregunta cuáles son las razones del retraimiento progresivo de la interferencia entre las nociones de derecha y de izquierda, precisando que «desde luego que la derecha quiere un poco más de liberalismo y un poco menos de política social, mientras que la izquierda prefiere un poco más de política social y un poco menos de liberalismo, pero al final, entre el social-liberalismo y el liberalismo social, no podemos decir que la clase política esté verdaderamente dividida» Y citando a Grumberg: «El fuerte vínculo entre el liberalismo cultural y la orientación a la izquierda por un lado, y el liberalismo económico y la orientación a la derecha por otro, podrían llevar a preguntarnos si estos dos liberalismos no constituyen los dos polos opuestos de una única e igual dimensión, que no sería otra que la misma dimensión derecha-izquierda.»

Pero seguramente ha sido Ernst Jünger (“El Trabajador”) quien mejor ha descrito estos conceptos políticos. El conservador genuino –escribe Jünger- no quiere conservar éste o aquél orden, lo que quiere es restablecer la imagen del ser humano, que es la medida de las cosas. De esta forma, «se vuelven muy parecidos los conservadores y los revolucionarios, ya que se aproximan necesariamente al mismo fondo. De ahí que sea siempre posible demostrar la existencia de ambas cualidades en los grandes modificadores, en las que no sólo derrocan órdenes, sino que también los fundan». Jünger observaba cómo se fusionan de una manera extraña las diferencias entre la “reacción” y la “revolución”: «emergen teorías en las cuales los conceptos “conservador” y “revolucionario” quedan faltamente identificados …, ya que “derecha” e “izquierda” son conceptos que se bifurcan a partir de un eje común de simetría y tienen sentido únicamente si se los ve desde él. Tanto si cooperan como si lo hacen al mismo tiempo, la derecha y la izquierda dependen de un cuerpo cuya unidad tiene que hacerse visible cuando un movimiento pasa del marco del movimiento al marco del estado.» Sin comentarios.

Por todo ello, queremos subrayar aquí que, con la denominación de “Nueva Derecha” –aunque no nos agrade tal calificación y optemos por la de “Conservadurismo Revolucionario”--, se hace referencia a un estilo ético y estético de pensamiento político dirigido al repudio de los dogmatismos, la formulación antiigualitaria, el doble rechazo de los modelos capitalista y comunista, la defensa de los particularismos étnicos y regionales, la consideración de Europa como unidad, la lucha contra la amenaza planetaria frente a la vida, la racionalización de la técnica, la primacía de los valores espirituales sobre los materiales. El eje central de la crítica al sistema político “occidental” lo constituye la denuncia del cristianismo dogmático, el liberalismo y el marxismo, como elementos niveladores e igualadores de una civilización europea, perdida y desarraigada, que busca, sin encontrarla, la salida al laberinto de la “identidad específica”. En el núcleo de esta civilización europea destaca la existencia del “hombre europeo multidimensional”, tanto al nivel biológico, que en su concepción sociológica reafirma los valores innatos de la jerarquía y la territorialidad, como al específicamente humano, caracterizado por la cultura y la conciencia histórica. Constituye, en el fondo, una reivindicación de la “herencia” –tanto individual como comunitaria-, fenómeno conformador de la historia evolutiva del hombre y de los pueblos, que demuestra la caducidad de las ideologías de la nivelación y la actualidad de la rica diversidad de la condición humana. Un resumen incompleto y forzado por la tiranía del espacio digital, pero que sirve al objeto de efectuar comparaciones.

Entre tanto, el “Neoconservadurismo” contrarrevolucionario, partiendo del pensamiento del alemán emigrado a norteamérica Leo Strauss, no es sino una especie de “reacción” frente a la pérdida de unos valores que tienen fecha de caducidad (precisamente los suyos, propios de la burguesía angloamericana mercantilista e imperialista). Sus principios son el universalismo ideal y humanitario, el capitalismo salvaje, el tradicionalismo académico, el burocratismo totalitario y el imperialismo agresivo contra los fundamentalismos terroristas “anti-occidentales”. Para estos neconservadores, Estados Unidos aparece como la representación más perfecta de los valores de la libertad, la democracia y la felicidad fundada en el progreso material y en el regreso a la moral, siendo obligación de Europa el copiar este modelo triunfante. En definitiva, entre las ideologías popularizadas por los “neocons” (neoconservadores en la expresión vulgata de Irving Kristol) y los “recons” (revolucionarios-conservadores, de mi cosecha) existe un abismo insalvable. El tiempo dirá, como esperaban Jünger y Heidegger, cuál de las dos triunfa en el ámbito europeo de las ideas políticas. Entre tanto, seguiremos hablando de esta original “batalla de las ideologías” en futuras intervenciones.

[Publicado por "ElManifiesto.com" el  20/08/2010]

Evola & Spengler

by Robert STEUCKERS

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/

Translated by Greg Johnson

“I translated from German, at the request of the publisher Longanesi . . . Oswald Spengler’s vast and celebrated work The Decline of the West. That gave the opportunity to me to specify, in an introduction, the meaning and the limits of this work which, in its time, had been world-famous.” These words begin a series of critical paragraphs on Spengler in Julius Evola’s The Way of Cinnabar (p. 177).

Evola pays homage to the German philosopher for casting aside “progressivist and historicist fancies” by showing that the stage reached by our civilization shortly after the First World War was not an apex, but, on the contrary, a “twilight.” From this Evola recognized that Spengler, especially thanks to the success of his book, made it possible to go beyond the linear and evolutionary conception of history. Spengler describes the opposition between Kultur and Zivilisation, “the former term indicating, for him, the forms or phases of a civilization that is qualitative, organic, differentiated, and vital, the latter indicating the forms of a civilization that is rationalist, urban, mechanical, shapeless, soulless” (p. 178).

Evola admired the negative description that Spengler gives of Zivilisation but is critical of the absence of a coherent definition of Kultur, because, he says, the German philosopher remained the prisoner of certain intellectual schemes proper to modernity. “A sense of the metaphysical dimension or of transcendence, which represents the essence of all true Kultur, was completely lacking in him” (p. 179).

Evola also reproaches Spengler’s pluralism; for the author of The Decline of the West, civilizations are many, distinct, and discontinuous compared to one another, each one constituting a closed unit. For Evola, this conception is valid only for the exterior and episodic aspects of various civilizations. On the contrary, he continues, it is necessary to recognize, beyond the plurality of the forms of civilization, civilizations (or phases of civilization) of the “modern” type, as opposed to civilizations (or phases of civilization) of the “Traditional” type. There is plurality only on the surface; at bottom, there is a fundamental opposition between modernity and Tradition.

Then Evola reproaches Spengler for being influenced by German post-romantic vitalist and “irrationalist” strains of thought, which received their most comprehensive and radical expression in the work of Ludwig Klages. The valorization of life is vain, explains Evola, if life is not illuminated by an authentic comprehension of the world of origins. Thus the plunge into existentiality, into Life, required by Klages, Bäumler, or Krieck, can appear dangerous and initiate a regressive process (one will note that the Evolian critique distinguishes itself from German interpretations, according exactly to the same criteria that we put forward while speaking about the reception of the work of Bachofen).

Evola thinks this vitalism leads Spengler to say “things that make one blush” about Buddhism, Taoism, Stoicism, and Greco-Roman civilization (which, for Spengler, is merely a civilization of “corporeity”). Lastly, Evola does not accept Spengler’s valorization of “Faustian man,” a figure born in the Age of Discovery, the Renaissance and humanism; by this temporal determination, Faustian man is carried towards horizontality rather than towards verticality. Regarding Caesarism, a political phenomenon of the era of the masses, Evola shares the same negative judgment as Spengler.

The pages devoted to Spengler in The Path of Cinnabar are thus quite critical; Evola even concludes that the influence of Spengler on his thought was null. Such is not the opinion of an analyst of Spengler and Evola, Attilio Cucchi (in “Evola, Tradizione e Spengler,” Orion no. 89, 1992). For Cucchi, Spengler influenced Evola, particularly in his criticism of the concept of the “West”: by affirming that Western civilization is not the civilization, the only civilization there is, Spengler relativizes it, as Guénon charges. Evola, an attentive reader of Spengler and Guénon, would combine elements of the the Spenglerian and Guénonian critiques. Spengler affirms that Faustian Western culture, which began in the tenth century, has declined and fallen into Zivilisation, which has frozen, drained, and killed its inner energy. America is already at this final stage of de-ruralized and technological Zivilisation.

It is on the basis of the Spenglerian critique of Zivilisation that Evola later developed his critique of Bolshevism and Americanism: If Zivilisation is twilight for Spengler, America is the extreme-West for Guénon, i.e., irreligion pushed to its ultimate consequences. In Evola, undoubtedly, Spenglerian and Guénonian arguments combine, even if, at the end of the day, the Guénonian elements dominate, especially in 1957, when the edition of The Decline of the West was published by Longanesi with a Foreword by Evola. On the other hand, the Spenglerian criticism of political Caesarism is found, sometimes word for word, in Evola’s books Fascism Seen from the Right and the Men Among the Ruins.

Dr. H. T. Hansen, the author of the Introduction to the German edition of Men Among the Ruins (Menschen inmitten von Ruinen [Tübingen: Hohenrain, 1991]), confirms the sights of Cucchi: several Spenglerian ideas are found in outline in Men Among the Ruins, notably the idea that the state is the inner form, the “being-in-form” of the nation; the idea that decline is measured to the extent that Faustian man has become a slave of his creations; the machine forces him down a path from which he can never turn back, and which will never allow him any rest. Feverishness and flight into the future are characteristics of the modern world (“Faustian” for Spengler) which Guénon and Evola condemn with equal strength.

In The Hour of Decision (1933), Spengler criticizes the Caesarism (in truth, Hitlerian National Socialism) as a product of democratic titanism. Evola wrote the Preface of the Italian translation of this work, after a very attentive reading. Finally, the “Prussian style” exalted by Spengler corresponds, according to Hansen, with the Evolian idea of the “aristocratic order of life, arranged hierarchically according to service.” As for the necessary preeminence of Grand Politics over economics, the idea is found in both authors. Thus the influence of Spengler on Evola was not null, despite what Evola says in The Path of Cinnabar.

Source: Nouvelles de Synergies européennes no. 21, 1996.

Note: Evola’s The Path of Cinnabar is now available in English translation from Arktos Media.

Carl Schmitt: The End of the Weimar Republic

Carl Schmitt (part III)

The End of the Weimar Republic

By Keith Preston

Ex: http://www.alternativeright.com/

 

 

 Adolf Hitler Accepts the Weimar Chancellorship From President Paul von Hindenburg, January 30, 1933

Carl Schmitt accepted a professorship at the University of Berlin in 1928, having left his previous position at the University of Bonn. At this point, he was still only a law professor and legal scholar, and while highly regarded in his fields of endeavor, he was not an actual participant in the affairs of state. In 1929, Schmitt became personally acquainted with an official in the finance ministry named Johannes Popitz, and with General Kurt von Schleicher, an advisor to President Paul von Hindenburg.

Schleicher shared Schmitt’s concerns that the lack of a stable government would lead to civil war or seizure of power by the Nazis or communists. These fears accelerated after the economic catastrophe of 1929 demonstrated once again the ineptness of Germany’s parliamentary system. Schleicher devised a plan for a presidential government comprised of a chancellor and cabinet ministers that combined with the power of the army and the provisions of Article 48 would be able to essentially bypass the incompetent parliament and more effectively address Germany’s severe economic distress and prevent civil disorder or overthrow of the republic by extremists.

Heinrich Bruning of the Catholic Center Party was appointed chancellor by Hindenburg. The Reichstag subsequently rejected Bruning’s proposed economic reforms so Bruning set about to implement them as an emergency measure under Article 48. The Reichstag then exercised its own powers under Article 48 and rescinded Bruning’s decrees, and Bruning then dissolved the parliament on the grounds that the Reichstag had been unable to form a majority government. Such was the prerogative of the executive under the Weimar constitution.

In the years between 1930 and 1933, Carl Schmitt’s legal writings expressed concern with two primary issues. The first of these dealt with legal matters pertaining to constitutional questions raised by the presidential government Schleicher had formulated. The latter focused on the question of constitutional issues raised by the existence of anti-constitutional parties functioning within the context of the constitutional system.

Schmitt’s subsequent reputation as a conservative revolutionary has been enhanced by his personal friendship or association with prominent radical nationalists like Ernst Jünger and the “National Bolshevist” Ernst Niekisch, as well as the publication of Schmitt’s articles in journals associated with the conservative revolutionary movement during the late Weimar period. However, Schmitt himself was never any kind of revolutionary. Indeed, he spoke out against changes in the constitution of Weimar during its final years, believing that tampering with the constitution during a time of crisis would undermine the legitimacy of the entire system and invite opportunistic exploitation of the constitutional processes by radicals. His continued defense of the presidential powers granted by Article 48 was always intended as an effort to preserve the existing constitutional order.

The 1930 election produced major victories for the extremist parties. The communists increased their representation in the Reichstag from 54 to 77 seats, and the Nazis from 12 to 107 seats. The left-of-center Social Democrats (SPD) retained 143 seats, meaning that avowedly revolutionary parties were now the second and third largest parties in terms of parliamentary representation. The extremist parties never took their parliamentary roles seriously, but instead engaged in endless obstructionist tactics designed to de-legitimize the republic itself with hopes of seizing power once it finally collapsed. Meanwhile, violent street fighting between Nazi and communist paramilitary groups emerged as the numbers of unemployed Germans soared well into the millions.

In the April 1932 presidential election, Hitler stood against Hindenburg, and while Hindenburg was the winner, Hitler received an impressive thirty-seven percent of the vote. Meanwhile, the Nazis had become the dominant party in several regional governments, and their private army, the SA, had grown to the point where it was four times larger than the German army itself.

Schmitt published Legality and Legitimacy in 1932 in response to the rise of the extremist parties. This work dealt with matters of constitutional interpretation, specifically the means by which the constitutional order itself might be overthrown through the abuse of ordinary legal and constitutional processes. Schmitt argued that political constitutions represent specific sets of political values. These might include republicanism, provisions for an electoral process, church/state separation, property rights, freedom of the press, and so forth. Schmitt warned against interpreting the constitution in ways that allowed laws to be passed through formalistic means whose essence contradicted the wider set of values represented by the constitution.

Most important, Schmitt opposed methods of constitutional interpretation that would serve to create the political conditions under which the constitution itself could be overthrown. The core issue raised by Schmitt was the question of whether or not anti-constitutional parties such as the NSDAP or KPD should have what he called the “equal chance” to assume power legally. If such a party were to be allowed to gain control of the apparatus of the state itself, it could then use its position to destroy the constitutional order.

Schmitt argued that a political constitution should be interpreted according to its internal essence rather than strict formalistic adherence to its technical provisions, and applied according to the conditions imposed by the “concrete situation” at hand. On July 19, 1932, Schmitt published an editorial in a conservative journal concerning the election that was to be held on July 31. The editorial read in part:

Whoever provides the National Socialists with the majority on July 31, acts foolishly. … He gives this still immature ideological and political movement the possibility to change the constitution, to establish a state church, to dissolve the labor unions, etc. He surrenders Germany completely to this group….It would be extremely dangerous … because 51% gives the NSDAP a “political premium of incalculable significance.”

The subsequent election was an extremely successful one for the NSDAP, as they gained 37.8 percent of the seats in the parliament, while the KPD achieved 14.6 percent. The effect of the election results was that the anti-constitutional parties were in control of a majority of the Reichstag seats.

On the advice of General Schleicher, President Hindenburg had replaced Bruning as chancellor with Franz von Papen on May 30. Papen subsequently took an action that would lead to Schmitt’s participation in a dramatic trial of genuine historic significance before the supreme court of Germany.

Invoking Article 48, the Papen government suspended the state government of Prussia and placed the state under martial law. The justification for this was the Prussian regional government’s inability to maintain order in the face of civil unrest. Prussia was the largest of the German states, containing two-thirds of Germany’s land mass and three-fifths of its population. Though the state government had been controlled by the Social Democrats, the Nazis had made significant gains in the April 1932 election. Along the way, the Social Democrats had made considerable effort to block the rise of the Nazis with legal restrictions on their activities and various parliamentary maneuvers. There was also much violent conflict in Prussia between the Nazis and the Communists.

Papen, himself an anti-Nazi rightist, regarded the imposition of martial law as having the multiple purposes of breaking the power of the Social Democrats in Prussia, controlling the Communists, placating the Nazis by removing their Social Democratic rivals, and simultaneously preventing the Nazis from becoming embedded in regional institutions, particularly Prussia’s huge police force.

The Prussian state government appealed Papen’s decision to the supreme court and a trial was held in October of 1932. Schmitt was among three jurists who defended the Papen government’s policy before the court. Schmitt’s arguments reflected the method of constitutional interpretation he had been developing since the time martial law had been imposed during the Great War by the Wilhelmine government. Schmitt likewise applied the approach to political theory he had presented in his previous writings to the situation in Prussia. He argued that the Prussian state government had failed in its foremost constitutional duty to preserve public order. He further argued that because Papen had acted under the authority of President Hindenburg, Papen’s actions had been legitimate under Article 48.

Schmitt regarded the conflict in Prussia as a conflict between rival political parties. The Social Democrats who controlled the state government were attempting to repress the Nazis by imposing legal restrictions on them. However, the Social Democrats had also been impotent in their efforts to control violence by the Nazis and the communists. Schmitt rejected the argument that the Social Democrats were constitutionally legitimate in their legal efforts against the Nazis, as this simply amounted to one political party attempting to repress another. While the “equal chance” may be constitutionally denied to an anti-constitutional party, such a decision must be made by a neutral force, such as the president.

As a crucial part of his argument, Schmitt insisted that the office of the President was sovereign over the political parties and was responsible for preserving the constitution, public order, and the security of the state itself. Schmitt argued that with the Prussian state’s failure to maintain basic order, the situation in Prussia had essentially become a civil war between the political parties. Therefore, imposition of martial law by the chancellor, as an agent of the president, was necessary for the restoration of order.

Schmitt further argued that it was the president rather than the court that possessed the ultimate authority and responsibility for upholding the constitution, as the court possessed no means of politically enforcing its decisions. Ultimately, the court decided that while it rather than the president held responsibility for legal defense of the constitution, the situation in Prussia was severe enough to justify the appointment of a commissarial government by Papen, though Papen had not been justified in outright suspension of the Prussian state government. Essentially, the Papen government had won, as martial law remained in Prussia, and the state government continued to exist in name only.

During the winter months of 1932-33, Germany entered into an increasingly perilous situation. Papen, who had pushed for altering the constitution along fairly strident reactionary conservative lines, proved to be an extraordinarily unpopular chancellor and was replaced by Schleicher on December 3, 1932. But by this time, Papen had achieved the confidence of President von Hindenburg, if not that of the German public, while Hindenburg’s faith in Schleicher had diminished considerably. Papen began talks with Hitler, and the possibility emerged that Hitler might ascend to the chancellorship.

Joseph Bendersky summarized the events that followed:

By late January, when it appeared that either Papen or Hitler might become chancellor, Schleicher concluded that exceptional measures were required as a last resort. He requested that the president declare a state of emergency, ban the Nazi and Communist parties, and dissolve the Reichstag until stability could be restored. During the interim Schleicher would govern by emergency decrees. …

This was preferable to the potentially calamitous return of Papen, with his dangerous reform plans and unpopularity. It would also preclude the possibility that as chancellor Hitler would eventually usurp all power and completely destroy the constitution, even the nature of the German state, in favor of the proclaimed Third Reich. Had Hindenburg complied with Schleicher’s request, the president would have denied the equal chance to an anti-constitutional party and thus, in Schmitt’s estimate, truly acted as the defender of the constitution. … Having lost faith in Schleicher, fearing civil war, and trying to avoid violating his oath to uphold the constitution, Hindenburg refused. At this point, Schleicher was the only leader in a position to prevent the Nazi acquisition of power, if the president had only granted him the authorization. Consequently, Hitler acquired power not through the use of Article 48, but because it was not used against him.

[emphasis added]

The Schleicher plan had the full support of Schmitt, and was based in part on Schmitt’s view that “a constitutional system could not remain neutral towards its own basic principles, nor provide the legal means for its own destruction.” Yet the liberal, Catholic, and socialist press received word of the plan and mercilessly attacked Schleicher’s plan specifically and Schmitt’s ideas generally as creating the foundation for a presidential dictatorship, while remaining myopically oblivious to the immediate danger posed by Nazi and Communist control over the Reichstag and the possibility of Hitler’s achievement of executive power.

On January 30, 1933, Hitler became chancellor. That evening, Schmitt received the conservative revolutionary Wilhelm Stapel as a guest in his home while the Nazis staged a torchlight parade in Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate in celebration of Hitler’s appointment. Schmitt and Stapel discussed their alarm at the prospect of an imminent Nazi dictatorship and Schmitt felt the Weimar Republic had essentially committed suicide. If President von Hindenburg had heeded the advice of Schleicher and Schmitt, the Hitler regime would likely have never come into existence.

Carl Schmitt: The Concept of the Political

Carl Schmitt (Part II)

The Concept of the Political

By Keith Preston

 

Ex: http://www.alternativeright.com/

 

Carl Schmitt, circa 1928

It was in the context of the extraordinarily difficult times of the Weimar period that Carl Schmitt produced what are widely regarded as his two most influential books. The first of these examined the failures of liberal democracy as it was being practiced in Germany at the time. Schmitt regarded these failures as rooted in the weaknesses of liberal democratic theory itself. In the second work, Schmitt attempted to define the very essence of politics.

Schmitt's The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy was first published in 1923.^* In this work, Schmitt described the dysfunctional workings of the Weimar parliamentary system. He regarded this dysfunction as symptomatic of the inadequacies of the classical liberal theory of government. According to this theory as Schmitt interpreted it, the affairs of states are to be conducted on the basis of open discussion between proponents of competing ideas as a kind of empirical process. Schmitt contrasted this idealized view of parliamentarianism with the realities of its actual practice, such as cynical appeals by politicians to narrow self-interests on the part of constituents, bickering among narrow partisan forces, the use of propaganda and symbolism rather than rational discourse as a means of influencing public opinion, the binding of parliamentarians by party discipline, decisions made by means of backroom deals, rule by committee and so forth.

Schmitt recognized a fundamental distinction between liberalism, or "parliamentarianism," and democracy. Liberal theory advances the concept of a state where all retain equal political rights. Schmitt contrasted this with actual democratic practice as it has existed historically. Historic democracy rests on an "equality of equals," for instance, those holding a particular social position (as in ancient Greece), subscribing to particular religious beliefs or belonging to a specific national entity. Schmitt observed that democratic states have traditionally included a great deal of political and social inequality, from slavery to religious exclusionism to a stratified class hierarchy. Even modern democracies ostensibly organized on the principle of universal suffrage do not extend such democratic rights to residents of their colonial possessions. Beyond this level, states, even officially "democratic" ones, distinguish between their own citizens and those of other states.

At a fundamental level, there is an innate tension between liberalism and democracy. Liberalism is individualistic, whereas democracy sanctions the "general will" as the principle of political legitimacy. However, a consistent or coherent "general will" necessitates a level of homogeneity that by its very nature goes against the individualistic ethos of liberalism. This is the source of the "crisis of parliamentarianism" that Schmitt suggested. According to the democratic theory, rooted as it is in the ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau, a legitimate state must reflect the "general will," but no general will can be discerned in a regime that simultaneously espouses liberalism. Lacking the homogeneity necessary for a democratic "general will," the state becomes fragmented into competing interests. Indeed, a liberal parliamentary state can actually act against the "peoples' will" and become undemocratic. By this same principle, anti-liberal states such as those organized according to the principles of fascism or Bolshevism can be democratic in so far as they reflect the "general will."

The Concept of the Political appeared in 1927. According to Schmitt, the irreducible minimum on which human political life is based.

The political must therefore rest on its own ultimate distinctions, to which all action with a specifically political meaning can be traced. Let us assume that in the realm of morality the final distinctions are between good and evil, in aesthetics beautiful and ugly, in economics profitable and unprofitable. […]

The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy. … In so far as it is not derived from other criteria, the antithesis of friend and enemy corresponds to the relatively independent criteria of other antitheses: good and evil in the moral sphere, beautiful and ugly in the aesthetic sphere, and so on. 

These categories need not be inclusive of one another. For instance, a political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly. What is significant is that the enemy is the "other" and therefore a source of possible conflict.

The friend/enemy distinction is not dependent on the specific nature of the "enemy." It is merely enough that the enemy is a threat. The political enemy is also distinctive from personal enemies. Whatever one's personal thoughts about the political enemy, it remains true that the enemy is hostile to the collective to which one belongs. The first purpose of the state is to maintain its own existence as an organized collective prepared if necessary to do battle to the death with other organized collectives that pose an existential threat. This is the essential core of what is meant by the "political." Organized collectives within a particular state can also engage in such conflicts (i.e. civil war). Internal conflicts within a collective can threaten the survival of the collective as a whole. As long as existential threats to a collective remain, the friend/enemy concept that Schmitt considered to be the heart of politics will remain valid.

Schmitt has been accused by critics of attempting to drive a wedge between liberalism and democracy thereby contributing to the undermining of the Weimar regime's claims to legitimacy and helping to pave the way for a more overtly authoritarian or even totalitarian system of the kind that eventually emerged in the form of the Hitler dictatorship. He has also been accused of arguing for a more exclusionary form of the state, for instance, one that might practice exclusivity or even supremacy on ethnic or national grounds, and of attempting to sanction the use of war as a mere political instrument, independent of any normative considerations, perhaps even as an ideal unto itself. Implicit in these accusations is the idea that Schmitt’s works created a kind of intellectual framework that could later be used to justify at least some of the ideas of Nazism and even lead to an embrace of Nazism by Schmitt himself.

The expression "context is everything" becomes a quite relevant when examining these accusations regarding the work of Carl Schmitt. This important passage from the preface to the second edition of The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy sheds light on Schmitt’s actual motivations:

That the parliamentary enterprise today is the lesser evil, that it will continue to be preferable to Bolshevism and dictatorship, that it would have unforeseen consequences were it to be discarded, that it is 'socially and technically' a very practical thing-all these are interesting and in part also correct observations. But they do not constitute the intellectual foundations of a specifically intended institution. Parliamentarianism exists today as a method of government and a political system. Just as everything else that exists and functions tolerably, it is useful-no more and no less. It counts for a great deal that even today it functions better than other untried methods, and that a minimum of order that is today actually at hand would be endangered by frivolous experiments. Every reasonable person would concede such arguments. But they do not carry weight in an argument about principles. Certainly no one would be so un-demanding that he regarded an intellectual foundation or a moral truth as proven by the question, “What else?”

This passage indicates that Schmitt was in fact wary of undermining the authority of the republic for its own sake or for the sake of implementing a revolutionary regime. Clearly, it would be rather difficult to reconcile such an outlook with the political millenarianism of either Marxism or National Socialism. The "crisis of parliamentary democracy" that Schmitt was addressing was a crisis of legitimacy. On what political or ethical principles does a liberal democratic state of the type Weimar establish its own legitimacy? This was an immensely important question, given the gulf between liberal theory and parliamentary democracy as it was actually being practiced in Weimar, the conflicts between liberal practice and democratic theories of legitimacy as they had previously been laid out by Rousseau and others and, perhaps most importantly, the challenges to liberalism and claims to "democratic" legitimacy being made at the time by proponents of revolutionary ideologies of both the Left and the Right.

Schmitt observed that democracy, broadly defined, had triumphed over older systems, such as monarchy, aristocracy and theocracy, by trumpeting its principle of "popular sovereignty." However, the advent of democracy had also undermined older theories on the foundations of political legitimacy, such as those rooted in religion ("divine right of kings"), dynastic lineages or mere appeals to tradition. Further, the triumphs of both liberalism and democracy had brought into fuller view the innate conflicts between the two. There is also the additional matter of the gap between the practice of politics (such as parliamentary procedures) and the ends of politics (such as the "will of the people").

Schmitt observed how parliamentarianism as a procedural methodology had a wide assortment of critics, including those representing the forces of reaction (royalists and clerics, for instance) and radicalism (from Marxists to anarchists). Schmitt also pointed out that he was by no means the first thinker to recognize these issues, citing Mosca, Jacob Burckhardt, Hilaire Belloc, G. K. Chesterton, and Michels, among others.

A fundamental question that concerned Schmitt is the matter of what the democratic "will of the people" actually means, and he observed that an ostensibly democratic state could adopt virtually any set of policy positions, "whether militarist or pacifist, absolutist or liberal, centralized or decentralized, progressive or reactionary, and again at different times without ceasing to be a democracy." He also raised the question of the fate of democracy in a society where "the people" cease to favor democracy. Can democracy be formally renounced in the name of democracy? For instance, can "the people" embrace Bolshevism or a fascist dictatorship as an expression of their democratic "general will"?

The flip side of this question asks whether a political class committed in theory to democracy can act undemocratically (against "the will of the people"), if the people display an insufficient level of education in the ways of democracy. How is the will of the people to be identified in the first place? Is it not possible for rulers to construct a "will of the people" of their own through the use of propaganda?

For Schmitt, these questions were not simply a matter of intellectual hair-splitting but were of vital importance in a weak, politically paralyzed liberal democratic state where the commitment of significant sectors of both the political class and the public at large to the preservation of liberal democracy was questionable, and where the overthrow of liberal democracy by proponents of other ideologies was a very real possibility.

Schmitt examined the claims of parliamentarianism to democratic legitimacy. He describes the liberal ideology that underlies parliamentarianism as follows:

It is essential that liberalism be understood as a consistent, comprehensive metaphysical system. Normally one only discusses the economic line of reasoning that social harmony and the maximization of wealth follow from the free economic competition of individuals. ... But all this is only an application of a general liberal principle...: That truth can be found through an unrestrained clash of opinion and that competition will produce harmony.

For Schmitt, this view reduces truth to "a mere function of the eternal competition of opinions." After pointing out the startling contrast between the theory and practice of liberalism, Schmitt suggested that liberal parliamentarian claims to legitimacy are rather weak and examined the claims of rival ideologies. Marxism replaces the liberal emphasis on the competition between opinions with a focus on competition between economic classes and, more generally, differing modes of production that rise and fall as history unfolds. Marxism is the inverse of liberalism, in that it replaces the intellectual with the material. The competition of economic classes is also much more intensified than the competition between opinions and commercial interests under liberalism. The Marxist class struggle is violent and bloody. Belief in parliamentary debate is replaced with belief in "direct action." Drawing from the same rationalist intellectual tradition as the radical democrats, Marxism rejects parliamentarianism as a sham covering the dictatorship of a particular class, i.e. the bourgeoisie. “True” democracy is achieved through the reversal of class relations under a proletarian state that rules in the interest of the laboring majority. Such a state need not utilize formal democratic procedures, but may exist as an "educational dictatorship" that functions to enlighten the proletariat regarding its true class interests.

Schmitt contrasted the rationalism of both liberalism and Marxism with irrationalism. Central to irrationalism is the idea of a political myth, comparable to the religious mythology of previous belief systems, and originally developed by the radical left-wing but having since been appropriated in Schmitt’s time by revolutionary nationalists. It is myth that motivates people to action, whether individually or collectively. It matters less whether a particular myth is true than if people are inspired by it.

At the close of Crisis, Schmitt quotes from a speech by Benito Mussolini from October 1922, shortly before the March on Rome. Said the Duce:

 

We have created a myth, this myth is a belief, a noble enthusiasm; it does not need to be reality, it is a striving and a hope, a belief and courage. Our myth is the nation, the great nation which we want to make into a concrete reality for ourselves.

Whatever Schmitt might have thought of movements of the radical Right in the 1920s, it is clear enough that his criticisms of liberalism were intended not so much as an effort to undermine democratic legitimacy so much as an effort to confront its inherent weaknesses with candor and intellectual rigor.

Schmitt also had no illusions about the need for strong and decisive political authority capable of acting in the interests of the nation during perilous times. As he remarks,

If democratic identity is taken seriously, then in an emergency no other constitutional institution can withstand the sole criterion of the peoples' will, however it is expressed.

In other words, the state must first act to preserve itself and the general welfare and well-being of the people at large. If necessary, the state may override narrow partisan interests, parliamentary procedure or, presumably, routine electoral processes. Such actions by political leadership may be illiberal, but they are not necessarily undemocratic, as the democratic general will does not include national suicide. Schmitt outlined this theory of the survival of the state as the first priority of politics in The Concept of the Political. The essence of the "political" is the existence of organized collectives prepared to meet existential threats to themselves with lethal force if necessary. The "political" is different from the moral, the aesthetic, the economic, or the religious as it involves, first and foremost, the possibility of groups of human beings killing other human beings.

This does not mean that war is necessarily "good" or something to be desired or agitated for. Indeed, it may often be in the political interests of a state to avoid war. However, any state that wishes to survive must be prepared to meet challenges to its existence, whether from conquest or domination by external forces or revolution and chaos from internal forces. Additionally, a state must be capable of recognizing its own interests and assume sole responsibility for doing so. A state that cannot identify its enemies and counter enemy forces effectively is threatened existentially.

Schmitt's political ideas are, of course, more easily understood in the context of Weimar's political situation. He was considering the position of a defeated and demoralized German nation that was unable to defend itself against external threats, and threatened internally by weak, chaotic and unpopular political leadership, economic hardship, political and ideological polarization and growing revolutionary movements, sometimes exhibiting terrorist or fanatical characteristics.

Schmitt regarded Germany as desperately in need of some sort of foundation for the establishment of a recognized, legitimate political authority capable of upholding the interests and advancing the well-being of the nation in the face of foreign enemies and above domestic factional interests. This view is far removed from the Nazi ideas of revolution, crude racial determinism, the cult of the leader, and war as a value unto itself. Schmitt is clearly a much different thinker than the adherents of the quasi-mystical nationalism common to the radical right-wing of the era. Weimar's failure was due in part to the failure of the political leadership to effectively address the questions raised by Schmitt. 

______________

 

 

*The German title -- Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus -- literally means “the historical-spiritual condition of contemporary parliamentarianism.” The common rendering, “The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy,” is certainly more euphonious, though it is problematic since one of Schmitt’s central points in the book is that parliamentarianism is not democratic.   

Carl Schmitt - Weimar: State of Exception

Carl Schmitt (Part I)

Weimar: State of Exception

By Keith Preston

 

Ex: http://www.alternativeright.com/

 

 

Carl Schmitt, the Return of the German Army Following World War I (photo: BBC)

Among the many fascinating figures that emerged from the intellectual culture of Germany’s interwar Weimar Republic, perhaps none is quite as significant or unique as Carl Schmitt. An eminent jurist and law professor during the Weimar era, Schmitt was arguably the greatest political theorist of the 20th century. He is also among the most widely misinterpreted or misunderstood.

The misconceptions regarding Schmitt are essentially traceable to two issues. The first of these is obvious enough: Schmitt’s collaboration with the Nazi regime during the early years of the Third Reich. The other reason why Schmitt’s ideas are so frequently misrepresented, if not reviled, in contemporary liberal intellectual circles may ultimately be the most important. Schmitt’s works in political and legal theory provide what is by far the most penetrating critique of the ideological and moral presumptions of modern liberal democracy and its institutional workings.

Like his friend and contemporary Ernst Junger, Schmitt lived to a very old age. His extraordinarily long life allowed him to witness many changes in the surrounding world that were as rapid as they were radical. He was born in 1888, the same year that Wilhelm II became the emperor of Germany, and died in 1985, the year Mikhail Gorbachev became the final General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Schmitt wrote on legal and political matters for nearly seven decades. His earliest published works appeared in 1910 and his last article was published in 1978. Yet it is his writings from the Weimar period that are by far the most well known and, aside from his works during his brief association with the Nazis, his works during the Weimar era are also his most controversial.

Not only is it grossly inaccurate to regard Schmitt merely as a theoretician of Nazism, but it is also problematical even to characterize him as a German nationalist. For one thing, Schmitt originated from the Rhineland and his religious upbringing was Catholic, which automatically set him at odds both regionally and religiously with Germany’s Protestant and Prussian-born elites. As his biographer Joseph Bendersky noted, Schmitt’s physical appearance was “far more Latin than Germanic” and he had French-speaking relatives. Schmitt once said to the National-Bolshevik leader Ernst Niekisch, “I am Roman by origin, tradition, and right.”

At age nineteen, Schmitt entered the prestigious University of Berlin, which was exceedingly rare for someone with his lower middle-class origins, and on the advice of his uncle chose law as his area of specialization. This choice seems to have initially been the result of ambition rather than specificity of interest. Schmitt received his law degree in 1910 and subsequently worked as a law clerk in the Prussian civil service before passing the German equivalent of the bar examination in 1915. By this time, he had already published three books and four articles, thereby foreshadowing a lifetime as a highly prolific writer.

Even in his earliest writings, Schmitt demonstrated himself as an anti-liberal thinker. Some of this may be attributable to his precarious position as a member of Germany’s Catholic religious minority. As Catholics were distrusted by the Protestant elites, they faced discrimination with regards to professional advancement. Schmitt may therefore have recognized the need for someone in his situation to indicate strong loyalty and deference to the authority of the state. As a Catholic, Schmitt originated from a religious tradition that emphasized hierarchical authority and obedience to institutional norms.

Additionally, the prevailing political culture of Wilhelmine Germany was one where the individualism of classical liberalism and its emphasis on natural law and “natural rights” was in retreat in favor of a more positivist conception of law as the product of the sovereign state. To be sure, German legal philosophers of the period did not necessarily accept the view that anything decreed by the state was “right” by definition. For instance, neo-Kantians argued that just law preceded rather than originated from the state with the state having the moral purpose of upholding just law. Yet German legal theory of the time clearly placed its emphasis on authority rather than liberty.

Schmitt’s most influential writings have as their principal focus the role of the state in society and his view of the state as the essential caretaker of civilization. Like Hobbes before him, Schmitt regarded order and security to be the primary political values and Schmitt has not without good reason been referred to as the Hobbes of the 20th century. His earliest writings indicate an acceptance of the neo-Kantian view regarding the moral purpose of the state. Yet these neo-Kantian influences diminished as Schmitt struggled to come to terms with the events of the Great War and the Weimar Republic that emerged at the war’s conclusion.

Schmitt himself did not actually experience combat during the First World War. He had initially volunteered for a reserve unit but an injury sustained during training rendered him unfit for battle; Schmitt spent much of the war in Munich in a non-combatant capacity. Additionally, Schmitt was granted an extended leave of absence to serve as a lecturer at the University of Strassburg.

As martial law had been imposed in Germany during the course of the war, Schmitt’s articles on legal questions during this time dealt with the implications of this for legal theory and constitutional matters. Schmitt argued that the assumption of extraordinary powers by military commanders was justified when necessary for the preservation of order and the security of the state. However, Schmitt took the carefully nuanced view that such powers are themselves limited and temporary in nature. For instance, ordinary constitutional laws may be temporarily suspended and temporary emergency decrees enacted in the face of crisis, but only until the crisis is resolved. Nor can the administrators of martial law legitimately replace the legislature or the legal system, and by no means can the constitutional order itself be suspended.

Carl Schmitt was thirty years old in November of 1918 when Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated and a republic was established. To understand the impact of these events on Schmitt’s life and the subsequent development of his thought, it is necessary to first understand the German political culture from which Schmitt originated and the profoundly destabilizing effect that the events of 1918 had on German political life.

Contemporary Westerners, particularly those in the English-speaking countries, are accustomed to thinking of politics in terms of elections and electoral cycles, parliamentary debates over controversial issues, judicial rulings, and so forth. Such was the habit of German thinkers in the Wilhelmine era as well, but with the key difference that politics was not specifically identified with the state apparatus itself.

German intellectuals customarily identified “politics” with the activities surrounding the German Reichstag, or parliament, which was subordinated to the wider institutional structures of German statecraft. These were the monarchy, the military, and the famous civil service bureaucracy, with the latter headed up primarily by appointees from the aristocracy. This machinery of state stood over and above the popular interests represented in the Reichstag, and pre-Weimar Germans had no tradition of parliamentary supremacy of the kind on which contemporary systems of liberal democracy are ostensibly based.

The state was regarded as a unifying force that provided stability and authority while upholding the interests of the German nation and keeping in check the fragmentation generated by quarrelling internal interests. This stability was eradicated by Germany’s military defeat, the imposition of the Treaty of Versailles, and the emergence of the republic.

The Weimar Republic was unstable from the beginning. The republican revolution that had culminated in the creation of a parliamentary democracy had been led by the more moderate social democrats, which were vigorously opposed by the more radical communists from the left and the monarchists from the right.

The Bolshevik Revolution had taken place in Russia in 1917, a short-lived communist regime took power in Hungary in 1919, and a series of communist uprisings in Germany naturally made upwardly mobile middle-class persons such as Schmitt fearful for their political and economic futures as well as their physical safety. During this time Schmitt published Political Romanticism where he attacked what he labeled as “subjective occasionalism.” This was a term Schmitt coined to describe the common outlook of German intellectuals who sought to remain apolitical in the pursuit of private interests or self-fulfillment. This perspective regarded politics as merely the prerogative of the state, and not as something the individual need directly engage himself with. Schmitt had come to regard this as an inadequate and outmoded outlook given the unavoidable challenges that Germany’s political situation had provided.

Schmitt published Dictatorship in 1921. This remains a highly controversial work and subsequent critics of Schmitt who dismiss him as an apologist for totalitarianism or who attack him for having created an intellectual framework conducive to the absolute rule of the Fuhrer during the Nazi period have often cited this particular work as evidence. However, Schmitt’s conception of “dictatorship” dealt with something considerably more expansive and abstract than what is implied by the term in present day popular (or often academic) discourse.

For Schmitt, a “dictatorship” is a situation where a particular constitutional order has either been abrogated or has fallen into what Schmitt referred to as a “state of exception.” As examples of the first kind of situation, Schmitt offered both the Leninist model of revolution and the National Assembly that had constructed the constitutional framework of Weimar. In both instances, a previously existing constitutional order had been dismissed as illegitimate, yet a new constitutional order had yet to be established. A sovereign dictatorship of this type functions to

represent the will of these formless and disorganized people, and to create the external conditions which permit the realization of the popular will in the form of a new political or constitutional system. Theoretically, a sovereign dictatorship is merely a transition, lasting only until the new order has been established.

By this definition, a “sovereign dictatorship” could include political forces as diverse as the Continental Congresses of the period of the American Revolution to the anarchist militias and workers councils that emerged in Catalonia during the Spanish civil war to guerrilla armies holding power in a particular region where the previously established government has retreated or collapsed during the course of an armed insurgency. Schmitt also advanced the concept of a “commissarial dictatorship” as opposed to a “sovereign dictatorship.”

Schmitt used as an illustration of this idea Article 48 from the Weimar constitution. This article allowed the German president to rule by decree in states of emergency where threats to the immediate security of the state or public order were involved. As he had initially suggested in his wartime articles concerning the administration of martial law, Schmitt regarded such powers as limited and temporary in nature and as rescinded by the wider constitutional order once the emergency situation has passed. Contrary to the image of Schmitt as a totalitarian apologist, Schmitt warned of the inherent dangers represented by the powers granted to the president under Article 48, noting that such powers could be used to attack and destroy the constitutional order itself.

The following year, in 1922, Schmitt published Political Theology. This work advanced two core arguments. The first of these was a challenge to the legal formalism represented by German jurists of the era such as Hans Kelsen. Kelsen’s outlook was not unlike that of contemporary American critics of “judicial activism” who regard law as normative unto itself and insist legal interpretation should be restricted to pure law as derived from constitutional texts and statutory legislation, irrespective of wider or related political, sociological or moral concerns. Schmitt considered this to be a naïve outlook that failed to consider two crucial and unavoidable matters: the reality and inevitability of political and social change, and exceptional cases. It was the latter of these that Schmitt was especially concerned with. It was the question of the “state of exception” that continued to be a preoccupation of Schmitt.

Exceptional cases involved situations where emergencies threatened the state itself. For Schmitt, the maintenance of basic order preceded constitutional norms and legal formalities. There is no constitution or law if there is chaos. The important question regarding exceptional cases was the matter of who decides when an emergency situation exists. Schmitt regarded this decision-making power as the prerogative of the sovereign. Within the constitutional framework of Weimar, sovereignty was held jointly by the Reich president and the Reichstag, meaning that the president could legitimately declare a state of emergency and temporarily rule by decree if the Reichstag agreed to grant him such powers.

While Schmitt was certainly a thinker of the Right, it is a mistake to group him together with proponents of the “conservative revolution” such as Moeller van den Bruck, Oswald Spengler, Edgar Jung, or Hugo von Hofmannsthal. There is no evidence of him having expressed affinity for the views of these thinkers or joining any of the organizations that emerged to promote their ideas. Schmitt’s conservatism was squarely within the Machiavellian tradition, and he counted Machiavelli, Hobbes, Jean Bodin and conservative counterrevolutionaries such as Joseph De Maistre and Juan Donoso Cortes as his influences.

During the Weimar era, Schmitt expressed no sympathy for the mystical nationalism of the radical Right, much less the vulgar racism and anti-Semitism of the Nazi movement. He was closer to the anti-liberal thinkers that James Burnham and others subsequently labeled as “the neo-Machiavellians.” These included Vilfredo Pareto, Robert Michels, Gaetano Mosca, and Georges Sorel along with aristocratic conservatives like Max Weber. These thinkers expressed skepticism regarding the prospects of liberalism and democracy and emphasized the role of elites, the irrational, and the power of myth with regards to the political. Though Schmitt never joined a political party during the Weimar era, within the spectrum of German politics of the time he can reasonably be categorized as something of a moderate. He had admirers on both the far Right and far Left, including sympathizers with the Conservative Revolution as well as prominent intellectuals associated with the Marxist Frankfurt School, such as Walter Benjamin, Franz Neumann, and Otto Kirchheimer.

Schmitt’s own natural affinities were mostly likely closest to the Catholic Center Party, which along with the Social Democrats who had led the revolution of 1918 were the most consistently supportive of the republic and the constitutional order, and which represented the broadest cross-section of economic, class, regional, and institutional interests of any of the major parties during Weimar.

Like Hobbes before him, Schmitt was intensely focused on how order might be maintained in a society prone to chaos. Both economic turmoil and political instability continually plagued the republic. Successive political coalitions failed in their efforts to create a durable government and chancellors came and went. The Reichstag was immobilized by the intractable nature of political parties representing narrow class, ideological, or economic interests and possessing irreconcilable differences with one another. Additionally, many of the political parties that formed during the Weimar era, including those with substantial representation in the Reichstag, possessed little or no genuine commitment to the preservation of the republican order itself. Extremist parties, most notably the German Communist Party (KPD) and the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), or the Nazis, as they came to be called, openly advocated its overthrow. Terrorism was practiced by extremists from both the right and left. Crisis after crisis appeared during the Weimar period, and the parliament was each time unable to deal with the latest emergency situation effectively. The preservation of order subsequently fell to the president. Article 48 of the constitution stated in part:

If a state does not fulfill the duties imposed by the Reich constitution or the laws of the Reich, the Reich president may enforce such duties with the aid of the armed forces. In the event that public order and security are seriously disturbed or endangered, the Reich president may take the necessary measures in order to restore public security and order, intervening, if necessary, with the aid of the armed forces. To achieve this goal, he may temporarily suspend entirely or in part, the stipulated basic rights in articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153. All measures undertaken in accordance with sections 1 or 2 of this article must be immediately reported to the Reichstag by the Reich president. These measures are to be suspended if the Reichstag so demands.

As an indication of the unstable nature of the Weimar republic, Article 48 was invoked more than two hundred and fifty times by successive presidents during the republic’s fifteen years of existence.

Interview: Anarcho-Primitivist Thinker and Activist John Zerzan

Interview: Anarcho-Primitivist Thinker and Activist John Zerzan

By Alex BIRCH

Ex: http://www.corrupt.org/

John Zerzan is one of the leading advocates of the anti-civilization movement, communicating through speech, literature and action that modern society is unsustainable and harmful to our psychology and freedom. Following in the footsteps of Theodore Kaczynski, Zerzan is a radical anarcho-primitivist and believes that we must get rid of civilization itself, returning to a very simple lifestyle close to nature. His ideas confront commonly held beliefs about primitive people and about our path towards progress.

When was the first time you seriously began to question modern civilization?

I began to question civilization by the early '80s. Began the route to this in the '70s when I was looking at the beginnings of industrialism in England, which led to certain conclusions about the nature of technology (that's it's always about values, never neutral). This went on to thinking about division of labor and soon I was confronted by the nature of civilization. About when Fredy Perlman was making similar conclusions.

Most people today would agree that we live in troubled times, but few would dare to claim the system is fundamentally flawed. What makes you defend the radical viewpoint that we cannot reform civilization to better meet our needs and the future health of our planet?

Freud saw civ [Editor's note: civilization] as the cause of neurosis (Civ and its Discontents), Jared Diamond called domestication (the basis of civ) "the worst mistake humans ever made." It isn't so hard to come to a radical conclusion about it; what is harder is to project an alternative.

A big part of your criticism against civilization is that it gives birth to hierarchies and inequalities. Is it possible for humans to completely get rid of social power structures?

I think it's possible to get rid of the structures; afterall. Homo didn't seem to need them for more than two million years. Power structures emerge quite recently really. That is with domestication, followed swiftly by civ.

German anthropologist Hans-Peter Dürr made a study during the 80’s, which described primitive tribes in modern time displaying extreme social guilt over nakedness and sexuality. Aren’t there other countless examples of primitive tribes where social and cultural norms uphold power and gender structures as part of everyday life?

Primitive is a fairly useless term. The watershed is whether or not people practice some domestication. This sounds simplistic but it holds true universally. Think of a behavior or attitude that we might call negative. Did it exist before domestication? No is the simple answer.

Theodore Kaczynski rejected leftism, because he believed it would inevitably support collectivism, and thus, the growth of large-scale societies. Do you agree with him or have you chosen a different ideological path?

I do agree with that. I am anti-leftist. ('Post-leftist' is a phoney term signifying about nothing.)

Kaczynski also famously claimed that technology creates incentive for its own continued growth. Is technology a necessary evil, or is primitive technology in small-scale communities acceptable, as long as it doesn’t develop into industrial forms?

Tools are fine, that which has little or no division of labor/specialization. Systems of technology are a 'necessary evil' if you want eco-disaster and barren techno-cultures (like this one).

Let’s say we had the possibility of returning to local, self-sustaining communities tomorrow. Would we be able to regulate or prevent communities to unite and begin developing better technology and more advanced lifestyles?

Given what we know about the bad results of political and technological development I would think that people would not want to replicate that path.

You’ve said that the “symbolic thinking” of modern man, including language, mathematics and time, limits and oppresses our freedom. What do you believe led up to the development of these things—why did humanity choose civilization culture and not primitive culture? Do we have a choice at all?

My guess is that the very, very slow movement of division of labor crept up on humans and set the stage for domestication. All of society moves along together so that it is hard to reverse things - which is a big reason technology never goes backward. The whole question of the symbolic is connected, I think, to the movement of alienation. Unless it's just a coincidence that both seemed to have come along together.

Kaczynski argues that we need to destroy key elements of industrial society in order to return to a pre-industrial order. Do you believe this is realistically possible, and if so, are there ethical limits to radical activism against the current order?

I think the elements need to be destroyed but if the population wants technology it will likely, I'm afraid, simply be re-installed. So the challenge is deeper than just physically destroying the stuff. The limits of militancy would seem to be determined in terms of how serious the situation is in one's estimation. That is people who are shocked by radical acts are basically those who feel that the dominant order is mainly sound and healthy.

Do you believe green anarchists are organized enough to be able to overthrow the current system and replace it with your ideal vision, or do anarcho-primitivists need to align themselves with other anti-globalist groups in order to grow more powerful?

What other 'anti-globalist' groups, is one question. Where are leftist groups, for instance, anti-globalization? They want to reform it not get rid of it - because industrial existence, mass society, is fine with them. But a-p folks [Editor's note: anarcho-primitivists] are nowhere potent enough yet to be decisive against it.

What changes do you want to see being implemented as a part of reducing the negative impacts of globalization?

Abolition of globalization ,in favor of radically decentralized, face-to-face community somewhat along the lines of band society, which obtained for thousands of generations.

Some people might compare your views with that of Rousseau. Isn’t there a danger in romanticizing “the wild man” against “the modern man,” imposing a romantic picture of what’s it like to live a primitive lifestyle?

Romantizing or idealizing life outside of domestication/civlization is not a good idea and the road there is not likely to be a picnic. But what are the choices? Continuing on a path of suicide, genocide, ecocide?

The current ecological crisis is beginning to scare many. Is humanity by nature an irresponsible species, or what motivates us to value profit and greed over long-term health for the environment and ourselves?

No, not by nature. Again, consider that war, hierarchy, eco-destruction, the systematic objectification of women, religion, work, etc etc. are products of domestication/civ and that people - who were cooking with fire 2 million years ago -did fine without that exalted development.

Do you believe a collapse of the globalist order is inevitable, or is there a possibility for humanity to unite its best of minds and choose a different path?

I am actually hopeful that as reality continues to present itself unmistakably that there could be a conscious choice in favor of a sane existence. That of course is what I am working toward.

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Visit John Zerzan's site at http://www.johnzerzan.net/ for more information.

Serge Latouche et le refus du développement

 

Archives de SYNERGIES EUROPEENNES - 1986



Serge Latouche et le refus du développement

La problématique, universelle, du développement économique et social des pays faisant partie de ce que l'on appelle le Tiers Monde, constitue, depuis maintenant plusieurs décennies, un champ de débats et de controverses interminables. Deux écoles se présentent. L'une prétend que, dans une vision linéaire occidentale de l'histoire des peuples, la voie du développement est le passage obligé de tous les peuples sur le chemin de leur "évolution". Cette vision regroupe dans une conclusion commune les émules de l'école libérale (favorable non seulement au développement d'un marché mondial mais aussi à la liberté totale des échanges de biens et marchandises) et une partie de l'école marxiste, issue partiellement des mêmes doctrines propres aux économistes du XVIIIème siècle. L'autre école ne présente pas la même cohérence. Globalement, elle nie que le développement soit le résultat d'une série de mécanismes socio-économiques répétitifs et affirme même que les formes du développement "à l'occidentale" ne sont pas nécessairement positives en soi, ne favorisent pas obligatoirement le bien-être de ces peuples et ne contribuent pas automatiquement à la préservation de leurs identités.

 

Serge LATOUCHE, spécialiste du Tiers Monde, épistémologue des sciences sociales, est aussi professeur d'économie politique. Sa démarche se présente, dès le départ, comme un refus de l'école matérialiste orthodoxe, que ce soit dans sa version libérale ou marxiste. Pour lui, l'idéologie du développement constitue d'une part une idéologie de camouflage et, d'autre part, une négation plus ou moins avouée des identités ethno-culturelles. Idéologie de camouflage: l'idée de développement cache médiocrement un paradigme essentiel de la pensée issue de la matrice judéo-helléni- stique. Il y a probablement une forme de "ruse de la raison occidentale" qui assure ainsi son pouvoir de domination, pouvoir colonial proprement dit, sur les pays dits "sous-développés" ou "moins avancés" (la variété des catégories de dénomination de ces pays révèlent bien le caractère idéologique des analyses et non la neutralité du langage prétendument scientifique).

 

Qu'est-ce que le développement? Une approche vulgaire répondrait sans hésitation: le bien-être des masses et un "niveau de vie" élevé (équivalent au moins à l'American Way of Life). Cette réponse constituerait une fois de plus un camouflage du véritable discours idéologique qui sous-tend cette déclaration de principe aussi simpliste qu'intéressée. Serge LATOUCHE nous le rappelle: jusqu'à présent, toutes les expériences de politiques de développement ont échoué... Toutes les techniques ont fait la preuve de leur inefficacité... D'ailleurs face à ces échecs répétés, certains ont pu parler de "mythe du développement" (Cf. Celso FURTADO ou Candido MENDES). Le résultat de ces tentatives est catastrophique: exode rural massif, qui a entraîné non seulement une désertification des campagnes (avec des effets explicites comme la baisse de la capacité de production agricole du pays, donc l'aggravation de la dépendance alimentaire et, en même temps, la dégradation des conditions écologiques sur les terres laissées à l'abandon) mais aussi une "clochardisation" monstrueuse des paysans dans les périphéries des grandes cités occidentalisées (le phénomène des bidonvilles dans les mégalopoles comme Mexico, le développement de la criminalité juvénile comme à Rio de Janeiro ou certaines grandes villes africaines, l'augmentation des activités économiques parallèles à l'économie mondiale localisée, etc..). Phénomène aussi de destructions des tissus locaux de production s'inscrivant dans une logique mondialisée de division et de délocalisation des tâches (Cf. les stratégies des firmes transnationales).

 

Dans un certain nombre de ces pays, les recettes nouvelles procurées par l'exploitation des ressources locales, soit directement exploitées par l'Etat (version post-nassérienne en Egypte, par ex.) soit concédées à des entreprises étrangères (Cf. le cas d'Elf Aquitaine, multinationale pétrolière française, au Gabon), ces profits réalisés par cette rente naturelle, furent réutilisés dans le sens d'un mode de développement copié des modes des pays du centre du système. La construction d'énormes complexes industriels (Nigéria, par ex.), qui exigeait d'énormes investissements et dont les profits espérés en termes de développement industriel national et d'implantation sur les marchés mondiaux, fut refusée malgré les espoirs des dirigeants locaux. Ces investissements furent surtout l'occasion, pour les entreprises étrangères (bâtiments et travaux publics comme Bouygues en France), de réaliser de substantiels chiffres d'affaires sur les chantiers ouverts. Parallèlement à ces recettes, on constate que le système bancaire occidental, alléché par ce "développement" des pays du Tiers Monde, pratique alors une politique de crédit très large, dépassant même souvent les règles de sécurité généralement admises en la matière par les professionnels eux-mêmes. D'où, dans les années 80, l'affolement du système bancaire occidental face au montant de la dette internationale, surtout aggravé par l'insolvabilité évidente des pays endettés (la crise pétrolière de 1973 est aujourd'hui passée et on peut constater sans aucun effort que le marché pétrolier est aujourd'hui victime d'une crise des prix à la baisse). La rente n'est plus le gage certain d'une solvabilité.

 

Pour E. MORIN, cette crise du développement, c'est à la fois la crise de l'idéologie occidentale sous la forme de deux de ses mythes fondateurs (conquête de la nature-objet par l'homme souverain et triomphe de l'individu atomisé bourgeois) et "le pourrissement du paradigme humanistico-rationnel de l'homo sapiens/faber"...

 

Par ailleurs, Serge LATOUCHE pose ensuite la question fondamentale, valable pour toute idéologie universaliste: "Y a-t-il un niveau de bien-être quantitativement repérable et ayant une signification dans l'absolu?" (p.9). Cette "absolutisation", dans le temps et dans l'espace, des valeurs occidentales, tant au niveau des valeurs fondamentales que dans les pratiques concrètes de réalisation, se pose aussi dans la remise en question des idéaux occidentaux: 1) idéologie des droits de l'homme (qui ne sont plus les droits que l'on peut concevoir dans un système de valeurs spécifiques comme celles qui président à l'Habeas Corpus des cultures anglo-saxonnes) à prétention universaliste et impérialiste (Reagan prétend justifier ses multiples agressions dans le monde au nom d'une vague référence à cette idéologie), 2) système de "démocratie représentative" idéologiquement et politiquement hégémo- nique (cette valorisation absolue impliquant aussi une dévalorisation des autres systèmes, de tous les autres systèmes politiques), etc... Le paradigme occidental du développement se traduit en fait dans ce que Serge LATOUCHE nomme une "objectivation du social".

 

Cette objectivation, qui passe par l'acquisition théorique des formes de vie occidentales (possession des biens de consommation utiles) se conjugue avec une utilisation neutralisée de la technique. Cette dernière est alors perçue comme purement "naturelle", moyen objectif de maîtrise, donc sans caractère culturel et "engagé". Serge LATOUCHE ajoute: "L'objectivation du développement est la source de la conception "technique" des stratégies de développement". La question, précise-t-il afin de parer à toute fausse critique (du style: "c'est trop facile de refuser le développement quand on en bénéficie soi-même"), n'est pas de dire non à une augmentation des conditions matérielles d'existence des hommes, mais de traduire le développement dans un schéma qui respecte et tienne compte des spécificités culturelles de chaque peuple. Le développement ne doit pas, en sus d'une paupérisation des peuples, favoriser le phénomène majeur de déculturation. L'auteur précise que le tort provoqué par le développement aux peuples est bien celui-là et que sa nature est d'être radical. En effet, le développement est  -il faut le souligner-  un "paradigme occiden- tal". Il s'agit d'une expérience historique liée à un ensemble de valeurs propres à une aire culturelle, globalement judéo-chrétienne. LATOUCHE écrit: "Le développement, c'est un regard sur le monde qui vise à valoriser celui dont il émane et à dévaloriser l'autre". Il ajoute que proposer cette expérience en modèle universel indépassable est un "maquillage" de l'impérialisme de l'Occident. Certains, plus précis, préfèrent parler de "néo-colonialisme".

 

Nous ne prétendons pas épuiser toute la richesse des réflexions économiques et culturelles de ce livre. Les analyses des principes d'autodynamisme du capital, le débat sur l'antériorité du capitalisme sur l'impérialisme (thèse léniniste classique) contesté par Serge LATOUCHE, sont quelques-uns des éléments de ce livre magistral. Citons, en guise de conclusion, ces quelques phrases: "Finalement, par des voies différentes, libéraux et marxistes se rejoignent sur ce même "diagnostic réaliste". Ils communient dans la même vision occidentale d'une histoire unidimensionnel- le". "En limitant dans le résultat du mouvement de leur analyse théorique la portée des destructions à leur portée strictement économique, les marxistes réduisent le sous-développement des pays victimes à un recul des forces productives et non à la destruction des bases d'une autre forme d'épanouissement historique. L'équation 'sous-développement = retard' n'est tautologique que si le champ du possible est réduit à une ligne d'évolution unique, sur laquelle on ne peut effectivement qu'être en avance ou en retard".

 

Deux citations qui résument la position de Serge LATOUCHE: refuser les analyses purement économiques pour introduire les paramètres culturels et politico-historiques, non pas comme critères exogènes, de pure extériorité par rapport à un soi-disant "système" infrastructurel de nature quantitative et économique, mais comme sujets actifs de la réflexion analytique. Une indépendance intellectuelle que tous nos lecteurs apprécieront.

 

Ange SAMPIERU.

 

Serge LATOUCHE, Faut-il refuser le développement?, PUF, Paris, 1986, 135 FF.

De la flexibilité du travail en Europe

 

Archives de SYNERGIES EUROPEENNES - 1986

 

De la flexibilité du travail en Europe

 

Au cœur du débat politique au-jourd'hui en Europe: la question de la flexibilité . Pour les libéraux, c'est la panacée salvatrice, qui va nous faire quitter les sables mouvants de la crise. Pour les syndicats et les socialistes, c'est le "Grand Satan". Bref, dans cette opposition doctrinale, les "libéraux" se donnent le masque de l'innovation et les socialistes apparaissent comme des conservateurs frileux. Et, globalement, le dilemme mène à l'impasse. Un groupe d'économistes de la FERE (Fédération Européenne de Recherches Economiques) a choisi une approche différente: celle de la régulation , combinant approche historique (une urgente nécessité) et analyse institutionnelle (pour éviter les pièges tendus par les utopies universalistes).

 

Au schématisme en vogue dans les arènes politiciennes répond, enfin, une approche nuancée, tenant compte des facteurs historiques et des modes nationaux de gestion du politique. Cette réponse nouvelle permet d'échapper à l'euro-pessimisme qui vise à faire accroire que l'Europe est irrémédiablement condamnée à cause de la rigidité de ses structures socio-économiques, à moins qu'in extremis, elle n'adopte le modèle reaganien et ne saborde ses réseaux de solidarité. Pour Robert BOYER, coordinateur de la FERE, et ses collègues européens, l'Europe peut parfaitement se donner une flexibilité propre, différente de la "flexibilité" néo-libérale des reaganomics, peut ainsi moderniser les secteurs-clefs de son industrie et conserver et maintenir ses réseaux de solidarité sociale. En clair, ce que proposent les économistes de la FERE, c'est un néo-bismarckisme socialiste, seule réponse satisfaisante au néo-libéralisme a-social. Pour reprendre le vocabulaire inauguré par ces universitaires, il s'agit de mettre au point, de concert avec les instances de représentation syndicale, une flexibilité offensive, pour répondre aux défis sans précédent qu'enregistre actuellement l'Europe.

 

Quels sont ces défis et comment la flexibilité offensive pourra y répondre? D'abord, envisageons les défis: 1) Depuis 1973, année de la première crise pétrolière, le chômage de masse, et corrélativement les inégalités sociales, n'ont cessé de croître. Si, en 1960 et en 1973, la CEE comptait 2,5 % de chômeurs, elle en compte 10,2 % aujourd'hui. Aux Etats-Unis, la progression a été de 5,5 % (1960), à 4,9 % (1973) et à 7,2 % (1985). Au Japon, on est modestement passé de 1,7 % (1960) à 1,3 % (1973) et à 2,5 % (1985).

 

2) Le deuxième défi, ce sont la lenteur et les difficultés des reconversions industrielles qui remettent en question la place internationale de notre continent. En effet, la spécialisation de l'Europe consiste surtout en "vieilles industries" qui exigent de lourds financements publics. De ce fait, il manque alors des fonds pour lancer des secteurs porteurs d'avenir. L'Europe perd du terrain face à son concurrent japonais, qui enregistre lui des percées spectaculaires dans les domaines de la haute technologie.

 

3) Le troisième défi, ce sont les politiques étroitement nationales, celles du chacun pour soi. Les Européens ont travaillé dans la dispersion et provoqué l'apparition d'une concurrence intra-européenne, non basée sur les principes du protectionnisme (ce qu'interdit le Traité de Rome) mais sur des modulations "nationales" de la flexibilité du rapport salarial, mesures destinées à faire face au Japon mais qui entraînent aussi, sans doute involontairement, des divergences d'intérêts et de stratégie entre Européens. Cette hétérogénéité fractionne l'Europe qui, face à des blocs de plus de 100 ou 200 millions de producteurs/consommateurs, n'offre plus que des résistances dérisoires, à l'échelle du "petit nationalisme". Il n'y a pas de vision continentale et cohérente, en Europe, dans les domaines de l'économie et des politiques sociales.

 

Ce "petit nationalisme", qui agit dans le Concert international comme agit l'esprit de clocher au sein des Etats-Nations, engendre précisément cet euro-pessimisme qui qualifie notre Europe de continent englouti, de nouvelle Atlantide, incapable de s'adapter à la marche du monde et aux innovations technologi- ques. Pour échapper à ce pessimisme qui fige les volontés, il convient préalablement de dresser le bilan des faiblesses réelles de l'Europe et de ses forces potentielles.

 

Les deux autres blocs de l'OCDE (E.U., Japon) connaissent une évolution bien différente et plus encourageante que celle de l'Europe. Les Etats-Unis connaissent une phase fortement extensive, avec création d'emplois mais productivité stagnante, ce qui engendrera des problèmes à moyen terme. Le Japon vit toujours à l'heure du cercle vertueux (productivité, compétitivité, emplois). Grâce à leur productivité, et contrairement aux Américains, les Japonais créent de l'emploi, augmentent leurs salaires et maintiennent leur rythme de croissance. L'Europe, elle, connaît des gains de productivité mais ceux-ci n'assurent pas notre compétitivité, et, ipso facto, suscitent le chômage. La création des emplois tertiaires ne suit pas le rythme préoccupant de la désindustrialisation. Bref, disent BOYER et ses collègues, la dynamique fordienne (de production et de consommation de masse) est enrayée, sans que les petits mondes politiciens soient capables d'apporter des substituts crédibles et acceptables par l'ensemble de la population.

 

Voilà pour les raisons légitimes d'être euro-pessimiste. Mais l'objectivité oblige à reconnaître les limites des modèles américain et japonais. La reprise américaine demeure fragile, la productivité n'augmente pas dans des proportions satisfaisantes et la surévaluation du dollar (de 1979 à 1985) a détruit des pans entiers de l'industrie américaine, ce qui a obligé les Etats-Unis à importer des quantités considérables de biens. Malgré les performances brillantes de la recherche, les Américains n'ont pas su commercialiser leurs découvertes de manière optimale. Quant au Japon Superstar, il dépend trop de l'ouverture des frontières à ses marchandises et un éventuel retour du protectionnisme, aux Etats-Unis ou en Europe, le menace comme une épée de Damoclès.

 

Conséquence: il faut valoriser les atouts de l'Europe. D'abord, la productivité, qui, en Europe, a dépassé les niveaux américains depuis 1979!! Mais cette réussite est jugulée par l'absence de cohérence en matière de recherche. L'Europe demeure tristement avare pour ses chercheurs. Les parts du PNB réservées à la recherche restent moindres en Europe qu'aux Etats-Unis et au Japon. De plus, cette recherche n'est pas liée à l'activité industrielle réelle. Le patronat européen et les clowns politiciens qui animent les vaudevilles parlementaires, refusent toujours de se soumettre à l'intelligence technique. La FERE suggère une relecture de SCHUMPETER, pour qui la sortie des crises s'opérait par "révolutions technologiques" et, corrélativement, par diminution du pouvoir politique des classes oisives (aristocratie, militaires, avocats, clergés parasitaires, rentiers, industriels sans formation d'ingénieur, etc.) au profit des classes productrices et créatrices (ingénieurs, ouvriers des secteurs de pointes, concepteurs, enseignants, médecins, etc.).

 

Ce démarrage problématique de l'Europe, qui paie drôlement cher le pouvoir qu'elle laisse aux classes oisives, la met dans une situation plus que critique. Elle est battue, dans la guerre économique et dans l'affrontement pour la maîtrise des nouvelles technologies, par les Etats-Unis et le Japon. De ce fait, ses avantages risquent de ne plus se mesurer que par rapport aux pays plus pauvres, qui, devenant parfois Nouveaux Pays Industrialisés (NPI), se mettent à leur tour à la concurrencer. D'où le risque de voir s'implanter des "zones franches" en Europe comme dans le Sud-Est asiatique, précisément pour concurrencer les productions de cette région. THATCHER a tenté le coup en Ecosse et des voix se sont élevées en Belgique (DELAHAYE et VERHOFSTADT) pour pratiquer une telle politique de démission nationale. Heureusement,  ces pitreries d'avocats politiciens sont restées lettre morte...

 

Mais l'Europe peut jouer le rôle de David face aux Goliaths. Elle peut transformer ses faiblesses en leviers d'une construction européenne. C'est ce que BOYER et ses collègues appellent "l'art du judoka". Comme Carl SCHMITT qui déplorait la disparition du "jus publicum europaeum" et souhaitait le rétablir, BOYER et alii veulent "promouvoir un espace social euro- péen". Dans ce cadre,  finalement conforme aux principes de la géopoliti- que, les Etats renonceraient aux recours à la flexibilité défensive, qui réduit les salaires sans rien résoudre, pour passer à une flexibilité offensive, en suivant trois autres axes: recomposition des dyna- miques régionales, création d'une véritable Europe industrielle et technologique, constitution d'une vraie politique économique com- mune.

 

Le premier axe, implique une décentralisation intelligente, capable de générer des complémentarités à l'échelle continentale. Le second axe implique, selon le modèle suédois de politique industrielle (Cf. Orientations n°5 et Vouloir n°27), de générer un haut niveau de vie (avec croissance démogra- phique; ce que la Suède n'a pas trop réussi) grâce à des structures de production efficaces capables de résister à la concurrence internationale. Ce qui implique, deuxième axe, de consacrer des fonds publics importants aux secteurs de pointe (projets Eureka, Esprit, etc.), en dépit des groupes de pression qui veulent maintenir les subventions aux secteurs vieillis. Mais, une telle politique requiert la formation des travailleurs, donc une revalorisation de l'enseignement qui ne s'adresserait plus aux seuls enfants et adolescents, mais engloberait la moitié ou plus de la population adulte. Le degré de discipline sociale devra augmenter. La lutte contre le chômage passe par cette nécessité et par cette volonté de se former sans cesse. Le "New Deal" européen de demain impliquera sans doute une coopération (et non une compétition) sociale-darwinienne au sein des sociétés européennes, pour permettre à notre continent de gagner son struggle for life contre les Etats-Unis et le Japon. Ce faisceau de projets constitue ce que les auteurs de la FERE appellent la flexibilité offensive, intention politique bien plus prometteuse que l'actuelle flexibilité défensive, contraignante, a-sociale et anti-politique des conservateurs thatchériens et des obscurantistes libéraux . Enfin, l'œuvre des économistes de la FERE renoue avec les grands principes économiques, qu'envers et contre toutes les modes, nous n'avons jamais cessé de défendre dans ces colonnes: FICHTE, LIST, RODBERTUS, SCHMOLLER, SCHUMPETER (1).

 

Gilles TEGELBECKERS.

 

Sous la direction de Robert BOYER, La flexibilité du travail en Europe, Editions La Découverte, Paris, 331 pages, 175 FF.

 

(1) Cf. Orientations n°5, textes de Guillaume FAYE, Thierry MUDRY et Robert STEUCKERS. Cf. également, Contre l'économisme de G. FAYE (service librairie). 

"Rechtsvölker sind immer im Recht!" - Im Gespräch mit Dr. R. Oberlercher

»Rechtsvölker sind immer im Recht!«

Ex: http://www.deutsche-stimme.de/

Hegel, die NPD und die Arbeiterklasse: Die Deutsche Stimme im Gespräch mit Dr. Reinhold Oberlercher

Frage: Herr Dr. Oberlercher, Sie haben vor Jahren den Begriff der »Wortergreifung« geprägt, die immer der Machtergreifung vorangehen müsse. Wie beurteilen Sie Art und Inhalt der Wortergreifungen der NPD, und was wäre zu verbessern?

Oberlercher: Die Wortergreifungen der NPD sind nicht immer systemsprengend. Übernimmt man gar die Zuschreibungen des BRD-Systems und verortet sich selbst z.B. als rechten Rand, dann ist man nicht mehr die politische Befreiungsorganisation der Gesamtnation. Geht das System schließlich unter, wird sein rechter Rand dann natürlicherweise mit ihm verschwinden.

Frage: Demnach ist es aber genauso wenig zielführend, sich als links zu bezeichnen. Eine systemüberwindende Opposition müßte sich also als gesamtdeutsche Volksbewegung verstehen?

Oberlercher: Ja, das allein ist der richtige Weg. Das deutsche Volk umfaßt nämlich viele politische Richtungen: Fortschrittliche und Traditionalisten, Konservative und Liberale und Sozialisten, Anarchisten und Etatisten. Und alle auch noch in rechter und in linker Ausführung.

Frage: Fälschlicherweise wird »rechts« ja oft gleichgesetzt mit national. Welche Bedeutung haben die Begriffe links und rechts in einer Zeit, in der die festen Abgrenzungen zunehmend verschwinden?

Oberlercher: Ach, wissen Sie, die Abgrenzungen waren eigentlich noch nie wirklich fest, sondern immer sehr beweglich, weswegen sie auch nicht totzukriegen sind. In der politischen Theorie, die das Deutsche Kolleg vertritt, ist der Begriff des Politischen das Recht und das Rechtssubjekt und nicht, wie bei Carl Schmitt, die Unterscheidung von Freund und Feind. Politik dreht sich unserer Auffassung nach um Rechte, die man hat und die man verteidigen muß, oder um solche Rechte, die man nicht hat und die man fordern muß. Die Recht-Inhaber sind politisch die Rechten, die Recht-Forderer sind politisch die Linken. Da es den Kampf um das Recht auch in Zukunft geben muß und geben wird, dürfte auch der Rechts-Links-Gegensatz fortbestehen.

Frage: Aufgrund der wirtschaftlichen Konzentrationen der vergangenen Jahre wird die These vertreten, daß man von Kapitalismus nicht mehr sprechen könne. Vielmehr habe eine Veränderung hin zum Monopolismus stattgefunden. Was halten Sie von dieser These?

Oberlercher: Nichts. Denn Monopol ist ein Gegenbegriff zu Konkurrenz oder auch zu Oligopol, aber nicht zu Kapital, folglich kann der Kapitalismus auch nicht in einen Monopolismus übergehen. Die ganze Entwicklung des kapitalistischen Systems ist eine seiner Einführung und Durchsetzung in vorkapitalistischen sozialen Bereichen. Solange es solche Bereiche gibt, hat der Kapitalismus noch zu erobernde soziale Räume und damit eine geschichtliche Aufgabe vor sich. Das Gewaltmonopol des Staates z.B. wie der gesamte Staatsapparat überhaupt ist solch eine Sphäre, die dem Kapital noch nicht zur Gänze formell und reell unterworfen ist, aber daran wird eifrig gearbeitet.
Ebensowenig sind Universitäten und allgemeinbildendes Schulsystem dem Kapital schon gänzlich reell subsumiert. Nach der bis zur Vollautomation der materiellen Produktion geführten kapitalistischen Revolution in der Wirtschaft wäre es durchaus ein noch kapitalimmanenter revolutionärer Fortschritt, die pädagogische Produktion, die die Arbeitskräfte herstellt, zu privatisieren, zu automatisieren und der kapitalistischen Entwertung aller (Arbeits-) Werte, also der Aldisierung ihrer Preise, zu unterwerfen. Der Deutsche Nationalmarxismus hat diese revolutionäre Seite des kapitalistischen Systems immer befürwortet.

Frage: Sie sprachen davon, daß die anhaltende Vorknechtschaft Bedingung und Voraussetzung für eine kommende Vorherrschaft Deutschlands sei. Trauen Sie sich eine Prognose zu, wie lange die Vorknechtschaft noch andauern und was sie beenden wird?

Oberlercher: Nachdem ich im Jahre 1995 den Staatsuntergang der BRD und der übrigen Reichszerteilungsregimes für das Jahr 2000 prognostiziert hatte, wage ich im Jahre 2010 nicht, eine weitere von der Geschichte falsifizierbare Vorhersage über einen Zusammenbruchstermin abzugeben. Soweit es nun aber die Vorknechtschaft der BRD gegen ihre europäischen Mitknechte angeht, hat sich nichts geändert, aber beim Verhältnis gegenüber ihrem Herrn und Besatzer USA ist auffällig, daß trotz rapiden Verfalls die BRD immer häufiger als Anführer einer Fronde gegen das israelhörige US-Imperium auftritt, dessen Machtverfall relativ größer ist als der seiner Knechte. Die Residuen des rheinischen Produktivkapitals generieren noch immer Gegenkonzepte zum global nomadisierenden Spekulanten-Kapital des Imperiums.

Frage: Das Schicksals Ihres ehemaligen Mitstreiters Horst Mahler bewegt nicht nur das nationale Lager. Wie weit kann die nationale Opposition in ihrem Widerstand gegen das antinationale System gehen, ohne ihrem Anliegen zu schaden?

Oberlercher: Horst Mahler hat dem nationalen Anliegen nicht geschadet. Er hat aus eigenem Entschluß die Märtyrerschaft für Volk und Reich der Deutschen auf sich genommen. Seit das System Horst Mahler für das Festhalten an seiner Meinung zu 12 Jahren Gefängnis verurteilt hat, können alle deutschen Kollaborateure der Besatzungsmächte wissen, welche Mindeststrafe ihrer harrt.

Frage: Um das Deutsche Kolleg ist es etwas ruhig geworden, obwohl Sie Ihren
Ehrenplatz im jüngsten Hamburger Verfassungsschutzbericht erneut erfolgreich verteidigt haben. Sind die Repressionen des Systems der Grund, daß man so wenig hört?

Oberlercher: Der Grund ist einfach darin zu sehen, daß das Deutsche Kolleg im wesentlichen alles gesagt hat, das in Theorie und Programm gesagt werden mußte. Die Arbeit der Theoretiker und Programmatiker in der Neuen Deutschen National-Bewegung ist im großen und ganzen beendet, die geistige Gewalt hat
zugeschlagen, nun ist die materielle Gewalt geschichtlich am Zuge. Das System ist geistig bereits enthauptet, jetzt ist es nur noch physisch zu enthaupten. Also: Arbeiter der Faust an die Front!

Frage: Könnten Sie uns bitte Ihr Konzept der Deutschland AG erläutern?

Oberlercher: Die Deutschland AG ist die Herstellung einer nachkapitalistischen Wirtschaftsordnung. Sie ist die Vergesellschaftung aller Produktionsmittel und die Vermeidung ihrer Verstaatlichung. Denn die Verstaatlichung der kapitalistischen Produktionsmittel wäre ihre Absonderung von der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft insgesamt, somit also weder die klassenlose Vergesellschaftung in ihr noch ihre wirkliche Vergemeinschaftung durch den alle Bürger und ihren Staat umfassenden staatsbürgerlichen Verband.
Das Kapital wird also bürgerlich vergesellschaftet und zugleich national vergemeinschaftet, aber nicht verstaatlicht. Konkret wird folgendes durchgeführt: Das auf deutschem Boden angelegte Gesamtkapital wird in eine Aktiengesellschaft der deutschen Volkswirtschaft überführt. Die Aktien dieser Deutschen Volkswirtschafts-AG werden gleichmäßig auf alle Reichsdeutschen verteilt. Sie sind unveräußerlich und jeder erhält ein gleichgroßes Aktienpaket mit gleichem Stimmrecht, aus dem er die von der Aktionärsversammlung genehmigte Dividende als Einkommen aus Kapital bezieht. Ich verweise auf die DK-Erklärung „Die liberalistische Volksrevolution“ vom 30.11.2008.

Frage: In Ihrem jüngsten Werk beschäftigen Sie sich mit dem in der ganzen europäischen Geistesgeschichte nicht verstandenen Unterschied zwischen Recht und Gesetz. Worin besteht dieser entscheidende Unterschied?

Oberlercher: Recht, der substantielle Begriff des Politischen, ist Besitz, der Eigentum ist. Gesetz hingegen ist eine bloße Besitznorm, und ein Normbesitz ist ein Muster. Gesetz ist also etwas Technisches und nichts Rechtliches. Folglich erreicht man mit keiner Betrachtung, Beachtung oder Brechung eines Gesetzes
die Sphäre des Rechts. Nun gibt es in der Weltgeschichte ganze Völker, deren Geist entweder vom Gesetz oder vom Recht geleitet wird. Also sind Gesetzesvölker wie z.B. die Juden und die Araber niemals im Recht, hingegen Rechtsvölker wie z.B. die Deutschen und die Dänen sind immer im Recht.

Frage: Angesichts so vieler Karrieristen, Opportunisten und Geschichtsfälscher, die uns ihre Deutungen über die 68er Bewegung mit Hilfe der Massenmedien liefern: was ist die Bedeutung dieser Bewegung, was ihr geistiger Kern aus Ihrer Sicht? War 68 so anti-national, wie uns die Katheder-Sozialisten heute lehren?

Oberlercher: Die 68er Bewegung war nationalrevolutionär. Ihr Hauptidentifikationspunkt war der Wiedervereinigungskrieg der Vietnamesen gegen die amerikanische Besatzungsmacht im Süden und die pro-kapitalistischen Kollaborateure des Saigoner Regimes. Das wurde als Inspiration für den deutschen Befreiungskampf aufgenommen und führte zur Erfindung der Neuen Linken durch Hans-Jürgen Krahl und Rudi Dutschkes mitteldeutsche SDS-Fraktion. Für die Neue Linke war das Volk, die ganze Nation, das Subjekt aller nationalen und sozialen Befreiungskämpfe einschließlich der Revolutionen, nicht nur eine Klasse. Die Klasse der Industriearbeiter wurde als letzte ausreichend starke soziale Stütze des kapitalistischen Systems erkannt, die aber schon damals
eine schrumpfende Klasse war wie vordem schon das Besitzbürgertum.
Die Alte Linke (Gewerkschaften, SPD, KPD) blieb dagegen auf ihre Klassenbasis beschränkt und wurde damals bereits als tendenziell absteigend erkannt, weil der Prozeß der Automatisierung der Produktion an ihrem Ast sägte. Dutschke ging in seinen strategischen Überlegungen von der Arbeitslosigkeit der Mehrheit im Volke aus. Folglich galt das Hauptaugenmerk den Problemen des Reiches der Freiheit.

Frage: Woran arbeiten Sie, was sind Ihre politischen Zukunftspläne?

Oberlercher: Ich arbeite an einer Broschüre, die »Hegels System in Formeln« darstellt. Selbstverständlich ist darin auch eine komprimierte Verbalfassung enthalten. Außerdem schreibe ich an einer hegelianischen »Philosophie der Mathematik«. Politische Wirkungsmöglichkeiten im engeren Sinne sehe ich für mich gegenwärtig nicht.

Herr Dr. Oberlercher, wir danken Ihnen für das Gespräch.

Das Gespräch mit Dr. Reinhold Oberlercher führte Uwe Meenen.

Gnose et politique chez Jacob Taubes

Archives de SYNERGIES EUROPEENNES - 1986

 

Gnose et politique chez Jacob Taubes

 

Gnose et politique. Apparamment deux do- maines sans rapports aucuns l'un avec l'autre. La Gnose, c'est la théologie, la religion de la fuite hors des vanités de ce bas monde. La Gnose, c'est le refus de l'histoire, donc l'exact opposé du politique qui, lui, est immersion totale dans l'imma- nence de la Cité, dans le grouillement des passions et des intérêts. Pour Jacob TAUBES, pourtant, il est possible d'interpré- ter historiquement le déploiement des idéaux gnostiques, de repérer les traces que le mental gnostique a laissé, par le truchement du christianisme, dans les idéologies politiques. Ce travail de recherche, il l'a entrepris lors d'un colloque de la Werner-Reimers-Stiftung, tenu à Bad Homburg en septembre 1982. Les actes de ce colloque sont désormais disponibles sous forme de livre (références infra).

 

Le thème central, celui de la Gnose comme phénomène religieux, a déjà été abondem- ment exploré. Mais uniquement en tant que phénomène religieux de la fin de l'antiquité. Lors du colloque de Bad Homburg, la plupart des participants ont d'ailleurs abordé la Gnose sous l'angle strictement théologique, relatant ses avatars antiques. La Gnose n'est pourtant pas morte; elle s'est infiltrée dans le discours politique moderne. Odo MARQUARD définit la Gnose comme suit: "La Gnose est la positivisation de la Weltfremdheit (le fait d'être étranger au monde) et la négativisation du monde". Selon MARQUARD, la Gnose génère une conception eschatologique de l'histoire qui juge mauvais le monde tel qu'il est et valorise du même coup toute marginalité affichée par rapport à lui. Le Moyen Age jugule les débordements de l'eschatologisme, en posant un Dieu "bon", créateur d'un monde globalement positif. Ce monde, produit d'un créateur bon, ne peut en conséquence qu'être bon, conforme à sa bonté infinie. Le Moyen Age met donc un terme à la Weltfremdheit de la Gnose et revalorise la création. L'Augustinisme part du principe que cette "bonne création", ce "bon monde" a été perverti(e) par l'homme qui a abusé de sa liberté et s'est servi des richesses de cette création pour satisfaire des appétits de puissance. Le "bon monde", comme le "Bon Dieu", sont victimes de la "malifacture" de l'homme. Pour MAR- QUARD comme pour le théologien et philosophe Hans BLUMENBERG, le nomina- lisme constitue un retour de la Gnose en restituant au "Bon Dieu" une totale liberté d'action et donc une irresponsabilité vis-à-vis de ses créations qui, automatiquement, ne sont plus globalement considérées comme positives.

 

Cette "maléfaction" du monde provoque l'âge des révolutions populaires, des contestations sociales, des guerres de religions, parce que les hommes veulent abattre le monde tel qu'il est pour le remplacer par un monde idéal. A la suite de ces querelles, de ces guerres civiles perma- nentes, l'Europe connaîtra un deuxième dépassement du mental gnostique grâce à la "neutralisation" (Carl SCHMITT en parlera abondemment, dans le sillage de ses études sur HOBBES). L'Etat hobbesien neutralise ainsi les querelles religieuses; il valorise le monde régi par le Prince. Un siècle plus tard, LEIBNIZ parlera du meilleur Dieu, créateur du meilleur des mondes possibles. Dans cette optique, l'immanence acquiert à nouveau une valeur positive. La réalité de l'existence est acceptée telle quelle par les Lumières anglo-saxonnes. Le monde est acceptée mais, simultanément, dépourvu de tout caractère sensationnel.

 

A cette disparition du merveilleux et de l'enthousiasme eschatologique, succédera iné- vitablement la récidive gnostique, avec le pessimisme de ROUSSEAU et le concept marxiste d'aliénation. Pour MARQUARD, cette récidive gnostique recèle un danger très sérieux: celui de ne plus tenir compte des réalités complexes du monde immanent (jugées reflets du mal en soi) et d'engendrer une praxis du politique reposant sur le tout-ou-rien.

 

L'objet du colloque de Bad Homburg était d'accepter cette interprétation de l'histoire des idées politiques en Europe ou de la réfuter. Pour le professeur berlinois Richard FABER, pourfendeur génial de la notion d'Occident (Cf. Orientations no.5), le chemi- nement de MARQUARD est typiquement libéral, rattachable aux Lumières anglo-saxonnes, qui biffent des esprits les enthousiasmes et les fureurs révolutionnaires. Le Dieu "bon" des Lumières anglo-saxonnes, mais aussi de LEIBNIZ, est, pour MARQUARD, mort sous les coups de la récidive gnostique et du romantisme comme le signale un autre participant au colloque, Ioan P. CULIANU. Pour FABER, les thèses de MARQUARD expriment ipso facto un néo-conservatisme rigide, à mettre en parallèle avec la renaissance des thèses néo-libérales anti-révolutionnaires de HAYEK et de von MISES. L'alibi de MARQUARD, affirme FABER, est son "polythéisme", en tant qu'acceptation des diversités du monde. Mais ce polythéisme, ajoute encore FABER, minimise la fonction politique, qui est par définition transformatrice et quasi-prophéti- que. Les dieux du polythéisme marquardien sont "la science, la technique et l'économie" qui engendreront la neutralisation dont notre époque, héritière directe des gnoses romantique et marxiste, aurait rudement besoin.

 

Dans une seconde contribution au colloque de Bad Homburg, FABER s'attaque au théologien et philosophe germano-américain Eric VOEGELIN. Si MARQUARD et BLUMENBERG valorisaient essentiellement l'anti-gnosticisme des Lumières anglo-saxon- nes, VOEGELIN valorise, lui, la neutralisation médiévale de l'eschatologisme gnostique. Il y voit le véritable génie de l'Occident car, dans le libéralisme philoso- phique du XVIIIème siècle et dans le positivisme comtien, se cache l'idée d'une révolution permanente, d'une incomplétude du monde qui se "guérit" par de petites interventions chirurgicales. Le monde n'est pas accepté, dans ces philosophies sociales et politiques, comme globalement "bon". Dans les débats politiques, cela engendre une praxis marquée d'indécision voire un chaos non violent. Pour FABER, pourtant, VOEGELIN, BLUMENBERG et MARQUARD doivent être renvoyés dos à dos comme produits "occidentaux" qui refusent de percevoir le monde comme tissu conflictuel incontournable.

 

On le constate: le débat est sans fin, il interpelle toute l'histoire spirituelle et intel- lectuelle de l'Europe. Le politique véhicule nécessairement la gnose et nier les éléments gnostiques correspond à une négation partielle du politique.

 

Autre trésor que nous avons découvert dans les actes de cet époustouflant colloque, qui nous ouvre de vastes horizons: un essai d'Ekkehard HIERONIMUS sur le dualisme et la Gnose dans le mouvement völkisch allemand et plus précisément dans les cénacles qui ont adhéré au national-socialisme. Nous y reviendrons dans une prochaine contribution...

 

Robert STEUCKERS.

 

Jacob TAUBES, Gnosis und Politik, (Religionstheorie und Politische Theologie, Band II), Wilhelm Fink Verlag / Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, München/Paderborn, 1984, 306 S., 78 DM. 

J. J. Esparza: de la postmodernité

 

Archives de SYNERGIES EUROPEENNES - 1986

 

De la post-modernité

 

José Javier ESPARZA

 

La post-modernité est à la mode depuis une bonne décennie. Le terme "post-moderne" a été forgé par le philosophe français Jean-François LYOTARD qui entendait exprimer un sentiment hyper-critique, généré par le désenchantement que suscitaient notre époque (in: La condition postmoderne, Editions de Minuit, Paris, 1979). Depuis lors, les interprétations du phénomène post-moderne se sont succédé pour être appliquées sans trop d'ordre ni de rigueur. On en est même venu à l'identifier à une mode musicale, ce qui, finalement, revient à ne percevoir que la partie d'un tout. La musique hyper-sophistiquée par la technique, les "comics" américains ou la bande dessinée européenne, la mode, le foisonnement des manifestations artistiques de coloration dionysia- que ne sont ni plus ni moins que des facettes de la post-modernité. Mais les facettes les plus visibles donc, a fortiori, les plus appréciées par la culture mass-médiatique. Avant toute chose, il convient de comprendre ce qui a précédé ces phénomènes pour éviter de nous fourvoyer dans une analyse trop fragmentaire de la post-modernité.

 

Présentisme et désenchantement

 

Quels sont les facteurs sociologiques qui définissent la post-modernité? Pour Fernando CASTELLO, journaliste à El Pais, il s'agit de la vogue post-industrielle, portée par l'actuelle révolution scientifique et technique qui implique l'abandon des fonctions intellectuelles à la machine et se manifeste dans l'univers social par une espèce de nihilisme inhibitoire, par un individualisme hédoniste et par le désenchante- ment (1). D'autres, tel Dionisio CAÑAS, nous décrivent l'ambiance émotionnelle de l'attitude post-moderne comme un déchantement par rapport au passé marqué par l'idéologie du "progrès". Cette idéologie a donné naissance à la modernité et aujourd'hui, sa disparition engendre une désillusion face à un présent sans relief ainsi qu'une forte sensation de crainte face au futur immédiat. L'ensemble produit une vision apocalyptique et conservatrice, négatrice de la réalité, vision qui, selon CAÑAS, coïncide avec une esthétique "réhumanisante", anti-moderne et, parfois, engagée. Une telle esthétique avait déjà été annoncée par Gimenez CABALLERO, dans son ouvrage Arte y Estado, publié en 1935 (2). Pour ces deux auteurs, il s'agit, en définitive, d'un retour au conservatisme.

 

Entendons, bien sûr, que ce conservatisme ne saurait se réduire à un mental "droitier". Guillau- me FAYE (3) parle, par exemple, d'un néo-conservatisme des gauches, régressif mais tou- jours égalitaire, qui survient lorsque le progressisme se rétracte en un présent sans perspective, une fois coupées la mémoire et la dimension vivantes du passé. La post-modernité, l'attitude post-moderne, restent "progressistes" (du moins en paroles) et égalitaire, mais le progrès qu'elles évoquent est mis à l'écart lorsqu'il affronte, dans la réalité concrète, un futur incertain et critique. Le discours progressiste est, à l'épreuve des faits, freiné et immobilisé par la menace d'une crise mondiale. Mais s'il veut conserver sa valeur et sa légitimité, il doit continuer sa marche en avant tout en maintenant son utopie de normalisation du monde. Le résultat est que l'utopie progressiste commence à perdre sa crédibilité, faisant place à une forme élégante et sophistiquée de présentisme en laquelle le lyrisme technique de la modernité devient un snobisme technologique.

 

Le manque de perspectives que nous offre le futur crée un vide fatal, une sensation de désenchantement vis-à-vis du présent. Dans la modernité, le présent avait toujours été la préfiguration du futur, sa mise en perspective, qu'il s'agissait de la lutte des classes pour une société communiste ou de la normalisation légale pour aboutir au règne sans partage de la société marchande. Lorsque l'idéologie sociale, la modernité, n'a plus la possibilité de préfigurer quoi que ce soit, la post-modernité émerge. Mais pourquoi la modernité n'est-elle plus à même d'offrir un futur? Pourquoi est-on arrivé au point final de la modernité?

 

La mort du finalisme

 

L'idée de fin se trouve dans l'embryon même des idéologies de la modernité. Toutes partent d'un point de départ négatif (exploitation d'une classe prolétaire par une classe plus élevée, impossibilité de mener à bien les échanges naturels entre les individus, etc.) pour arriver à un point final positif (la société sans classes, le libre-échange, etc.). Dès lors, le finalisme est partie intégrante de la modernité en tant qu'idéologie.

 

Il est évident que la modernité n'est pas seulement une idéologie. La modernité est un phénomène ambigu parce qu'elle contient tant une idéologie homogénéisante et inorganique qu'un vitalisme transformateur de la nature organique. Ainsi, aux yeux d'Oswald SPENGLER, la modernité présente d'un côté la vitalité faustienne et aventurière qui est en grande partie à la base de la force d'impulsion du devenir historique européen, mais d'un autre côté, elle présente des tendances meurtrières qui prétendent normaliser (moderniser) la planète entière, en promouvant une vision inorganique. Une telle normalisation signifie pour SPENGLER la fin de l'âge des "hautes cultures" (Hochkulturen), la fin de l'ère des spiri- tualités et de la force vitale des peuples. Il existe donc un divorce entre la modernité comme vitalisme, comme aventure, comme "forme". La première est la vision progressiste de l'histoire, la seconde est la vision tragique du monde et de la vie. La première est celle qui a prédominé.

 

Le souci d'homogénéiser et de normaliser le monde, pour qu'il accède enfin à la fin paradisiaque promise, trouve son cheval de bataille dans l'idéologie du progrès, véhiculant une vision du temps linéaire qui relie le monde réel négatif au monde idéal positif. Cette particularité rappelle ce que NIETZSCHE nommait l'inversion socratique: la césure du monde en deux mondes, germe de toutes les utopies. Le progrès idéologique se perçoit comme matrice de la modernité. Mais ce progrès signifie aussi la certitude de l'existence d'un point final, puisqu'on ressent l'infinitude du progrès comme une hypocrisie et que, dans ce cas, il faudra un jour cesser de croire en lui. NIETZSCHE n'a-t-il pas écrit dans l'Antéchrist: "L'humanité ne représente pas une évolution vers quelques chose de meilleur ou de plus fort, ou de plus haut, comme on le croit aujourd'hui; le progrès est purement une idée moderne; c'est-à-dire une idée fausse". Par sa propre nature, la notion de progrès implique la fin de l'histoire. C'est ce que pressentait sans doute Milán KUNDERA, lorsqu'il écrivait: "Jusqu'à présent, le progrès a été conçu comme la promesse d'un mieux incontestable. Aujourd'hui cependant, nous savons qu'il annonce également une fin" (4). Cette certitude qu'une fin surviendra est cela précisément qui produit le désenchantement. Tous les finalismes sont à présent morts parce qu'ils ne sont légitimes que dans la mesure où ils atteignent un but hic et nunc.

 

Régression et fin de l'histoire

 

Mais quid dans le cas où l'on affirmerait aucun finalisme? Dans le cas où l'on ne prétendrait pas arriver à une fin de l'histoire, à la fin des antagonismes et des luttes entre volontés oppo- sées? Cette conclusion, consciemment ou inconsciemment, des milliers d'intellectuels l'ont déjà tirée. En se posant une question très simple: où se trouve ce fameux paradis annoncé par les progressistes? La réponse est lapidaire: nulle part. Déduction: la seule possibilité qui reste pour sauver l'utopie, c'est de cultiver une idéologie de la régression. On passe de ce fait à un culte du "régrès" qui remplace la culte du "progrès" devenu désuet et sans objet.

 

Ce n'est pas un hasard si la gauche de notre époque vire au "vert" et à un certain passéisme idyllique. Pour la gauche actuelle, l'Arcadie pastoraliste s'est substituée à l'Utopie constructiviste. Cette mutation est dans la logique des choses. Le progrès avait été conçu selon une double optique: idéologique et technologique. Le progrès technologique, véhiculé par cet esprit faustien et aventurier (SPENGLER), qui donna toute son impulsion au développement de l'Europe, a, plutôt que de normaliser et de pacifier, créé plus de tensions et d'antagonismes. Prométhée, dit-on, est passé à droite... La gauche a réagi, consciente que le progrès technique était par définition sans fin et limitait ipso facto son "monde idéal"; elle délaissa la technique, abandonna son promé- théisme (sauf, bien sûr en URSS où le technicisme marxiste se couple au mythe de Gengis Khan). La gauche a opéré un tour de passe passe conceptuel: elle n'a plus placé la fin de l'histoire, l'homogénéisation de la planète, dans un avenir hypothétique. Sur le plan des idées et de la praxis, elle a replacé cette fin dans l'actualité. Attitude clairement observable chez les idéologues de l'Ecole de Francfort et leurs disciples.

 

Cette mutation s'est effectuée de manière relativement simple. Il s'agit, dans la perspective actuelle de la gauche, de vivre et de penser comme si la révolution et le paradis sans classes, idéaux impossibles à atteindre, existaient de manière intemporelle et pouvaient être potentialisés par l'éducation, le combat culturel et la création de mœurs sociales nouvelles. On constate que la gauche intellectuelle effectue cette mutation conceptuelle au moment où sociaux-démocrates et sociaux-libéraux affirment de fait la fin de l'histoire parce qu'ils estiment, sans doute avec raison, que leur société-marché a abouti. On croit et l'on estime qu'est arrivé le moment d'arrêter le mouvement qui a mis fin jadis à l'Ancien Régime et implanté l'ordre social-bourgeois.

 

Mais que faire si ce mouvement ne s'arrête pas partout, en tous les points de la planète? Si le principe de révolution agite encore certains peuples sur la Terre? En Occident, on a décrété que l'histoire était terminée et que les peuples devaient mettre leurs volontés au frigo. Et en ce bel Occident, c'est chose faite. Elles croupissent au frigidaire les volontés. Ailleurs dans le monde, la volonté révolutionnaire n'est pas extirpée. Le monde effervescent du politique, la Vie, les relations entre les peuples et les hommes n'obéissent pas partout à la règle de la fin des antagonismes. Croire à cette fiction, c'est se rendre aveugle aux motivations qui font bouger le monde. C'est déguiser la réalité effeverscente de l'histoire et du politique avec les frusques de l'idéologie normalisatrice et finaliste.

 

Là nous percevons clairement la contradiction fondamentale de la société post-moderne.

 

Un doux nihilisme

 

Dans de telles conditions, nos sociétés ne peuvent que vivre en complet dysfonctionnement. D'un côté, nous avons un monde idéal, suggéré par les idéologies dominantes, conforme à ses présupposés moraux qu'il convient de mettre en pratique dans sa vie quotidienne pour ne pas se retrouver "marginal" (humanitarisme, égalitarisme, bien-être). D'un autre côté, nous voyons un monde réel qui, en aucun cas, n'obéit à l'idéologie morale moderne et qui nous menace constamment d'une crise finale, d'une apocalypse terrible.

 

La technique qui nous permet de survivre dans cette contradiction est simple: c'est la politique de l'autruche. Le divorce entre les deux réalités crée une formidable schizophrénie sociale. Selon les termes de BAUDRILLARD: Perte du rôle social, déperdition du politique... De toutes parts, on assiste à une perte du secret, de la distance et à l'envahissement du domaine de l'illusion... Person- ne n'est actuellement capable de s'assumer en tant que sujet de pouvoir, de savoir, d'histoire (5). Le spectateur a supplanté l'acteur. Quand les hommes, les citoyens avaient un rôle, le jeu social détenait un sens. N'étant plus que des spectateurs impuissants, tout sens s'évanouit. Et derrière le spectacle, en coulisses, se déploie un monde qui n'a rien à voir avec celui qui nous est offert, suggéré, vanté. Le système cherche à ce que nous vivions comme si la fin de l'histoire, du politique, du social était déjà survenue. Autrement dit, le système simule la disparition du sens que nous évoquions.

 

Il ne reste plus aux hommes qu'à s'adonner au nihilisme "soft" d'un monde sans valeurs. Mais le sens des valeurs a-t-il réellement disparu? Non. Il se cache. Il est imperceptible dans les sociétés de consommation de masse d'Europe mais reste vivace là où se manifeste une volonté collective d'affirmation. Du point de vue de l'idéologie occidentale dominante, les signes d'un tel sens restent cachés comme un visage derrière un masque. Pourtant, ce visage est celui d'un être bien vivant. C'est ce qui explique pourquoi l'homo occidentalis ne mesure les phénomènes nationalistes du Tiers-Monde que sous l'angle de folies individuelles alors qu'en réalité, il s'agit de volontés nationales d'échapper à la dépradation américaine ou soviétique. Dans nos sociétés, au contraire, il n'y a déjà plus de volonté collective mais il règne un individualisme englouti dans l'indifférence généralisée de la massification. C'est un univers où chacun vit et pense comme tous sans pour autant sortir de son petit monde individuel. C'est là une autre forme de nihilisme et l'on ne détecte rien qui puisse affirmer une quelconque volonté.

 

Cet individualisme a déteint sur toute la société post-moderne. Il a suscité tous les phénomènes qui caractérisent ce post-modernisme, y compris ce nihilisme hédoniste, né de la disparition du sens. Gilles LIPOVETSKI confirme cet individualisme intrinsèque de la société post-moderne en énumérant les traits qui la caractérisent: recherche de la "qualité de la vie", passion pour la personnalité, sensibilité "écolo", désaffection pour les grands systèmes qui exigent la motivation, culte de la participation et de l'expression, mode rétro,... (6).

 

Arrêtons nous un moment à ce culte de la participation et de l'expression qui sont symptômes supplémentaires de la schizophrénie sociale et, par là, facteurs de nihilisme. Il existe dans nos sociétés une impulsion de type moral qui appelle constamment à la participation dans la vie publique et à l'expression de la volition individuelle par le biais de la communication. Ainsi, l'on prétend que nos sociétés sont des sociétés de communication, thème que l'on retrouve chez des auteurs aussi éloignés l'un de l'autre que HABERMAS, MARSHALL McLUHAN ou Alvin TOFFLER. Mais où participer, où s'exprimer quand les institutions qui avaient traditionnelle- ment la fonction de canaliser ces pulsions et ces nécessités ont cessé de posséder un sens, ont succombé aux impulsions commerciales de la communication de masse? Comme l'a vu justement BAUDRILLARD (7), le système appelle sans cesse à la participation, il veut sortir la masse de sa léthargie, mais la masse ne réagit pas: elle est trop bien occupée à assurer son bien-être individuel. La participation et l'expression jouent aujourd'hui le même rôle de norme sociale que l'idée que le souverain était l'incarnation d'un pouvoir divin. Actuellement, les normes morales  -déjà non politiques-  du système social-démocratique ne sont qu'un simple vernis, comme le fut, à la fin du XVIIème siècle, l'idée du souverain comme principe incarnateur. Cela signifierait-il que nous sommes à la fin d'un cycle? En termes clairs: le silence des masses, l'impossibilité des dogmes fondamentaux du système démocratique signifie- raient-ils le terme, la mort de l'idée démocratique de participation du peuple, laissant cette participation à une simple fiction juridique, comme le pense Jürgen HABERMAS (8)?

 

Ainsi, l'impossibilité de réaliser ce qui paraît le plus important dans toute société démocratique qui se respecte pourrait donner naissance à un nouveau facteur de nihilisme qui s'ajouterait à ceux déjà énumérés. D'autre part, à la vision apocalyptique inhérente à tout finalisme, se joignent actuellement divers paramètres de crise: économiques, écologiques, géostratégiques... Tous pourraient, à un moment donné, converger. En réalité, la crise est l'état habituel du monde depuis que l'homme existe sur cette planète. Le sens que l'on donnait à la vie était celui qui réduisait l'acuité des crises; il y avait alors quelque chose à leur opposer. Aujourd'hui, en revanche, la crise se profile avec netteté et le consensus a disparu. L'appareil macroéconomique transnational qui régit actuellement l'Occident est occupé à régulariser un système de crise. Mais cette crise ne peut être régularisée indéfiniment. Après la crise viendra inéluctablement la guerre... ou une autre situation conflictuelle qui ne prendra pas nécessairement le visage de la confrontation militaire directe; Songeons aux guerres économiques et culturelles qui affaiblissent déjà l'Europe, avec parfois la frappe chirurgicale et précise d'un terrorisme manipulé...

 

Parier pour l'interrègne

 

Le nihilisme de notre actuelle quotidienneté n'a rien à voir avec le nihilisme classique, exprimé par le terrorisme urbain et le chaos social. Le nihilisme actuel est un nihilisme doux, "soft", accepté comme tel par le système en tant que rouage de son mécanisme complexe. Un nihilisme qui peut se présenter comme inhibiteur, c'est-à-dire comme une acception des normes politiques et morales du système couplée à un refus d'avaliser son fonctionnement et les hiérarchies qu'il implique. Mais un nihilisme qui peut aussi se présenter comme nihilisme "exhibé", comme c'est le cas pour les "nouveaux barbares". Finalement, aucun des deux modèles n'est réellement nocif pour le système. Ce flou est précisément ce qui fait de la post-modernité une époque potentiellement décisive, dans la mesure où on peut franchement la définir comme un interrègne. Interrègne obscur, chargé d'ivresse dionysiaque sourde, comme nous l'a décelé Guillaume FAYE (9). Interrègne qui est prémisse de quelque chose d'encore incertain. Quelque chose qui pourrait rendre à notre monde son enthousiasme, son sens de l'aventure, la nécessité du risque et la volonté de prendre à nouveau des décisions. Tel est le pari de tout interrègne.

 

Giorgio LOCCHI écrit que les représentants les plus autorisés de la Révolution Conservatrice allemande du temps de Weimar, de JüNGER à HEIDEGGER, ont appelé "interrègne" cette période d'attente durant laquelle le destin bascule entre deux possibilités: 1) achever le triomphe de la conception du monde égalitaire avec sa "fin de l'histoire" ou 2) promouvoir une régénération de l'histoire (10). La post-modernité actuelle est un interrègne. Pour cela elle peut être le creuset d'une nouvelle révolution culturelle comme celles qu'a connues l'Europe tout au long de son histoire. En dernière instance, la balance penchera de l'un ou de l'autre côté...

 

Dès lors, nous pouvons affirmer qu'il existe quatre attitudes fondamentales en jeu actuellement. L'une de ces attitudes est proprement post-moderne, elle est hédoniste, éclectique, dionysiaque, indécise. Cette atittude-là est celle du pari pour les mutations superficielles mais contestatrices. Une deuxième attitude est également conforme au système; elle intériorise les présupposés "progressistes" et prône l'aveuglement face à l'histoire en marche, face au devenir du réel; elle fuit tout espèce de pari. Une troisième attitude pourrait être celle de nouveaux barbares, citadins ou ruraux. Elle consiste à sortir du système, à en sortir psychiquement pour les premiers, physiquement pour les secondes. Il s'agit de tuer les parieurs en "cassant le jeu". Enfin, la quatrième attitude est l'attitude faustienne et aventurière: miser et gagner. Mais pour quel enjeu? La régénération de l'histoire européenne. La décision de miser constitue alors un moment-clef.  Telle pourrait être l'attitude d'une Nouvelle Révolution, inspirée de la révolution conservatrice allemande des années 20. Tous les révolutionnaires conservateurs, écrit Louis DUPEUX (12), se définissent comme résolument modernes... Loin de la peur et des tourments qu'engendre le pessimisme conservateur traditionnel, la Révolution Conservatrice dégage une modernité contre le modernisme ou le progressisme, une contre-modernité. Il s'agit, en clair de se décider pour le côté organique de la modernité et d'abandonner les chimères inorganiques. Accepter et assumer la modernité comme forme vitale, comme impulsion et non comme sens orienté vers un finalisme inéluctable (et finalement misérabiliste) qu'on n'atteindra en fin de compte jamais. Rappellons-nous l'expression de JüNGER: fondre passé et futur en un présent vivant, ardent.

 

Il faut que dès maintenant, ceux qui ont décidé de parier pour cette nouvelle révolution spirituelle prennent conscience que le destin de notre culture et de notre continent se trouve entre leurs mains. Il serait toutefois assez ingénu de rejeter simplement les manifestations sociales et esthétiques de la post-modernité au nom d'un "conservatisme" qui, au bout du compte, ne pourrait conduire à rien. Il s'agit de savoir ce que peut donner comme résultat "l'orgiasme" en lequel se plonge la post-modernité. FAYE a écrit que dans les orgies romaines, seul l'amphitryon reste sobre: parce que le "climax", l'apogée du dionysisme n'est autre que le signal du prochain retour d'Apollon. Dans la perspective de cette nouvelle révolution culturelle, notre nouvelle révolution culturelle, la post-modernité ne peut être que la certitude, esthétique et mobilisatrice, que Dionysos sait ce qu'il fait même si ses serviteurs ignorent ses desseins.

 

Javier ESPARZA.

(traduction française de Rogelio PETE).

 

Cet article de Javier ESPARZA, traduit par Rogelio PETE est extrait de la revue PUNTO Y COMA (N°2, décembre 85 - février 1986). Adresse: Revista PUNTO Y COMA, Apartado de Correos 50.404, Madrid, España. Tel.: [phone]. Abonnement pour six numéros pour tout pays européen: 2600 pesetas. Tarif étudiant: 2200 pesetas.

 

Notes

 

(1) Castello, F., Tiempos Posmodernos, El Pais, 30/1/1985.

(2)  Cañas, D., La posmodernidad cumple 50 años en España, El Pais, 28/4/1985.

(3) Faye, G., La modernité, ambigüités d'une notion capitale, in: Etudes et Recherches n°1 (2ème série), printemps 1983.

(4) Kundera, M., cité par Régis Debray in Le pouvoir intellectuel en France, Ramsay, Paris, 1979.

(5) Baudrillard, Jean, Les stratégies fatales, Grasset, 1983.

(6) Lipovetsky, G., L'ère du vide, Gallimard, 1983.

(7) Baudrillard, J., Cultura y Simulacro, Kairos, 1984.

(8) Habermas, J., Historia y crítica de la opinión pública, Gili, Col. Mass Media, 1982.

(9) Faye, G., La nouvelle société de consommation, Le Labyrinthe, 1984.

(10) Locchi G., Wagner, Nietzsche e il mito sovrumanista, Akropolis, 1982.

(11) L'auteur du présent article ne trouve pas, dans la "révolution conservatrice" actuelle des Etats-Unis, d'éléments valables pour une régénération historico-culturelle de l'Europe. Il estime que ces éléments sont davantage à rechercher dans le sillage de la "Nouvelle Droite" française et des mouvements qu'elle a influencé ou dont elle a reçu l'influence en Europe.

(12) Dupeux L., Révolution Conservatrice et modernité, in Revue d'Allemagne, Tome XIV, Numéro 1, Janvier-Mars 1982.

 

Evola’s Metaphysics of War

Derek Hawthorne

 

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com

Julius Evola
Metaphysics of War:
Battle, Victory, and Death in the World of Tradition
Aarhus, Denmark: Integral Tradition Publishing, 2007

Italian Traditionalist Julius Evola (1898–1974) needs little introduction to the readers of Counter-Currents. The Metaphysics of War is a collection of sixteen essays by Evola, published in various periodicals in the years 1935–1950.

These essays constitute what is certainly the most radical attempt ever made to justify war. This justification takes place essentially on two levels: one profane, the other sacred. At the profane (meaning simply “non-sacred”) level, Evola argues that war is one of the primary means by which heroism expresses itself, and he regards heroism as the noblest expression of the human spirit. Evola reminds us that war is a time in which both combatants and non-combatants realize that they may lose their lives and everything and everyone they value at any moment. This creates a unique moral opportunity for individuals to learn to detach themselves from material possessions, relationships, and concern for their own safety. War puts everything into perspective, and Evola states that it is in such times that “a greater number of persons are led towards an awakening, towards liberation” (p. 135):

From one day to the next, even from one hour to the next, as a result of a bombing raid one can lose one’s home and everything one most loved, everything to which one had become most attached, the objects of one’s deepest affections. Human existence becomes relative–it is a tragic and cruel feeling, but it can also be the principle of a catharsis and the means of bringing to light the only thing which can never be undermined and which can never be destroyed. [p. 136]

So far, these ideals may seem quite similar to those espoused by Ernst Jünger–and indeed Evola alludes to him in one place in the text (p. 153), and is uncharacteristically positive. (Usually when Evola references a modern author it is almost always to stick the knife in.) However, Evola goes well beyond Jünger, for he adds to this ideal of heroism and detachment a “spiritual” and even supernatural dimension (this is the “sacred” level I alluded to earlier). In essential terms, Evola argues that the heroism forged in war is a means to transcendence of this world of suffering and to identification with the source of all being. He even argues that the hero may attain a kind of magical quality.

Unsurprisingly, Evola attempts to situate his treatment of heroism in terms of the doctrine of the “four ages,” a staple of Traditionalist writings. The version of the four ages most familiar to Western readers is the one found in Ovid, where the ages are gold, silver, bronze, and iron. However, Evola has squarely in mind the Indian version wherein the iron age (the most degraded of all) is referred to as the Kali Yuga. To these correspond the four castes of traditional society, with a spiritual, priestly element dominating in the first age, the warrior in the second, the merchant (or, bourgeoisie, the term most frequently used by Evola) in the third, and the slave or servant in the fourth.

When the bourgeoisie dominates in the third age, “the concept of the nation materializes and democratizes itself”; “an anti-aristocratic and naturalistic conception of the homeland is formed” (p. 24). Ironically, when I read this I could not help but think of fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany. To the liberal mind, fascism and Nazism both are “ultra-conservative” (to put it mildly). From the Traditionalist perspective, however, both are modern, populist movements. And National Socialism especially found itself caught up in reductionist, biological theories of “the nation.” Nevertheless, Evola writes that “fascism appears to us as a reconstructive revolution, in that it affirms an aristocratic and spiritual concept of the nation, as against both socialist and internationalist collectivism, and the democratic and demagogic notion of the nation” (p. 27). In other words, whatever its shortcomings may be, fascism is for Evola a means to restore Tradition. Evola also writes approvingly of fascism having elevated the nation to the status of “warrior nation.” And he states that the next step “would be the spiritualization of the warrior principle itself” (p. 27). Of course, it seems to have been Heinrich Himmler’s ambition to turn his SS into an elite corps of “spiritual warriors.” One wonders if this was the reason Evola began courting members of the SS in the late 1930s (a matter briefly discussed in John Morgan’s introduction to this volume).

Evola tells us that the end of the reign of the bourgeoisie opens up two paths for Europe. One is a shift to the subhuman, and Evola makes it clear that this is what bolshevism represents. The fourth age is the age of the slave and of the triumph of slave morality in the form of communism. The other possibility, however, is a shift to the “superhuman.” As Evola has said elsewhere, the Kali Yuga may be an age of decline but it presents unique opportunities for self-transformation and the attainment of personal power. (“A radical destruction of the ‘bourgeois’ who exists in every man is possible in these disrupted times more than in any other,” p. 137). Those who “ride the tiger” are able not just to withstand the onslaught of negative forces in the fourth age, but actually to use them to rise to higher levels of self-realization. War is one such negative force, and Evola maintains that the idea of war as a path to spiritual transformation is a Traditional view.

According to Evola, the ancient Aryans held that there are two paths to enlightenment: contemplation and action. In traditional Indian terms, the former is the path of the brahmin and the latter of the kshatriya (the warrior caste). Both are forms of yoga, which literally means any practice that has as its aim connecting the individual to his true self, and to the source of all being (which are, in fact, the same thing). The yoga of action is referred to as karma yoga (where karma simply means “action”), and the primary text which teaches it is the Bhagavad-Gita. Evola returns again and again to the Bhagavad-Gita throughout The Metaphysics of War, and it really is the primary text to which Evola’s philosophy of “war as spiritual path” is indebted. The work forms part (a very small part, actually) of the epic poem Mahabharata, the story of which culminates in an apocalyptic war called Kurukshetra. On the eve of battle, the consummate warrior Arjuna (the Siegfried of the piece) surveys the two camps from afar and realizes that on his enemy’s side are many men who are his friends and relations. When Arjuna reflects on the fact that he will have to kill these men the following day, he falters. Fortunately, his charioteer–who is actually the god Krishna–is there to teach him the error of his ways. Krishna tells Arjuna that these men are already dead, for their deaths have been ordained by the gods. In killing them, Arjuna is simply doing his duty and playing his role as a warrior. He must set aside his personal feelings and concentrate on his duty; he must literally become a vehicle for the execution of the divine plan.

One might well ask, what’s in it for Arjuna? The answer is that this following of duty becomes a path by which he may triumph over his fears, his passions, his weaknesses–all those things that tie him to what is ephemeral. Following his duty becomes a way for Arjuna to rise above his lesser self and to connect with the divine. This is not mere piety or “love of God.” It is a way to tap into a superhuman source of power and wisdom. The result is that Arjuna becomes more than merely human.

In fact, Krishna puts Arjuna in a situation in which he must fight two wars. One, the “lesser” war is external–it is the one fought on the battlefield with swords and spears. The other, “greater” war is internal and is fought against the internal enemy: “passion, the animal thirst for life” (p. 52). Evola places a great deal of emphasis on this distinction. What Krishna really teaches Arjuna is that in order to fight the lesser war, he must fight the greater one. Really, unless one is able to conquer one’s weaknesses, nothing else may be accomplished. This opens up the possibility that there may be “warriors” who never fight in any conventional, “external” wars. These would be warriors of the spirit. Evola believes that one can be a true warrior without ever lifting a sword or a gun, by conquering the enemy within oneself. And he mentions initiatic cults, like Mithraism, which conceived of their members on the model of soldiers.

Nevertheless, the focus in The Metaphysics of War is really on actual, physical combat as a means to spiritual transformation. Evola tells us that the warrior ceases to act as an ordinary person, and that a non-human force transfigures his action. The warrior who does not fear death becomes death itself. This is one of the major lessons imparted by Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita. It is not just a matter of “waking up” or becoming tougher and harder (as it is in Jünger). Evola clearly suggests that there is a supernatural element involved, though his remarks are far from clear. He writes that “the one who experiences heroism spiritually is pervaded with a metaphysical tension, an impetus, whose object is ‘infinite,’ and which, therefore, will carry him perpetually forward, beyond the capacity of one who fights from necessity, fights as a trade, or is spurred by natural instincts or external suggestion” (p. 41). Elsewhere Evola states that when the “right intention” is present “then one has given birth to a force which will not be able to miss the supreme goal” (p. 48).  Heroic experiences seem “to possess an almost magical effectiveness: they are inner triumphs which can determine even material victory and are a sort of evocation of divine forces intimately tied to ‘tradition’ and ‘the race of the spirit’ of a given stock” (p. 81).

The suggestion here is that the experience of combat, fought with the right intention, results in a kind of ecstasy (an “active ecstasy” as Evola says on p. 80). The Greek ekstasis literally means “standing outside onself.” In combat one is lifted out of one’s ordinary self and, more specifically, out of one’s concern with the mundane cares of life. One enters into a state where one ceases even to care about personal survival. It is at this point that one has ceased to identify with the “animal” elements in the human personality and has tapped into that part of us that seems to be a divine spark. This is not, however, an intellectual state or “realization.” Instead, it is a new state of being, which pervades the entire person. The ancient Germans called it wut and odhr. And from these two words derive two of the names of the chief Germanic god: Wuotan and Odin. Odin is not, however, conceived simply as the god of war; he is also the god of wisdom and spiritual transformation. In this state of ecstasy, one feels oneself lifted above the merely human; one’s senses and reflexes become more acute, one’s movements more graceful, life suddenly comes into perspective and is seen as the transient affair that it really is, and one feels invincible, capable of accomplishing anything. (A dim simulacrum of this is experienced in athletic competition.) One has, in fact, become a god.

Evola ties this achievement of self-transformation through combat into a “general vision of life,” which he expresses in one of the most memorable metaphysical passages in this small volume:

[L]ike electrical bulbs too brightly lit, like circuits invested with too high a potential, human beings fall and die only because a power burns within them which transcends their finitude, which goes beyond everything they can do and want. This is why they develop, reach a peak, and then, as if overwhelmed by the wave which up to a given point had carried them forward, sink, dissolve, die and return to the unmanifest. But the one who does not fear death, the one who is able, so to speak, to assume the powers of death by becoming everything which it destroys, overwhelms and shatters–this one finally passes beyond limitation, he continues to remain upon the crest of the wave, he does not fall, and what is beyond life manifests itself within him. [p. 54]

Throughout The Metaphysics of War, Evola describes the various virtues of the warrior. These are the characteristics one must have to be effective in battle, and receptive to the sort of experience Evola describes. Again, however, it is very clear that he believes that all those who follow a path of spiritual transformation are warriors. Evola describes the warrior as without any doubt or hesitation; as having a bearing that suggests he “comes from afar”; as holding a world-affirming outlook. The warrior takes pleasure in danger and in being put to the test. (The lesson here for all of us, Evola says, is to find the meaning in adversity, and to take hardships as calls upon our nobility.) The warrior regards as comrades only those he can respect; he has a passion for distance and order; he has the ability to subordinate his passions to principles. The warrior’s relations with others are direct, clear, and loyal. He carries himself with a dignity devoid of vanity, and loathes the trivial.

Above all, however, Evola emphasizes the importance of  detachment:

detachment towards oneself, towards things and towards persons, which should instill a calm, an incomparable certainty and even, as we have before stated, an indomitability. It is like simplifying oneself, divesting oneself in a state of waiting, with a firm, whole mind, with an awareness of something that exists beyond all existence. From this state the capacity will also be found of always being able to commence, as if ex nihilo, with a new and fresh mind, forgetting what has been and what has been lost, focusing only on what positively and creatively can still be done. [p. 137]

Evola offers us a vision of life as a member in a spiritual army. The standard, liberal view of the military is in effect that it is a necessary evil, and that the military and its values are not a suitable model for individual lives or societies. Evola argues instead that true civilization is conceived in heroic and “virile” terms. Readers of Evola’s other works will be familiar with his concept of “spiritual virility.” Mere physical virility is the element in the man that he shares with other male animals. But this is not true or absolute manhood. True manhood is achieved in the spirit, in developing the sort of hardness, detachment, and perspective on life that is characteristic of the warrior. Rene Guenon (a major influence on Evola) called the modern age “the reign of quantity.” It is typical of our time that we have come to see manhood entirely in terms of quantities of various kinds: how many pounds one can bench press or squat; numbers of sexual partners; inches of height; inches of penis; the number of zeros in one’s bank balance; the number of cylinders in one’s engine, etc. Just as in Huxley’s Brave New World, our masters have striven to create a society without conflict; a “nice” and “tolerant” society. And women have invaded virtually every arena of competition that used to be exclusively male, and ruined them for everyone. Under such circumstances, how is spiritual virility to develop? It is no surprise that our conception of virility is a purely physical and quantitative one. Evola evidently saw in fascism a means to awaken spiritual virility in the Italian male. He says that the starting point for fascist ethics is “scorn for the easy life” (p. 62).

Unlike other thinkers on the right, Evola never was particularly interested in biological conceptions of race, because he believed that human nature as such was irreducible to biology. He opposed reductionism, in short, and believed in a spiritual (i.e., non-material) component to our identity. Evola articulates his views on race in much greater detail elsewhere. Here he reminds us of his belief in a “super race” of the spirit: a race of men who are like-souled, and not necessarily like-bodied. Nevertheless, Evola realized the connection between the body and the spirit. He did not believe that all the (biological) races are equally fitted for achieving heroism. What Evola was most concerned to combat was a racialism that reduced heroism or mastery to simple membership in a race defined by certain biological characteristics. For Evola, heroism is really achieved in a step beyond the biological, and in mastery over it.

One will also find little in Evola that celebrates “the nation.” Evola’s ideal of heroism transcends national identity. This comes out most clearly in his discussion of the Crusades: “In fact, the man of the Crusades was able to rise, to fight and to die for a purpose which, in its essence, was supra-political and supra-human, and to serve on a front defined no longer by what is particularistic, but rather by what is universal” (p. 40, italics in original). Having written this, however, Evola immediately realized that the powers that be might see this (correctly) as implying that it is the achievement of heroism as such that is important, not merely the achievement of heroism in service to one’s people. A further implication of this, of course, is that the hero is raised above his people. And so Evola writes in the next paragraph, “Naturally this must not be misunderstood to mean that the transcendent motive may be used as an excuse for the warrior to become indifferent, to forget the duties inherent in his belonging to a race and to a fatherland” (pp. 40-41). Evola is not really being disingenuous here. Taking a cue again from the Bhagavad-Gita, one can say that it is the performance of one’s duty to race and fatherland that is the path to liberation. But as the wise man once said, when the raft takes us to the other shore, we do not put it on our backs and carry on with it. As Rajayoga teaches, there is no god (and certainly no country) above an awakened man. Evola is a fundamentally a philosopher of the left hand path, not a conservative. This individualistic element in him is troublesome for many on the right, and it is one of the primary reasons why he was unable to wholly reconcile himself to fascism.

Nine of these essays were written during the Second World War, and it is interesting to see how Evola situates his understanding of the conflict within his philosophy. In one essay written on the eve of the war, Evola states that “If the next war is a ‘total war’ it will mean also a ‘total test’ of the surviving racial forces of the modern world. Without doubt, some will collapse, whereas others will awaken and arise. Nameless catastrophes could even be the hard but necessary price of heroic peaks and new liberations of primordial forces dulled through grey centuries. But such is the fatal condition for the creation of any new world–and it is a new world that we seek for the future” (p. 68). It is doubtful that the war’s outcome either surprised or demoralized Evola. As noted earlier, he believed strongly in a cyclical view of history, and saw our age as a period of inevitable decline. It could not have surprised him that the combined forces of bourgeois and Bolshevik prevailed. In the final essay of in this volume, published five years after the end of the war, Evola reflects that “what is really required to defend ‘the West’” against the forces of barbarism “is the strengthening, to an extent perhaps still unknown to Western man, of a heroic vision of life” (p. 152).

Evola makes it clear that his position is not an unqualifiedly pessimistic one. The Kali Yuga is not the final age; history is cyclical, and a new and better age will follow this one. In each period, the stage is set for the next. The actions of those who resist this age set the stage for what is to come. Hence, though speaking and acting on behalf of truth may seem futile given the degradation that surrounds us, ultimately our resistance is part of the mechanism of the great cosmic wheel which will, in time, swing things back to truth and to Tradition. In the act of resisting, heroism is born in us and instantly we become creatures who no longer belong to this age, who “come from afar.” We become beacons pointing the way to the future, and simultaneously back to a glorious past. Evola writes that “a teaching peculiar to the ancient Indo-Germanic traditions was that precisely those who, in the dark age, in spite of all, resist, will be able to obtain fruits which those who lived in more favorable, less hard periods could seldom reach” (p. 61).

The Metaphysics of War is required reading for all those interested in the Traditionalist movement. But it will be of special appeal to a certain sort of man, who scorns the easy life and seeks to give birth to something noble and heroic in himself.

Note: The Metaphysics of War is available for purchase here.

L'après-démocratie

 

 

L'après-démocratie

 

Ex: http://www.scriptoblog.com/

« L’Après-démocratie » est un recueil de textes, dans lequel Eric Werner (EW) défend la thèse générale suivante : plus personne ne peut décemment croire que nous vivions en démocratie. Il ne reste, du projet démocratique, que des traces – telles que les élections, tous les cinq ans, et qui consistent désormais à choisir entre l’aile gauche et l’aile droite d’un seul et même parti institutionnel.

Aile gauche et aile droite qui, au demeurant, font en pratique à peu près la même politique, imposée par « le vrai pouvoir ».

Un vrai pouvoir qui se situe au niveau de l’hyperclasse, et de son gouvernement mondial. Un vrai pouvoir échappe à tout contrôle démocratique, influence de manière décisive la « ligne éditoriale » de la presse, et pilote à distance la plupart des institutions, justice incluse, via des réseaux d’influence ramifiés. Ce vrai pouvoir décide de ce que vous ignorez, donc de ce que vous savez. Il vous éduque, il vous surveille, il vous juge. Il contrôle la démocratie, elle ne le contrôle pas.

Nous voici dans « l’après démocratie ».

*

Comment en est-on arrivé là ?

Fondamentalement, pour EW, il s’agit tout simplement de la mise à jour de ce que la « démocratie occidentale » était de manière latente – mise à jour rendue possible par la disparition de l’ennemi.

Un disparition de l’ennemi qui a levé les barrières que le système était obligé d’entretenir devant lui, pour échapper à son cours spontané…

Depuis que le communisme a été vaincu, l’Occident n’a plus besoin d’entretenir une façade pluraliste. Il s’engage donc dans la voie totalitaire, qu’il a longtemps combattue, mais qui est aussi, secrètement, son essence profonde.

Chronologiquement, l’adoption de la loi Gayssot arrive juste après la chute du Mur de Berlin : le totalitarisme occidental a littéralement éclaté au grand jour, dès que son adversaire ne fut plus là pour l’empêcher de s’exprimer.

Totalitarisme d’ailleurs d’autant plus redoutable que, fait observer EW, il est dissimulé par un formidable voile propagandiste de dénégation, bien plus habile que celui tendu jadis par les systèmes hitlériens ou staliniens.

EW nous renseigne, à ce propos, sur ce qui se produit en ce moment dans le monde germanophone (EW est suisse) – une évolution d’un monde voisin dont nous sommes, nous, en France, sans doute assez mal informés.

Un chiffre : en Allemagne, le nombre de personnes ayant fait l’objet de procédures pour « connections avec des groupes extrémistes » et « excitation du peuple » se montait, en 1998, à 9.549. En Suisse, deux juges ont été mis en vacances forcées après avoir prononcé une peine jugée trop légère contre un politicien d’extrême droite coupable d’un délit d’opinion. L’affaire fut rejugée, et le politicien a été condamné à 15 mois de prison ferme – pour comprendre l’échelle des peines sous-jacentes à cette décision, notons qu’à la même époque, l’auteur d’un viol sur une fillette de cinq ans fut condamné à une peine de neuf mois de prison avec sursis. Le monde germanophone est majoritairement en train, tout doucement, de basculer dans un totalitarisme ouvert, une répression judiciaire de la pensée dissidente – bien plus vite, bien plus nettement qu’en France.

*

Après avoir planté le décor, EW analyse cette dérive totalitaire.

Reprenant la distinction d’Arendt entre pensée et raisonnement, il montre que l’Occident contemporain est peuplé d’idéologues des Droits de l’homme qui raisonnent, mais ne pensent plus – en ce sens que leur raisonnement ne se réfère plus à la réalité. Cette disposition d’esprit particulière se combine avec des intérêts objectifs (toujours implicites) pour créer une ambiance générale d’intimidation. De là, vers la terreur, qui est désormais repositionnée dans le cadre général de l’insécurité – on ne terrorise plus en brutalisant, mais en exposant à une brutalité latente (économique, sociale, voire physique, avec une délinquance tolérée). Sous l’angle organisationnel, il n’y a évidemment aucun rapport entre l’arrestation par le NKVD au petit matin dans l’URSS des années 30 et l’agression au coin de la rue dans la France de 2010 ; mais sur le plan fonctionnel, le rôle de la terreur dans une mécanique d’intimidation générale et de sidération populaire est comparable. Le « racaille » raciste antiblanc est le SA du totalitarisme multiculturel américanomorphe (un point sur lequel EW revient fréquemment).

Plus profondément, une guerre cognitive est faite aux populations, par des moyens plus subtils que ceux dont disposaient les anciens totalitarismes. La dissolution du « nous » (famille, coutume, tradition, enracinement local et national) rend le « je » impensable (puisqu’il n’est plus inscrit dans rien, il « flotte »), et l’opinion bascule dans la formulation moue d’un consensus auquel « on » se rallie (« on » étant, finalement, un corps collectif « non-social », la somme des individualités disjointes reliées uniquement par le réseau médiatique). Il y a explosion des frontières de l’être mental des occidentaux, ce sont des organismes sans peau, en voie de dilution, « clients » parfaits du néo-totalitarisme occidental. L’ultime rempart contre l’illusion, l’école, est même désormais tombé, avec la généralisation du « pédagogisme », c'est-à-dire la manipulation des enfants pour leur faire intérioriser des attitudes bien précises, compatibles avec le système dominant.

Au-delà de ce constat somme toute aujourd’hui presque devenu banal, EW tente de mettre en lumière les causalités profondes du mécanisme décrit. Il s’intéresse, par exemple, à la sociologie de cette nouvelle domination, et souligne le rôle particulier qu’y tient manifestement la pègre – historiquement très souvent associée aux régimes totalitaires ou dictatoriaux. Les tyrans, rappelle EW, se méfient toujours beaucoup plus des honnêtes gens que des voyous, chez qui ils vont souvent recruter leur garde personnelle.

D’où une hypothèse sur la convergence spontanée entre l’idéologie de certains sociologues de l’excuse (« pro-racailles ») et le totalitarisme des marchés : version renouvelée du mécanisme décrit par La Boëtie et d’autres, mécanisme qui voulait que le tyran, pour garder sous contrôle les « abeilles domestiques », importât des « frelons étrangers ».

Dans cette optique, l’incubation d’une idéologie de la haine de soi n’est, en réalité, qu’un dispositif annexe ; le but est de tenir les « abeilles » dans la peur des « frelons ». Ce n’est ni plus ni moins que la généralisation des techniques utilisées, pendant la période de dénazification de l’Allemagne, par les conquérants américains (destruction programmée du modèle anthropologique germanique, supposé créateur de la « personnalité autoritaire » de type « fasciste » - d’où la fabrication d’une population féminisée, fragilisée, en quête de protection et donc facile à dominer).

D’où, encore, une hypothèse sur l’attitude différenciée des idéologues néo-totalitaires à l’égard du religieux. D’une manière générale, ils s’en méfient, puisque la religion définit un espace mental collectif structuré, donc de nature à s’opposer aux forces de dilution que le néo-totalitarisme instrumentalise. Mais ils se méfient du christianisme plus que des autres religions (islam en particulier), parce que le christianisme construit une métaphysique de la liberté, où la conscience individuelle peut en quelque sorte être équipée de manière autonome – ce qui implique que même si les forces de dilution détruisent toute structure collective, le christianisme peut continuer à structurer une révolte individuelle (chose que l’islam peut plus difficilement faire). D’où sans doute le fait que nos dirigeants combattent l’islam là où il est structurant d’une identité collective réelle (donc en Dal-el-Islam), mais en encourage l’importation chez nous, où il contribue à la déchristianisation.

*

Comment résister à ce néo-totalitarisme ? Voilà, évidemment, la question qu’EW ne peut éviter ; à quoi bon décrire l’ennemi, si ce n’est pas pour le combattre ?

EW souligne tout d’abord qu’il faut combattre en nous la tendance au défaitisme. Quand nous apprenons que 5 % des Suisses n’ont pas la télévision, ne nous lamentons pas qu’ils ne soient que 5 % ; prenons note du fait qu’ils sont déjà 5 %.

Ensuite et surtout, il faut, nous dit-il, sortir du piège consistant à reconnaître au pouvoir actuel un monopole de la capacité à gérer les problèmes qu’il a lui-même créer (l’immigration inassimilable, par exemple). Il faut poser le problème en termes renouvelés, et cesser de confondre révolte et résistance.

Le révolté et le résistant disent « non », l’un et l’autre. Mais pas de la même manière. Le révolté, c’est l’esclave fouetté qui, soudain, se retourne et fait face à son maître. Le résistant, lui, ne fait pas face : il s’efface, il sort du cadre de gestion construit par son maître.

C’est pourquoi le résistant est avant tout un adepte de la stratégie indirecte ; à l’opposé du révolté, qui cherche la confrontation directe avec le tyran à l’intérieur d’un contexte donné, le résistant pense l’action dans la durée, et cette action n’est pas nécessairement un affrontement avec le tyran – c’est avant tout un effort pour se préparer à la modification du contexte.

Le plus souvent, cette modification du contexte est obtenue tout simplement en durant : le résistant gagne tant qu’il ne perd pas, c'est-à-dire tant qu’il n’est pas anéanti. Et finalement, le résistant l’emporte s’il parvient à faire durer sa retraite flexible une seconde de plus que l’élan du pouvoir qui tentait de l’anéantir. Ensuite, une fois que le pouvoir s’est usé, qu’il a fabriqué lui-même la masse de contradictions internes qu’il ne peut plus gérer, alors la résistance peut passer à la contre-offensive.

Et donc, pour conclure, ce que sous-entend EW, c’est qu’il ne faut pas accepter la logique selon laquelle nous devrions tolérer le système parce qu’il est le seul à pouvoir gérer les problèmes qu’il a créés. Nous devons lui résister, pour être là quand il ne pourra plus gérer ces problèmes.

Elisabeth Badinter bezweifelt einen Unterschied zwischen Kindern und Idioten

Ellen KOSITZA:

Elisabeth Badinter bezweifelt einen Unterschied zwischen Kindern und Idioten

Ex: http://www.sezession.de/

Wo spielt denn bloß dieses Szenario, das diese Woche von ungezählten Medien als „weiche“  Konkurrenz zu Sarrazin aufgegriffen wird? Die Rede geht von einer Rückkehr des Muttermythos, und zwar in bedrohlichem Ausmaß. Es gebe immer mehr Frauen, die sich von einem „naturalistischen Feminismus verführen“ lassen.

Es handele sich um verblendete Muttertiere, die „nur“ wegen eines oder mehreren Kinder „gleich einige Jahre zu Hause bleiben“ und sich mit einer kindverbundenen Lebensweise auch noch als „authentische, naturverbundene und weniger konsumorientierte Avantgarde“ fühlen.

Bewerkstelligt, so heißt es, habe diesen Sinneswandel mitnichten die Offensive etwa einer Ursula von der Leyen, die vor Jahr und Tag einen „konservativen Feminismus“ zum Leben erwecken wollte – der freilich das Gegenteil einer Rückbesinnung auf mütterliche Tugenden implizierte. Nein, dieser gegenaufklärerische Feminismus, der „Mutterschaft als etwas Erhabenes verehrt“, sei das Resultat einer „Heiligen Allianz der Reaktionäre“. Nicht die üblichen Verdächtigen wie Kirche und politisch Konservative, sondern ein Klüngel aus Ökologen, Esoterikern, Ärzten, Verhaltensforschern, Stillorganisationen und 68er-Töchtern, die die mühsam errungene Gleichberechtigung der Geschlechter wieder ins Wanken bringen. Das Patriarchat schlägt zurück – unter weiblicher Mithilfe.

 Der Leser reibt sich die Augen: Welcher Ort, welche Zeit wird denn hier verhandelt?

 Es ist Elisabeth Badinter, seit Jahrzehnten Frankreichs (liberale!) Vorzeigefeministin, die ihr Land derzeit von einem massiven roll back in punkto Emanzipation bedroht sieht. Ihr Buch Le conflit. La femme et la mère, das in Frankreich gleich nach Erscheinen auf Platz 1 der Verkaufslisten schnellte und heiß diskutiert wurde, ist ein Plädoyer für die Abtrennung der mütterlichen Sphäre von der weiblichen Identität.

Der Mutterinstinkt sei eine Erfindung: Mit dieser These hatte Badinter vor dreißig Jahren Furore gemacht. Heute beweise aus ihrer Sicht die wachsende Gruppe der childfree – der bewußt kinderlosen Frauen-, daß es keine “universelle oder wesentliche Eigenschaften“ gebe, die Frauen von Männern unterscheide. Gesetzt, es sei der Fall, daß jede(r) heute frei seine „Rolle“ wählen könne. Was ist es dann, das Badinter zutiefst besorgt zur Feder greifen läßt? Zweifelt sie etwa die gleichsam naturgegebene, zumindest seit über 200 Jahren erstrittene Autonomie und die seit langem etablierte Selbstbestimmtheit der französischen Frau an? Es gibt keine staatlichen, noch weniger steuerliche Eingriffe, die Frauen „an den Herd“ binden wollen. Daß nun etwas mehr Frauen in Frankreich ihre Kinder einige Monate stillen wollen, geschieht aus freien Stücken. Badinter hält diese neue „freiwillige Dienstbarkeit“ für brandgefährlich.

Während mindestens 60% der deutschen und noch weit mehr der skandinavischen Frauen ihren Säugling ein Vierteljahr nach der Geburt wenigstens teilweise mit Muttermilch versorgen, sind es in Frankreich nicht mal 20%. Tendenz allerdings: steigend. Und das findet Badinter – auch mit Verweis darauf, wie unfein und lächerlich der Stillvorgang jahrhundertelang in bürgerlichen Kreisen galt – besorgniserregend. Sie sieht eine Front von „Still-Ayatollahs“ am Werk, eine Bande, die zudem Gerüchte von der Förderlichkeit des Co-Sleepings (Kleinkind im Bett der Eltern, ein altes Eva-Herman-Thema) und einer engen Mutter-Kind-Bindung in die Welt setzten.

Badinter, die selbst während ihres Studiums drei Kinder zur Welt brachte, ist enttäuscht, daß nun selbst – und gerade! – die Töchter jener Feministinnen, die einst unter der Parole „Ich Zuerst!“ sich von der Knechtschaft gegenüber dem Baby und „den Machos zu Hause und am Arbeitsplatz“ befreit hätten, sich nun dem Druck einer „Gute-Mutter-Ideologie“ beugten. Klingt fast, als herrsche ganz privater Zwist im Hause Badinter…

In ihrem Heimatland stieß das Buch der emeritierten Professorin auf ein geteiltes Echo – und gelangte zwischen die Fronten. Selbst emanzipierte Grünen-Politikerinnen schimpften sie eine „Steinzeit-Feministin“. In der Tat fällt Badinter trotz einiger interessanter Fragen, die sie stellt, hinter ihr Niveau zurück.

Ist es tatsächlich angebracht, die Richtlinien der weltweit tätigen La Leche League, einer Stillorganisation mit weltweitem Tätigkeitsradius, aufzufächern, als handle es sich um eine Terrororganisation? Badinter zählt seitenlang die „angeblichen“ Vorteile des Stillens auf, um dann allein eines mit Bestimmtheit zurückzuweisen: Stillen macht nicht intelligentere Kinder. Sie klagt, das Eltern, die bereuen, je Kinder bekommen zu haben, heute nicht zu Wort kämen oder sich nicht mehr trauten, diesen Freiheitsverlust einzugestehen. Noch 1970 hätten 70% von 10.000 Befragten erklärt, nein, rückblickend hätten sie besser keine Elternschaft angestrebt. Der Vollzeitmutter eines Kleinkinds könne es schließlich noch heute vorkommen, als würde sie „den ganzen Tag in Gesellschaft eines Inkontinenten und geistig Zurückgebliebenen verbringen“. Fast scheint es, als würde Badinter stillende Frauen, solche, die ohne Narkotika ihre Kinder zur Welt brachten und am Ende noch so verrückt sind, ihre Kinder in Stoffwindeln zu wickeln und selbst zu bekochen, ebenfalls den Geistesschwachen zurechnen.

Jedenfalls gehören sie nach Badinters Wertung nicht zu den Frauen, die es sich selbstbewußt herausnehmen, über ihren „Geist, ihre physische, emotionale und sexuelle Energie frei verfügen zu können.“ Die Französin sei traditionell eine Rabenmutter, sagt Badinter stolz, und aus ihrer Sicht führe alles andere zu einer Krise der Gleichberechtigung.

Hartnäckig - diese Klage durchzieht das Buch - hält die Autorin an ihrer Ansicht fest, daß die heutige Gesellschaft kinderlose Frauen „tiefgreifend“ ächtet. Man staunt. Ist das so, in Frankreich? Gibt es dort keine Pendants zu unseren Thea Dorns, Sabine Christiansens, Anne Wills und Angela Merkels, die hierzulande durchaus angesehene Positionen in der Öffentlichkeit bekleiden?

Ein Punkt in Badinters Buch ist immerhin interessant. Sie konstatiert, daß sich das Idealbild der Mutter nicht mehr mit dem der zeitgenössischen Frau decke. Dadurch verschrieben sich Frauen – Mütter wie Kinderlose – häufig einer „Logik des Alles-oder-Nichts.“ Heißt: Sich hervorragend auf dem Arbeitsmarkt zu positionieren ist eine ähnlich lebensfüllende Aufgabe wie die, eine 1a-Mutter zu sein. Beides zugleich will Frau sich nicht zumuten. Die französischen Frauen stünden deshalb bis heute gemeinsam mit den ebenfalls ungern stillenden und in der Mehrzahl außerhäuslich arbeitenden Isländerinnen und Irinnen an der europäischen Sitze der Gebärquoten, weil hier die frühzeitige Fremdbetreuung der Kinder nie übel beleumundet war und die meisten Mütter vollzeiterwerbstätig sind. Umgekehrt ist es in „gebärfaulen“ Ländern wie Deutschland, Japan und Italien. Dort sind bzw. waren Krippen eine Rarität, und darum zögerten Frauen die Geburt auch nur eines Kindes möglichst lange heraus. Heißt: Wenn man die Französinnen noch länger mit Vorstellungen traktiert, sich selbst um ihre Kinder zu kümmern, werde auch dort die Geburtenrate sinken.

 Die Argumentation besticht an der Oberfläche. Erweitert man aber den Blick – etwa auf die Verhältnisse im frauenerwerbsreichen, aber kinderarmen Mitteldeutschland, auf den Gebärstreik russischer Frauen oder auf die relativ hohen Geburtenziffern in den USA bei einer mäßigen Frauenwerbsquote gerade außerhalb prekärer Verhältnisse – dann beginnt auch diese Theorie zu schwanken. Man darf gespannt sein, wie Badinters eben in Deutschland erschienes Buch Der Konflikt. Die Frau und die Mutter über die vermeintliche schleichende Wiederversklavung der Frau hierzulande aufgenommen wird. Emma und FAZ hatten bereits im Juli großflächig versucht, die Debatte – im Sinne Badinters – anzuheizen, diese Woche gaben zahlreiche Blättern,von Spiegel bis Zeit (gewohnheitsmäßig mies geschrieben von Susanne Mayer, die´s für nötig befindet zu erwähnen, daß  Badinter Jüdin ist), der Französin das Wort.

Heidegger: la thématisation de l'être et ses énigmes

Archives de SYNERGIES EUROPENNES - 1996

 

HEIDEGGER : La thématisation de l'être et ses énigmes

 

 

Sens de la question

 

Nous avons tous entendu un jour ou l'autre que Heidegger, le métaphysicien, avait reposé le problème de l'Etre. Très bien, mais que signifie cette phrase et dans quelle mesure nous perrnet-elle de nous orienter?

 

La culture contemporaine favorise les mystifications. La philosophie de Heidegger reste ainsi abandonnée aux associations prévisibles, à l'avidité des théologiens estampillés, aux apologies et aux dénonciations faciles. Les diatribes du jeune Carnap possèdent quelque chose d'aristocratique par comparaison avec les jugements sommaires de notre époque. L'inquisiteur Levinas, par exemple, a trouvé que les incursions étymologiques et les métaphores rupestres de Heidegger dénonceraient une pensée liée au Sol et au Sang, étrangère aux aspirations de ces tribus de nomades philanthropiques qui vaguaient, dépourvues de tout, par le désert. Expert en lamentations, Levinas déplore également que le philosophe s'inspire de la poésie de Holderlin et non pas, par exemple, des Lamentations de Job. Heidegger, par conséquent, un antisémite larvé. Admettons. Et alors?

D'autres esprits critiques proches de la Nouvelle Droite, comme par exemple Pierre Chassard dans son ~u-delà des choses (1992), nous avertissent que cet Etre heideggérien cohabite avec un universalisme suspect, que la distance de l'Etre par rapport aux choses réelles et sa parenté avec le Néant font de lui le pendant du Dieu de l'Exode, que les textes pertinents accusent l'influence de Maïmonide... Heidegger, donc, un philosémite subreptice. Admettons. Et alors?

Le caractère alternatif ou périphérique d'une culture ne nous dispense pas d'un minimum de sérieux. Il est temps que nous commencions à accéder à la pensée de Heidegger en tant que pensée philosophique, la jugeant de ce point de vue, et non selon ses affinités avec les idéologies des Systèmes dominants ou de leurs rivaux contestataires. C'est là la question générique.

Consentons à un usage ambigu de l'expression "I'Etre", puisque aussi bien il s'agira d'une ambiguïté nécessaire et provisoire. La Philosophie que nous pouvons qualifier de "classique", avec Parménide tout d'abord, puis Platon, Aristote et la Scolastique, a commis une thématisation de l'Etre qui disparait avec la Modernité: de Descartes à Fichte, nul philosophe (qu'il soit rationaliste, empiriste, criticiste ou idéaliste) ne croit que la solution des vrais problèmes philosophiques dépende de certaines précisions, intuitions ou thèses sur l'Etre... Si toutefois l'Etre réapparaît dans l'idéalisme de Hegel comme Leitmotiv de quelques philosophèmes, ce n'est qu'avec Heidegger qu'est rétablie une thématisation comparable aux précédentes, et qui leur est probablement supérieure, tant par son obstination que par son caractère problématique.

C'est dans la compréhension du sens de l'Etre que réside le destin de l'Occident et l'histoire de la Philosophie se déroule conformément à l'élucidation ou à l'occultation de l'Etre. Que peut bien signifier une telle assertion? Les difficultés interprétatives soulevées par les textes de Heidegger sont bien connues. Je vais tenter ici une reconstruction des idées qu'il paraît suggérer - reconstruction qui doit être jugée non pas pour sa fidélité à la lettre ni pour sa fidélité à un "esprit" insaisissable (nous laissons cela à la Heideggerphilologie) mais pour son degré de fécondité explicative. C'est là la question spécifique. Notre explanandum est constitué par les solutions persistantes ou par l'absence non moins persistante de solution dans le traitement classique des problèmes ontologiques. Le chercheur contemporain, s'il est honnête, éprouve une série de désarrois devant des énigmes qui lui paraissent plus suscitées que découvertes. Par exemple:

a) Comme peuvent l'attester les élèves du Kindergarten néothomiste le plus proche, c'est dans la Différence Ontologique Etre/Étant que réside la clef de la Philosophie; mais une telle différence s'articule sur un mode inintelligible et nous conduit parfois à identifier l'Etre et le Néant. Pourquoi devrions-nous accepter ce jargon?

b) La Métaphysique (par exemple dans la première douzaine de Disputationes de Suarez) établit de fastidieuses équations entre transcendantaux pour nous informer que l'étant est un, etc.; information qui ne nous paraît pas trop excitante. A quoi vise-t-elle?

c) Depuis Platon on se demande "Qu'est-ce que l'Etre?" et l'on répond par telle ou telle catégorie de prédilection (Substance, Esprit, Matière). Mais il paraît absurde et capricieux de définir le plus général par seulement l'un de ses genres.

d) Fréquemment, depuis Aristote, la Métaphysique oscille entre une Ontologie du plus universel et une Théologie du plus singulier; on ne voit pas pour quelle raison on a pu unir des disciplines aussi disparates.

e) A peine l'Ontologie, qui prétend être la science de l'être en tant qu'être, nous introduit-elle à lui qu'elle nous signale avec impatience la porte de sortie (avec un écriteau "analogia entis" pour les sorties de secours) et qu'elle nous propose de diviser et subdiviser des entités spécifiques.

f~ L'Etre, de par son degré de généralité, ne paraît pas apte à abriter des contenus spécifiqu~s de telle sorte qu'il puisse inclure dans sa compréhension "le destin d'un peuple", ou quelque chose d'une pareille importance.

 

Cette liste sélectionne quelques sujets de perplexité. Une explication doit venir mitiger l'impression d'absurdité crasse que la Métaphysique produit aujourd'hui et l'inventaire précédent offre certains critères pour juger de l'hypothèse proposée. L'explication, contrairement à ce que l'on pourrait croire à première vue, ne sera pas simplement linguistique: il s'agit de discerner des structures ontologiques différentes qui sont parfois unifiées par de vieilles habitudes verbales.

 

Homonymie Ontologique Tran~cntégorielle: un Trépied

 

L'expression "I'Etre" n'est pas utilisée normalement comme une description définie, à la manière de "I'auteur du Quichotte". Les acceptions les plus fréquentes paraissent hésiter entre trois catégories:

1. une propriété, que nous désignerons par S

2... Ia classe E des objets qui satisfont cette propriété

3. Ies éléments de E, spécialement cet élément qui possède la propriété S d'une façon nécessaire et éternelle.

 

Le langage de tous les jours adjuge des termes de propriété au moyen du verbe avoir et des termes de classe au moyen du verbe être. Nous disons que Socrate est un sage ou qu'il a de la sagesse, mais nous ne disons pas qu'il est de la sagesse ou qu'il a un sage. En revanche, ce test linguistique est défaillant avec l'Etre: on dit sans problème de cohérence qu'il est un être ou qu'il a un être, qu'il est un étant ou qu'il a une entité. Nous pouvons supposer qu'ici il y a une distinction qui s'est obscurcie.

Les propriétés, par exemple la blancheur, définissent une classe, celle du blanc. Si nous distinguons la classe de la propriété qui la définit, il paraît naturel d'interpréter dans l'usage philosophique l"Etant" comme un terme qui se réfère à la classe (2) et l"'Etre" comme la désignation de (1). La priorité de la propriété qui définit sur la classe définie rend évident de quelle manière l'Étant se fonde sur l'Etre. Quand on dit que l'Etre "fait" que l'étant soit, on ne doit pas considérer un tel "faire" comme l'exercice d'une causalité. Il ne s'agit pas non plus du problème de l'Unité versus la Multiplicité, mais de la dépendance d'une classe - qui pourrait bien être unitaire - à l'égard de la propriété qui la détermine.

S'il y a plusieurs éléments dans cette classe E, qu'on appelle les "étants", ils peuvent se trouver dans dif~érentes relations de dépendance (par exemple, causalité, inhérence, composition), mais cette dépendance horizontale n'affecte ni n'annule la dépendance verticale à l'égard de S. Par exemple, un étant suprême, cause totale de tous les autres, etc., ne pourrait de ce fait équivaloir à la propriété. Lorsque l'on dit "Deus est ipsum esse" on semble tomber dans une erreur catégorielle, qui fait d'un élément d'une classe l'équivalent de la propriété qui définit cette classe. Il pourrait arriver qu'un élément de cette classe possède la propriété de façon nécessaire, sempiternelle, éminente, infinie etc., mais il apparaît qu'il continuerait à être différent de la propriété. Une propriété est infinie en tant qu'elle peut être le prédicat d'un nombre illimité d'objets. L'erreur se produit quand on assimile l'Etre et l'Acte, de telle sorte que l'Acte est compris comme une sorte de pensée universelle; à la suite de quoi on interprète l'Acte - par opposition à la Puissance - comme une Perfection. De là surgit un Etre comme infinie perfection et actualité, qui va comme un gant àl certaines représentations de la déité (voir les trois premières des vingt-quatre Thèses Thomistes). On déambule d'une catégorie à l'autre. De toute manière, les hésitations relatives à ces catégories expliquent que l'on puisse penser à une Onto-Théologie, à laquelle on faisait allusion en (d). Cette affirmation sera confirmée plus loin.

On a l'habitude de caractériser l'Ontologie comme une discipline de l'Etre, assimilant S et E. La distinction précédente dissipe l'inquiétude (e), quant aux deux voies que peut adopter une Ontologie: ou bien tenter de discriminer des régions et des relations à l'intérieur de la classe E des étants (ce qui paraît superficiel) ou bien élucider cette propriété fondatrice, ses relations avec d'autres propriétés et avec les divers étants (ce qui paraît profond). Il y a cependant une perturbation dans la diffusion pacifique du travail. Gilson a déclaré, dans son galimatias: "on peut penser qu'etre, c'est être un etre - mais aussi qu'etre un etre, c'est simplement etre". C'est-à-dire: nous pouvons privilégier dans notre spéculation les sujets de la propriété ou la propriété elle-même. Ainsi le galimatias disparaît, et le chemin s'ouvre aux vraies difficultés.

Jusqu'à présent l'idée était très simple. Mais si S est la propriété et E la classe des étants (c'est-à-dire des individus qui possèdent cette propriété), alors l'Etre sera-t-il un étant (non pas la classe E mais un élément de E)? Considérons attentivement la question et le dilemme. Si l'Etre n'est pas un étant, alors c'est qu'il manque de la propriété qui définit les étants, ce qui signifie : I 'Etre n 'est pas. C'est pourquoi bien souvent l'être est perçu comme un Néant, soit absolu, soit qualifié ("Néantd'Étant" - mais, pourrait-il y avoir un autre Néant?). Si l'on admet l'existence d'une classe complémentaire de l'Étant, le Néant, remplie de tout ce qui manque d'Etre, alors l'Etre sera un élément du Néant. Il paraît très curieux que le Néant ne soit pas quelque chose de plus ou moins similaire à l'ensemble vide. Nous savons que Hegel s'est trouvé dans une perplexité semblable, mais celle de Heidegger mérite plus d'attention.

Prenons l'autre terme du dilemme: la possibilité que S soit un étant. Alors une classe comprendrait la propriété qui la définit parmi ses éléments. Ce n'est pas à première vue impossible. D'une part il y a des propriétés qui se distinguent de leurs sujets: la proprieté "être un nombre pair" n'est ni paire, ni un nombre - la propriété qui définit la liste 2, 4, 6, 8... n'est pas l'un des nombres qui apparaissent dans cette liste. Mais d'autre part il y a des propriétés plus exotiques. Par exemple, la propriété "être pensable" est elle-même quelque chose de pensable: la propriété détermine la totalité de ce qui est pensable et elle est elle-même membre de cette totalité. Est-ce que la relation entre l'Etre et la classe des étants est de cette nature? Et nous voyons déjà que la question de l'Onto-Théologie se présente d'une manière moins capricieuse.

Si nous admettons avec beaucoup de libéralité ce type de propriétés et de classes exotiques, nous pouvons nous embrouiller dans des problèmes. Par exemple, on peut présumer que la classe des étants E, non seulement comprendrait l'Etre comme élément, mais aussi posséderait elle-même l'être. Ainsi E serait élément d'elle-même, et la totalité d'une collection ferait partie d'elle-même.

Assurément l'astuce des logiciens permet d'endiguer ces libéralités au moyen de divers traitements: ce qui n'empêche pas la persistance d'un symptôme alarmant. L'intuition primordiale qui guidait ces réflexions imposait une hiérarchie entre individus, classes et propriétés. Les propriétés sont universelles, les individus non: par conséquent, si l'Etre était un étant, il serait un universel et un individu. Et si parmi les éléments on admet des individus et des propriétés universelles, l'ordre rêvé se désagrège.

Ici le dilemme dé~ouche sur une confusion, un balbutiement sur la différence ontologique, affection facilement explicable vue l'hypothèse que nous avons introduite sur la thématisation de l'être et la possibilité de voir en lui une propriété. Ce qui conduit Heidegger plus d'une fois à voir dans l'Etre un Néant. Et qu'il ne s'agit pas là d'une idée accidentelle de Heidegger, on peut le vérifier en étudiant le "parricide" de l'Étranger d'Élée (Platon, Sophiste 241 d) et la polémique d'Aristote contre Melissô et Parménide (spécialement le texte de Physique I c.3, 186 a: 2531). Ainsi est satisfaite la requête (a). Il ne s'agit pas toujours d'un verbiage arbitraire au sujet de la Différence Ontologique, mais aussi d'une série de difi~lcultés pressel1ties sans que l'on possède l'instrument conceptuel pour les mettre en ordre.

 

Homonymie Ontologique Catégorielle ~ ventail de propriétés

 

Tant chez Aristote que chez Heidegger on rencontre une préoccupation liée à la pluralité des propriétés visées par le terme "l'Etre" (ne pas confondre avec l'analogia entis). L'expression "l'Etre" ne désignerait pas, comme on l'a supposé, une propriété, mais un éventail de propriétes. Ce fait dénote une homonymie catégorielle (puisque l'on se restreint à la catégorie des propriétés). L'interrogation sur l'Etre peut être comprise comme l'examen desdites propriétés et des relations qu'il pourrait y avoir entre elles. Sans vouloir être exhaustifs, nous pourrions consigner une série de propriétés compatibles et (au moyen de quelques raccords) coextensives entre elles:

- l'existence dans le temps présent

chose

 

- I'existence en général

- la possibilité d'existence

- I'identité

- la prédication

- I'affirmation

- la possibilité d'être pensé la possibilité d'être estimé en termes de volonté le fait d'être en relation de fondement, de cause ou d'effet avec quelque

 

- le fait d'être déterminé par quelque propriété

- le fait de posséder, pour un couple quelconque de propriétés contradictoires, I'une d'entre elles.

Cette deuxième homonymie explique les diverses formes dans lesquelles s'est développée une bonne part de la spéculation métaphysique traditionnelle, que ce soit dans le traitement des "transcendantaux" (un, vrai, bon), ou dans les explications sur son "objet" (étant nominal, étant participial, le "Meinbare" de Meinong, etc.). Les équations fastidieuses sont un effort pour explorer les distinctes propriétés auxquelles il a été fait confusément allusion. Les catégories (prédicaments) s'imposent comme la seule manière d'étudier les diverses prédications. Une oeuvre aussi influente que méconnue, celle de Josef Maréchal Le Point de Départ de la Métaphysique, se nourrit de l'assimilation des termes prédication, affirmation et existence (interprétée comme acte infini): le fait que nous puissions énoncer des jugements assertoriques ne serait explicable, selon Maréchal, que parce que nous supposons une synthèse de la copule de la prédication avec un acte infini: ici se révèlent certains thèmes de Malebranche, Fichte et peut-être Bradley, mais ce n'est que grâce à l'homonymie catégorielle qu'ils peuvent apparaître dans ce contexte métaphysique de façon assez naturelle.

Si Heidegger insis~e sur sa démonstration que l'Etre est essentiel au Langage, c'est qu'il pense à l'Etre comme faisant référence à la propriété de déterminer la prédication; s'il établit une relation avec le Temps, c'est que l'actualité de l'existence réclame le présent. La préférence des métaphysiciens qui placent au premier plan un certain type d'étants et à l'arrière-plan la généralité, se comprend s'ils croient voir chez certains étants une exemplification plus juste des propriétés qui dans tel ou tel système sont considérées comme remarquables. De telle sorte que l'interrogation "qu'est-ce que l'être?" acquiert un autre sens, libérée de son absurdité. Et s'il existe plusieurs propriétés implicites dans l'Etre, l'objet de l'ontologie est loin d'être simple et le recours à des divisions et subdivisions s'impose. Ainsi sont satisfaits, selon moi, les critères (b), (c) et (e) de notre liste.

Mais nous arrivons ici à une thèse cruciale pour la pensée heideggérienne: I'expansion de l'Etre en éventail nous permet de passer à une compréhension dialectique de ces propriétés (ceci renvoie au passage de Platon dans le Sophiste, 254 b sqq.). Etre, comme propriété centrale s'oppose à Devenir (Werden), à Apparence (Schein), à Penser (Denken) et à Devoir-Etre (Sollen) comme à des propriétés périphériques constituant une trame de propriétés.

 

Chaque fac,on de saisir une propriété centrale conditionnerait de manière radicale la façon de saisir une propriété périphérique proche. Ces propriétés sont à leur tour centrales par rapport à d'autres propriétés, et ainsi de suite. Une propriété centrale peut se comporter ou non comme un genre (un déterminable); sa centralité ne dépend pas de cela, mais d'un système de positions, tensions et compléments étendu non seulement au sens de la propriété mais aussi aux représentations qui l'enveloppent. "Devenir" signifie une succession continue de situations, mais représentée par le cours d'un fleuve, le bourgeonnement d'un arbre, la vague qui croît sans être une chose mais le déploiement d'une force qui se manifeste dans l'euphorie de l'aube. L'Art et la Poésie, créant un lien entre représentation et sens, peuvent donner accès à ces dimensions et placer les choses sujettes à l'expérience dans une perspective métaphysique - si tant est que la Métaphysique nous engage dans cette trame de propriétés. Ceci nous foumit la raison de cette étrange affirmation sur le destin d'un peuple et sa compréhension de l'Etre, sa façon d'aborder la question de l'Etre. Cette compréhension est portée par un langage naturel, qui est nécessairement collectif, et elle s'étend à travers lui au peuple qui le parle, et qui, de par cette compréhension athématique de l'Etre, se situe dans-le-monde d'une façon ou de l'autre. Ceci satisfait le réquisit (f).

 

L"'Interrogation Fondamentale de la Métaphysique"

 

La question (d) au sujet de l'Onto-Théologie n'était pas encore suf~lsamment résolue. Ainsi donc, si l'Etre instaure un ordre de fondements et de raisons suff1santes, il paraît adéquat d'instaurer un tel ordre dans la contingence générale de l'étant, introduisant par là une entité nécessaire. Mais si Heidegger feint de répéter la question de Leibniz "pourquoi y a-t-il quelque chose plutôt que rien?" il le fait seulement pour la rejeter, bien que d'une manière très diplomatique. Et il fait bien, car une question qui ~ne peut avoir de réponse est nulle et non avenue. J'omets de faire la démonstration exacte de cette nullité, mais j'en suggérerai les grandes lignes.

Appliquant le principe de raison suffisante nous imaginons deux situations contradictoires, toutes les deux possibles prises séparément: un monde vide ou un monde non vide. Chacune des deux situations paraît logiquement contingente, peut se présenter ou non, et la question fondamentale devrait conduire à donner raison de la contingence en général. Mais si la réponse est également contingente, on aurait seulement ajourné la question: comme avec le monde soutenu par un éléphant, qui devrait être soutenu par une tortue... etc.

Mais si la réponse n'était pas logiquement contingente et impliquait, par exemple "il existe une entité nécessaire" alors cette conclusion devrait être nécessaire et sa négation impossible. Est-ce là un résultat admissible? Non. De là suivraient deux inconvénients: l'un, qu'on disposerait alors d'un argument ontologique, car rendant superflue toute preuve à partir de la contingence; dans le fameux débat radial de Russell et Copleston en 1948 ce problème reste sousjacent, dominant ce qu'on voit à la surface. L'autre inconvénient est que du nécessaire ne peut s'ensuivre le contingent: la réponse ne peut donc donner raison de la contingence. C'est pourquoi l'Onto-Théologie implose quand elle tente d'expliquer la création a parte dei, dans la mesure où elle fait de Dieu un Créateur. Cette création (ou le fait qu'il y ait un Dieu créateur plutôt qu'un Dieu qui ne l'est pas) est une question logiquement contingente, comme l'existence même du monde. Si l'on introduit ici la Liberté divine, en réalité on ne fait que hisser un drapeau blanc, et ce principe de raison suffisante qui avait rendu de si précieux services se rend pieds et poings liés Le théologien propose un armistice: "Bâillonnons le principe de raison suffisante et parlons d'autre chose, de Dieu qui est amour, ou de la dignité de la personne humaine. " Le philosophe fait observer : "Comment? Dieu s'était introduit pour rationaliser le scandale de la contingence et puis, pour la compréhension de cet être nécessaire, on réintroduit en lui la contingence, l'affiublant du nom de Liberté." Spinoza en son Ethica (Pars I, prop. 17, 29 et 32) est plus conséquent que les Onto-Théologiens: ayant admis l'argument ontologique il nie qu'il puisse y avoir au monde quelque chose de contingent... Du nécessaire ne peut découler que le nécessaire.

En résumé: une réponse sensée à ce qu'on appelle la Question Fondamentale de la Métaphysique ne peut être ni une proposition nécessaire ni une proposition contingente. Mais une question qui empêche en principe toute réponse est une pseudoquestion - le résultat vaut indépendamment de toute théorie de vérification du sens et des critères similaires. Rien ne peut donc constituer une réponse à la question, qui s'annule par ce fait même, ce qu'il fallait démontrer. La démonstration exacte exige plus de précisions.

Il est clair que le chemin indiqué par Heidegger est différent, plus conforme à son style, difficile à abréger. Disons: la question peut s'autoabolir dans le questionnement "pourquoi un Pourquoi?". Nous trouverons seulement la propriété de l'Etre comme exigence de fondements des étants, et donation de ces fondements. Remplaçons alors la question abolie par la question sur la propriété centrale, et ce faisant nous retomberons sur nos pieds.

 

~eidegger et la Kulturphilosophie

 

Si de ce qui pre!cède on peut inférer des conséquences agréables ou désagréables au judéochristianisme et à ses institutions, c'est là une question qui intéresse plus le propagandiste que le philosophe. Ce qui est certain, c'est que Heidegger (considéré comme l'archétype du métaphysicien par des épigones insignifiants) déplace le centre de gravité de l'Ontologie vers ce qu'on peut appeler Philosophie de la Culture. J'ai proposé au début d'aborder Heidegger sous un angle philosophique et de juger sa pensée dans ce sens. Je vais risquer un jugement: si nous le comparons en tant que philosophe de la culture à Nietzsche, à Spengler, à Evola, il n'occupe pas la première place, nous sommes gênés par ses détours excessifs et le manque d'évidence des faits qu'il allègue. Si nous le considérons comme un philosophe de la ligne classique et théorique, nous sommes déconcertés par le peu de sensibilité de Heidegger à l'égard des problèmes métaphysiques. Depuis la cime de sa propre position, qu'il ne se donne jamais la peine d'expliciter, il se met à historiciser, émettant des opinions sur les penseurs qui l'ont précédé. Ce qui alimente la plèbe de la Philosophie, les professeurs sans idées qui tournent comme des vautours autour des grands morts. Heidegger se prête bien à une justification de la phrase de Nietzsche sur l'Histoire qui se convertit en fossoyeuse du présent. Dans nos institutions académiques - et dans une bonne partie de celles d'Europe, avoir été un philosophe est un honneur - vouloir parvenir à l'être, un opprobre.

Mais la Philosophie, après deux millénaires de lutte avec les mythologies judéochrétiennes et leurs sécularisations, est pour la première fois une nouvelle possibilité. C'est ici qu'il y a une splendeur de Heidegger. Sa grandeur est dans ce mode du philosopher à la frontière de la Science et de la Weltanschauung, sur cette mince ligne qui peut fasciner et confondre, induire au vertige ou empêcher la pensée. Heidegger nous éveille à de nouvelles possibilités épurées de toute tradition supposée. C'est cela que nous pouvons apprendre de Heidegger, non pas son jargon ou son désordre, son hostilité à l'égard de la science ou ses mauvaises argumentations. Ce ne sont pas ses thèses qui nous importent, mais les voies qui s'ouvrent en elles. Ce n'est pas tant la thématisation de l~tre qui nous intéresse, mais un retour de ce qui survint dans l'Hellade, le penser entre Mythos et Logos.

 

Carlos Dufour. Traduit de l'espagnol (argentin) par Bruno Dietsch.

 

 

La metafisica del sesso in Mircea Eliade

La metafisica del sesso in Mircea Eliade

di Giovanni Casadio*

Fonte: Rinascita [scheda fonte]

“La vita è fatta di partenze”
Jurnalul Portughez, 19 luglio 1945

Mircea Eliade nacque nel marzo 1907 e morì nel 1986, quindi a poco più di 79 anni. Trascorse 3 anni in India, quasi un anno in Inghilterra, quasi 5 anni in Portogallo (Lisbona e Cascais), 11 anni a Parigi, 30 anni in America (Chicago) e naturalmente 33 anni in Romania, gli anni della formazione, durante i quali fece continui viaggi in Italia e in Germania. Durante i 30 anni di relativa stabilità a Chicago, quasi tutte le estati traslocava in Francia, con lunghe trasferte prima nel Canton Ticino e poi in Italia.

 

 

Si sposò due volte (come adombrato nel proverbio “di Venere e di Marte non si sposa e non si parte”, le nozze sono come un imbarco per un viaggio assai incerto). La prima moglie Nina Mareş (dal 1934 al 1944), la seconda Christinel Cottescu (dal 1950 al 1986) furono devotissime amanti, massaie e segretarie. Ebbe una decina di amori extraconiugali importanti (i più notevoli, quello con Maitreyi, per il contesto orientale e il libro – anzi i due libri – che ne seguirono, e quello con Sorana, per l’exploit orgasmico di cui parlerò nel seguito). E svariate altre donne: non tantissime come il coetaneo Georges Simenon (1903-1989), che si vantava di aver consumato un numero di donne superiore a quello delle matite usate nei suoi innumerevoli scritti (quattrocento e più romanzi e migliaia di articoli) e in un’intervista al vitellone romagnolo Federico Fellini dichiarava: “Fellini, je crois que, dans ma vie, j’ai été plus Casanova que vous! J’ai fait le calcul, il ya un an ou deux. J’ai eu dix mille femmes depuis l’âge de treize ans et demi. Ce n’est pas du tout un vice. Je n’ai aucun vice sexuel, mais j’avais besoin de communiquer!”
Ma anche i libri o gli articoli che si scrivono e poi (non sempre) si pubblicano sono partenze. Un elenco provvisorio, probabilmente in difetto, potrebbe essere il seguente: Romanzi o racconti lunghi: 15 - volumi di novelle: 4 - diari: 5 - volumi di memorie: 2 - drammi: 4 - saggi di storia delle religioni, di filosofia, di critica letteraria: 34 e più - curatele di opere singole o collettive: 2 tomi (Bogdan Hasdeu); 1 tomo (Nae Ionescu); 4 tomi (From Primitives to Zen: fonti di storia delle religioni), 15 voll. (Encyclopedia of Religion) - riviste fondate e dirette o co-dirette: 1. Zalmoxis, 2. Antaios, 3. History of Religions.
Aggiungiamo più di 1900 articoli, pubblicati in riviste e miscellanee di varia cultura soprattutto nel periodo romeno, ripresi solo in minima parte nelle opere menzionate sopra. E non parliamo degli infiniti frammenti inediti: abbozzi di libri non condotti a termine, note erudite, appunti di diario smarriti nei vari traslochi o da lui stesso gettati nelle fiamme o distrutti nel grande incendio che devastò il suo ufficio all’Università di Chicago un anno prima della morte. Molto si trova ancora nei 177 scatoloni del fondo Eliade conservato allo “Special Collections Research Center” presso la Regenstein Library della Università di Chicago, insieme alla corrispondenza, i manoscritti e le prime copie a stampa di tutti i libri pubblicati da Eliade, scritti su di lui e altro materiale interessante, compreso la famosa pipa, 5 temperini e un calzascarpe. Certo una bagattella al confronto della produzione del quasi coetaneo teologo indo-catalano Raimon Panikkar (1918-), al quale si devono più di 60 voll. e più di 1500 articoli, ma – si sa – i teologi scrivono sotto la dettatura di Dio (ed Eliade non era un teologo, contrariamente a quanto molti pensano). Ma un numero abbastanza cospicuo per comprendere che siamo di fronte a un essere fenomenale: un individuo ossessionato da una specie di delirio della scrittura-confessione, in funzione di una fuga dalla realtà (in gergo psicologico “escapismo”), che è poi una forma estrema di svago o distrazione, il cui scopo è d’estraniarsi da un’esistenza nei confronti della quale si prova disagio.
Infinite (in svariate lingue) le monografie, le miscellanee, gli articoli, le voci d’enciclopedia, le recensioni, le tesi di laurea sui più disparati aspetti della sua vita e della sua opera. E – ed è ciò che più conta – infinite citazioni dei suoi scritti in opere di storia delle religioni e di ogni altro genere letterario; per fare un esempio, Eliade è l’unico storico delle religioni menzionato in due opere chiave di due papi, Karol Józef Wojtyła (Varcare la soglia della speranza) e Joseph Ratzinger (Fede, verità, tolleranza).
La sua vita in Portogallo
In questa sede, ci proponiamo di affrontare alcuni momenti del suo vissuto interiore nel periodo portoghese. Premettiamo che Eliade stette in Portogallo, prima come addetto stampa, poi come consigliere culturale, poi di nuovo come addetto stampa, poi come privato cittadino (in ragione dei mutamenti del vento politico romeno) dal 10 febbraio 1941 al 13 sett. 1945, esattamente 4 anni e 7 mesi: sono date che parlano da sé …
Il Jurnal portughez è il più importante dei diari di Eliade per due motivi. Anzitutto esso si diversifica da Şantier (“Cantiere”, noto in Italia come Diario d’India) e dai tre voll. di Fragments d’un journal ovvero Journalul in romeno (che vanno dall’arrivo in Francia nel ’45 alla morte dell’autore nell’86) perché non fu ridotto (e censurato) dall’Autore per la pubblicazione, sia perché non ne ebbe il tempo sia perché non si trovò mai nella disposizione d’animo adatta per fare i conti con il vissuto psichico di quegli anni colmi di avvenimenti funesti per lui, per il suo paese e per il resto del mondo. Sia chiaro: quando Eliade scrive, scrive sempre col pensiero al lettore. Una volta, infatti, osserva che solo quando lui avrà sessant’anni quei pensieri potranno essere resi di pubblico dominio, e solo allo stato di “frammenti”, estrapolati dall’insieme delle confessioni: così scrive il 5 febbraio 1945. Alla sua morte la moglie Christinel non si è mai decisa a dare il permesso della pubblicazione: solo pochissimi intimi hanno avuto accesso al manoscritto conservato nel fondo Eliade della Biblioteca Regenstein di Chicago, tra i quali l’amico romeno Matei Calinescu (1934-2009) e il fedelissimo allievo e biografo McLinscott Ricketts. Ricapitolando, il testo manoscritto è stato pubblicato così come era stato buttato giù dall’autore, e sarebbe dunque la prima volta che ci troviamo di fronte ai pensieri immediati di Eliade, un autore che anche critici benevoli come N. Spineto e B. Rennie considerano un grande bugiardo, costruttore e manipolatore del proprio personaggio per la posterità.
Abbiamo detto che il Jurnal del periodo portoghese è più importante di tutti gli altri diari per due motivi. Il primo, si è visto, risiede nel suo carattere di documento genuino, immediato, in quanto presenta i suoi pensieri senza tagli o rielaborazioni. Il secondo motivo è di ordine contenutistico, e non è meno essenziale. In esso infatti sono narrati: 1) i pensieri e le emozioni che fanno da sostrato alle due opere di Eliade (apparse entrambe nel 1949 ma cominciate in quegli anni luttuosi) di gran lunga più lette e citate, cioè il Traité d’histoire des religions (prima concepito come “Prolegomeni” e poi ripresentato in inglese come Patterns) e il Mythe de l’éternel retour (successivamente presentato in inglese col titolo più descrittivo Cosmos and History); 2) le emozioni e i pensieri generati dal progressivo disfacimento – cui seguirà un inesorabile collasso – delle due cose che al Nostro erano più care, la patria -nazione romena, neamul românesc (sotto il rullo compressore delle armate sovietiche e per la inettitudine o complicità di “piloti orbi” di varie tendenze), e la sposa Nina Mareş (in seguito agli effetti devastanti di un cancro all’utero). E – come è stato notato anche da Alexandrescu, che definisce il Diario portoghese “Apocalisse di Eliade” o “secondo Mircea Eliade” (p. 317, trad. ital.; p. 26, ed. romena) – tra le due catastrofi esiste un inscindibile nesso, quale quello che può sussistere tra le vicende del macrocosmo-mondo e quelle del microcosmo-uomo, per restare nei termini di una polarità derivata da una tradizione – quella indiana – a lui estremamente familiare (si veda, ad es. nel Diario, la riflessione del 25 sett. 1942: “Quando l’uomo scopre sé stesso, ātman, scopre l’assoluto cosmico, brahman, e nello stesso tempo coincide con esso”, p. 49, trad. it.). In queste circostanze, e da esse condizionato e afflitto, egli elabora una serie di formule ermeneutiche che anticipano la filosofia delle due opere. Da queste circostanze, in maniera ancora più evidente, nascono una serie di riflessioni assolutamente brutali sulla situazione politica del tempo e sulla propria intimità personale, riflessioni che non mancheranno di suscitare gli strilli indignati delle anime belle e dei corifei della correttezza politica. Diamo quindi la parola all’autore stesso: all’Eliade intimo.
La bella giudea di Cordova
Anzitutto una riflessione sulla donna come virtuale soggetto e oggetto di desiderio e di innamoramento. Il 5 ottobre 1944 Eliade è a Cordova per un congresso in cui avrebbe parlato di miti sull’origine delle piante. Nella piazzetta di Maimonide adocchia “dal gruppo di curiosi che ci guardano passare, una ragazza straordinariamente bella, con una macchia bruna sotto gli occhi. Un tipo marcatamente ebraico” (p. 169 trad. it.). In lui si accende la fiamma del desiderio; non lo dice – secondo lo stile reticente e allusivo che è tipico del suo diario –, ma è evidente dalla narrazione che segue. “Al Depósito de Sementales (cioè il deposito degli stalloni), perché ci vengano mostrati i cavalli. Il primo cavallo che ci presentano è da monta: poderoso, ma terribile. In effetti il sesso non è mai bello, manca di grazia, non ha altra qualità tranne quella della riproduzione potenziata in modo mostruoso. Sono convinto che la maggior parte dei cavalli arabi e arabo-ispanici che ci vengono fatti vedere, superbi, nervosi e fieri, siano impotenti, o quasi. Il pensiero che la forza generativa che sento turbarmi sin dall’adolescenza potrebbe essere il grande ostacolo tra me e lo spirito puro, l’uccello del malaugurio del mio talento, mi deprime. Che cosa avrei potuto creare se fossi stato meno schiavo della carne!”. Eliade fu certo ossessionato dall’antitesi tra libido copulandi e libido scribendi (sentite entrambe come forme di creazione potenziale), ma non ricorse mai come il giudeo greco alessandrino Origene al rimedio estremo della castrazione. Per domare le urgenze della carne dovette attendere il naturale sedarsi dell’istinto sessuale, in seguito al trascorrere degli anni e grazie alla compagnia di una donna castrante come Christinel Cottescu. Lì a Cordova, la visione in rapida successione della bella giudea e dei potenti/impotenti stalloni fa scattare nella sua mente un’intuizione sulle modalità dell’eros femminile che è certo basata sulla sua ventennale esperienza di seduttore ma anche su una raffinata capacità di cogliere gli aspetti sottili della realtà, capacità che è poi anche quella che contraddistingue la sua ermeneutica dei fenomeni religiosi nei loro aspetti simbolici. “Dubito che le donne amino la violenza come stile erotico e abbiano un debole per gli uomini brutali. La donna è sensibile in primo luogo all’intelligenza (come la intende lei, ovviamente: “vivacità di spirito”, “facezia” [spirt, drăcos, glumeţ], ecc.); più che alla stessa bellezza. In secondo luogo, è sensibile alla bontà. Tutti i racconti con donne ossessionate da uomini brutali, ecc., sono invenzioni letterarie di certi decadenti. Statisticamente, e soprattutto nei villaggi, ciò che attrae nel 90 % le donne è il “cervello” (deşteptăciunea) e la bontà. Non è la capacità generativa a distinguerci dalle donne, ma l’intelligenza” (p. 170 trad. it.).
La conclusione di Eliade, per quanto generalizzante, è sicuramente fondata e potrebbe assegnare al suo autore un posto d’onore tra i trattatisti dell’amore nella serie che va da un Andrea Cappellano a un Henri Stendhal, fino a un Francesco Alberoni, si licet parvis componere magnis. Merita attenzione il corollario di questa riflessione che sembra caratteristico di una mentalità tipicamente maschilista, piuttosto disinvolta nei riguardi delle capacità intellettuali del gentil sesso: “Non è la capacità generativa a distinguerci dalle donne, ma l’intelligenza”.
Intelligenza e gentil sesso
Vuole egli intendere, con questa asserzione, che le donne sono prive di intelligenza?
Probabilmente sì, nel senso che le donne sarebbero prive di quel certo tipo di intelligenza o prontezza di spirito che esse prediligono in quegli uomini che ai loro occhi ne appaiono dotati. E credo invero che quel suo insistere sulla differenza (quella certa cosa che ci distingue dalle donne, “ne distingue de femei”), debba intendersi nel senso che le donne – come del resto gli uomini – sono naturalmente attratte (per la nota legge chimico-fisica sull’attrazione tra poli contrari) da quegli uomini che possiedono in maniera marcata una caratteristica di cui esse si sentono prive: il che naturalmente è vero solo in certi casi. E sarà lo stesso Eliade a notarlo in un pensiero successivo che sembra in netta contraddizione con questo.
L’11 aprile 1945, meno di un anno dopo, il Nostro è in uno stato di acuta irritazione nei riguardi dei suoi compatrioti maschi (in particolare i funzionari del ministero degli Esteri, pronti a inchinarsi di fronte al nuovo padrone sovietico) e in più soggetto a una crisi nevrastenica, “alimentata in modo naturale dalla mia insoddisfazione erotica”. Il suo pessimismo “per quel che riguarda la condizione attuale dell’uomo” lo induce ad impietose considerazioni che smascherano la (presunta) superiorità dell’intelligenza maschile. “Certe volte mi deprime l’enorme ruolo che continua a svolgere la vanità nella vita di quasi tutti gli uomini; superiore a quello del sesso, della fame o della paura della morte. Mi convinco egualmente che il maschio ‘in generale’ è di gran lunga più stupido di quello che ritenevo sino a qualche anno fa. La lucidità del maschio è una leggenda. Conosco, oggi, moltissimi uomini che sono stati scelti, menati per il naso e ‘acchiappati’ da donne completamente prive di ogni tipo di attrattiva – senza che essi avessero anche solo il sospetto del ruolo passivo che hanno avuto. (…) In moltissime coppie che ho conosciuto negli ultimi sette, otto anni, le mogli sono molto al di sotto del livello dei mariti, ma infinitamente più intelligenti e abili di loro, prova ne sia il fatto che se li tengono. Al contrario, quasi tutte le donne ammirevoli che ho conosciuto in questo lasso di tempo sono rimaste senza marito, perché nessun uomo ha saputo sceglierle. D’altronde, credo che quasi nessun uomo scelga. È sempre scelto. Come spiegarmi, altrimenti, tante coppie assurde che conosco? La stupidità dei maschi non è mai tanto evidente come quando, dopo molti amoreggiamenti e avventure, decidono di sposarsi. Quasi sempre la sposa ‘scelta’ è di gran lunga inferiore alle donne con le quali hanno flirtato, ecc.” (p. 264-265, trad. it.). Sei mesi prima, come abbiamo visto, pare che egli pensasse esattamente il contrario. Anche se sembra evidente che nell’un caso egli si riferisce alle condizioni in base alle quali la donna si lascia sedurre, nell’altro alla strategia che mette in atto per sedurre – a fini matrimoniali. Sulla donna, sul mistero della mente femminile, comunque, fa cilecca la razionalità di Mircea Eliade, come faceva cilecca la razionalità di un Platone o di un Schopenhauer.
L’eros come emozione
e orgasmo
E dall’eros come “innamoramento” passiamo a un’altra serie di riflessioni attorno a un altro aspetto paradossale della tematica erotica: l’eros come emozione legata all’evento fisiologico dell’eccitazione e dell’orgasmo, di nuovo da un punto di vista prettamente maschile. Tra il 2 e il 3 di febbraio del 1945, quando la disperazione per la “sparizione di Nina” gli pare intollerabile, quando la lettera di quasi licenziamento del Ministero degli Esteri lo getta praticamente sul lastrico, egli giunge, come avrebbe detto Eschilo, al mathein attraverso il pathein: a un intuizione geniale attraverso l’angoscia e la sofferenza (p. 227, trad. it.). Egli si domanda: “Che cosa significa la perdita di tua moglie, in confronto alla grande catastrofe mondiale, nella quale lasciano la vita decine di migliaia di persone al giorno, che annienta città e strema nazioni?”. La risposta che Eliade dà è lucidissima, e getta, per così dire, un ponte tra il macro- e il microcosmo; e significa, nel fondo, che la massa non è che una somma di individui tra loro incomunicabili. “Gli risponderei: immaginati un giovane innamorato da tanto tempo, che, un bel giorno, riesce a far sua la donna amata. È felice, e nel vederlo traboccare di felicità tu gli dici: ‘Che interesse può avere il fatto che tu oggi abbia posseduto una donna! Alla stessa ora, in tutto il mondo, almeno un milione di coppie stavano facendo, come te, l’amore. Non c’è nulla di straordinario in quello che ti è successo!’. E, malgrado ciò, lui, innamorato, sa che ciò che gli è successo è stato straordinario”. In questa minirealtà – che poi tanto minima non è – Eliade dà mostra di una capacità introspettiva che gli fa cogliere quel tanto di banale e di balordo che è implicito nell’atto della consumazione, che assume significato solo attraverso l’amore, amore che è in grado di produrre una trasformazione quasi alchemica dell’evento fisiologico. Una capacità introspettiva che è in fondo in sintonia (ci sia concesso questo accostamento che ad alcuni potrà apparire irriverente o impertinente) con la sua riflessione su tempo ed eternità, quale si ritroverà appunto nel libro alla stesura del quale si accingerà il mese successivo e che apparirà in Francia quattro anni dopo col titolo Le mythe de l’éternel retour. Archétypes et répétition (Paris 1949). Per il resto della notte lo rode l’insonnia, durante la quale si accavallano pensieri dominati da una disperazione atroce e senza apparente via di uscita (“sento che qualsiasi cosa faccia il risultato è la disperazione”). E di nuovo si rifugia nell’escamotage del libertinaggio fine a se stesso, svuotato di ogni dimensione romantica.
“E ho un’alternativa: se mi getterò di nuovo in esperienze (leggi: erotismo), mi consumerò invano, perché nessun piacere fisico può essermi di consolazione una volta estinto (può forse consolarmi l’aver stretto tra le braccia Rica, Maitrey, Sorana e qualche altra? Mai un ricordo erotico consola; tutto si consuma per sempre nell’atto; si ricorda l’amore, l’amicizia, la storia legata a una donna, ma ciò che è stato essenzialmente erotico, il fatto in sé diventa nulla nell’istante successivo alla sua consumazione). Così, mi dico che devo accontentarmi di un equilibrio fisiologico acquisito senza grattacapi (un’avventura qualunque e comoda) e concentrarmi sulla mia opera, lasciandomi passare accanto la vita senza sentirmi costretto ad assaporarla, a cambiarla né ad avvicinarmela”. Alla lucidità della diagnosi (effettivamente è così: il ricordo erotico non consola, tutto si consuma per sempre nell’atto, da cui il pessimismo sull’eros come adempimento fisiologico frustrante di Lucrezio nel IV libro del De Rerum Natura e l’insaziabile concupiscenza di Don Giovanni nel mito e nella letteratura) segue la banalità della terapia: “un’avventura qualunque e comoda”, cioè evidentemente mercenaria.
Insomma, per salvarsi dalla depressione conseguente alla débacle sua personale e della sua patria, Eliade (in fondo ha solo 38 anni, un’età in cui gli ormoni sono ancora assai attivi) si rifugia nel sesso come atto biologico di puro consumo. Nei giorni e nelle notti che vanno dal 5 marzo al 15 aprile 1945, mentre la storia macina gli eventi (per usare un’espressione carducciana) come in nessun altro momento del secolo testé trascorso, il Nostro macina i propri testicoli con accanimento per così dire terapeutico. Negli intervalli della cronaca del pellegrinaggio a Fatima, “per il riposo dell’anima di Nina e la salvezza della mia integrità spirituale” (18 marzo, p. 252, trad. it.), e del successivo ritorno a Cascais ove si ritrova a lottare con i tira e molla del Ministero degli Esteri romeno e con i fantasmi del proprio passato, è tutto un susseguirsi di annotazioni di eventi crudamente neurologici e fisiologici (p. 249-269 trad. it.). Il 5 marzo egli comincia a sperimentare la sua inedita tecnica di liberazione dalla crisi nevrastenica dando briglia sciolta alla sua sensualità e ad una sfrenata ginnastica sessuale. “Oggi – annota – sono tornato alla fisiologia. In un’ora ho fatto l’amore tre volte con la stessa donna, un po’ meravigliata, bisogna dirlo, del mio vigore. Domani o dopodomani consulterò un neurologo: voglio tentare tutto. Mi affliggerebbe apprendere, ad esempio, che la mia nevrastenia e la mia melanconia sono dovute alle adorabili funzioni seminali” (p. 249, trad. it.).  Il 14 marzo, alla vigilia della partenza per Fatima, annota: “Ripeterò la mia arcinota tecnica di liberazione attraverso l’eccesso, di purificazione attraverso l’orgia. (…) Voglio sapere se la mia melanconia ha o no radici fisiologiche. Voglio liberarmi da ogni influenza seminale, anche se questa liberazione implicherà sedurre un centinaio di donne” (p. 251, trad. it.). Il 16 marzo riceve dal neurologo la risposta che si attendeva: “le melanconie dipendono da cause spirituali”, ma la crisi generale ha motivazioni più biologiche, legate alla sua ipersessualità insoddisfatta: “non posso raggiungere l’equilibrio se non solo dopo la realizzazione di quello erotico” (p. 252, trad. it.). E durante il viaggio, nonostante le consolazioni spirituali del paesaggio “archetipico” si ritrova a lottare coi soliti fantasmi ormonali: “Tutto ieri e oggi ossessionato dal sesso” (22 marzo, p. 257, trad. it.). L’11 aprile, di nuovo a Cascais, ripete a sé stesso che la crisi nervosa è basata sull’insoddisfazione erotica. Ma i rapporti saltuari, per quanto spinti al massimo della sollecitazione ormonale, non lo soddisfano abbastanza: “avrei bisogno di un’amante giorno e notte” (11 aprile, p. 264, trad. it).
La politica, la pausa,
il lavoro
Il 15 aprile finalmente il Nostro riprende a lavorare (dopo la crisi di melanconia del giorno precedente in cui ha vissuto “un distacco definitivo dall’opera, dalla cultura, dalla filosofia, dalla vita e dalla salvezza”), ed è alle prese con la rilettura di Isabel şi apele diavolului (1929/30), in vista di un’eventuale nuova edizione. E allora, quasi proustianamente, riaffiorano in lui sensazioni e ossessioni che lo perseguitavano al momento della stesura del libro e immediatamente dopo la sua apparizione in Romania. “Un particolare mi turba: l’accento che pongo sulla sterilità, sull’impotenza. … Mi sono chiesto se il mio rifiuto (nel romanzo) di possedere Isabel non potrebbe interpretarsi psicoanaliticamente come un’ossessione di impotenza. Visto che non ho mai avuto tale ossessione, mi chiedo da dove provenga il rifiuto di possedere una ragazza che ti si offre, complicato dalla gioia sadica di vederla posseduta da un altro. È probabile che questa domanda se la siano posta anche gli altri. Rammento che Sorana, dopo una giornata eroica [meglio: “brava”, romeno: zi de vitejie] nel rifugio di Poiana Braşov dove feci dieci volte l’amore con lei, mi confessò che il mio vigore l’aveva sorpresa; perché, dopo aver letto Isabel, mi credeva quasi impotente. Ma, spaventata dalla mia energia, si confidò con Lily Popovici, che lei riteneva avesse avuto più esperienze in fatto di uomini. Lily le disse che, se non mi avesse conosciuto, avrebbe pensato che mi fossi drogato, che avessi preso delle pillole, ecc. La cosa più divertente è che io neppure mi rendevo conto d’essere in realtà messo tanto “bene”. Mi sembrava che qualsiasi uomo, se una donna gli piaceva, ed era rilassato, poteva fare l’amore dieci volte! Più tardi, ho capito che questo è un privilegio abbastanza raro” (p. 268, trad. it.). Questa ossessione della virilità, presente nella sua narrativa giovanile, è certo esistente allo stato latente nella sua psiche (per quanto egli si affretti a precisare il contrario: “Il problema della potenza o dell’impotenza non mi ha mai preoccupato”), altrimenti mal si spiegherebbe questa sua ricorrente, quasi puerile compiacenza nell’esibizione delle sue prodezze priapiche, ed è da Eliade ricollegata a un rifiuto ben più radicato e conscio: il rifiuto di generare prole, che si lega poi al lacerante senso di colpa prodotto dalla morte di Nina per cause probabilmente legate a un aborto violento che lui stesso le aveva imposto.
In queste meditazioni di un Eliade alla soglia dei quarant’anni è teorizzata, sul piano individuale, una tecnica di liberazione dall’angoscia (in altre parole, una tecnica di “salvezza”), basata sulla ginnastica copulatoria e l’estasi eaiaculatoria, senza che si tenti di elevarla su un piano di trascendenza metafisica o di stabilire alcun rapporto con i valori catartici e salvifici dell’orgia, temi peraltro assai familiari all’Eliade autore, nel 1936, di Yoga, essai sur les origines de la mystique indienne. L’aggancio di questo tema con più ampie realtà filosofiche e storico-religiose sarà invece compiuto da un altro storico e pensatore che è stato un suo dialettico compagno di strada in varie imprese, l’italiano Julius Evola (1898-1974), in Metafisica del sesso (1958; II ed. 1969). Un libro, questo, anch’esso frutto di una catastrofe personale mirabilmente metabolizzata, un libro che Eliade non avrebbe mai potuto scrivere, anche se fu testimone della sua gestazione in un incontro avvenuto nel maggio del 1952. In esso, in particolare nel terzo capitolo (Fenomeni di trascendenza nell’amore profano), Evola tratta dell’amplesso da un punto di vista superiore, cercando di cogliere quegli effetti trascendenti che rappresentano l’acme dell’atto sessuale. Come ha scritto Franco Volpi nel Dizionario delle opere filosofiche (Milano 2000, p. 357), nella voce appositamente dedicata a quest’opera apparentemente così poco filosofica, “Evola sviluppa una considerazione metafisica del sesso, ritenendo tale fenomeno un elemento troppo importante nella vita degli esseri per lasciarlo a spiegazioni semplicemente positivistiche e sessuologiche. Il sesso è la forza magica più intensa della natura, capace di esercitare su tutti i viventi un’attrazione irresistibile e tale da fornire, secondo Evola, l’occasione per trascendere la mera corporeità ed elevarsi fino al piano dello spirito. Il fenomeno del sesso implica dunque un potenziale estatico, iniziatico, che può essere portato alla luce soltanto guardando a esso dalla prospettiva metafisica”. E, conclude Volpi, “nell’eros – nei suoi attimi sublimi, ma a volte anche in esperienze d’amore quotidiane particolarmente intense – balugina la trascendenza, la quale può infrangere i limiti della coscienza quotidiana e produrre un’apertura spirituale. Il fenomeno del sesso getta così un ponte tra la fisica e la metafisica, tra la natura e lo spirito”. Ma queste cose l’Eliade del 1945, innamorato senza speranza di una donna che è ormai un fantasma e soggetto ancora a violente tempeste ormonali, non poteva o non voleva dirle.

*Ordinario di Storia delle Religioni all’Università di Salerno

Tante altre notizie su www.ariannaeditrice.it

 

 

Johann Nepomuk Ringseis (1785-1880)

Archives de SYNERGIES EUROPEENNES - 1991

 

Robert STEUCKERS:

RINGSEIS, Johann Nepomuk  1785-1880

 

Né le 16 mai 1785 à Schwarzhofen en Bavière, le jeune Ringseis, très tôt orphelin, fréquentera l'école abbatiale des Cisterciens à Walderbach, puis le séminaire d'Amberg, avant de commencer des études de médecine en 1805 à Landshut sous la direction d'Andreas Röschlaub, dont il deviendra l'assistant. Influencé par les Lumières lors de sa première année d'étude, Ringseis se dégage vite du rationalisme étroit sous l'influence des idées de Stolberg et des écrits de Baader et des romantiques (surtout Joh. Mich. Sailer). Les mesures de confiscation des biens d'église en Bavière, dues à l'influence française, le choquent, le révoltent et ancrent définitivement ses convictions anti-révolutionnaires . Ringseis entame une brillante carrière médicale; philosophes célèbres, membres de la famille royale bavaroise sont ses patients attitrés. Plusieurs séjours en Italie avec le Kronprinz  de Bavière contribuent à conforter son catholicisme. Quand le prince héritier, devenu Louis Ier, monte sur le trône en 1825, Ringseis est nommé Obermedicinalrath  (ce qui équivaut à Ministre de la santé), avec pour mission de réformer la médecine en Bavière. C'est dans le cadre de ces activités politico-médicales que paraît en 1841 son ouvrage le plus célèbre: System der Medizin.  Avec l'appui du roi Louis Ier, Ringseis devient en quelque sorte le promoteur de la nouvelle université de Munich, où se télescoperont et se fructifieront mutuellement les idées protestantes et catholiques de l'époque. Son engagement ultramontain se précise. Entre 1848 et 1850, période agitée dans toute l'Europe, Ringseis participe à la vie politique bavaroise. En 1852, il quitte l'université pour marquer son désaccord avec les réformes envisagées mais y revient en 1855 et prononce un discours sur la nécessité de l'autorité dans les hautes sphères de la science. En 1872, à 87 ans, il quitte ses fonctions ministérielles. Il meurt à Munich le 22 mai 1880.

 

System der Medizin. Ein Handbuch der allgemeinen und speziellen Pathologie und Therapie; zugleich ein Versuch zur Reformation und Restauration der medicinischen Theorie und Praxis (System de la médecine. Manuel de pathologie et thérapie générales et spéciales; en même temps tentative de réformer et de restaurer la théorie et la pratique médicales) 1841

 

Les thèses principales de cet ouvrage très contesté dans les milieux médicaux du XIXième siècle sont: a) chaque organisme est dominé par un principe vital unitaire et individuel; b) la santé est l'état dans lequel ce principe domine seul; c) la maladie est l'état dans lequel ce principe ne domine plus seul mais est troublé par un élément étranger qu'il ne peut pas assimiler ni dominer; d) la guérison survient quand la force vitale, éventuellement soutenue par des médications, soumet et assimile le principe étranger entré dans le corps, l'élimine ou le maintient inoffensif; elle est complète quand la force vitale spécifique règne à nouveau seule dans l'organisme. Ce qui est pertinent dans cet ouvrage de médecine, c'est que Ringseis perçoit nettement la faiblesse des rationalismes issus du "satanique Descartes": ceux-ci imposent une logique qui ne vaut que pour les phénomènes extérieurs, dispersés et juxtaposés dans l'espace, et rejettent toutes formes de logique qui vaudraient pour les phénomènes intérieurs, qui s'emboîtent les uns dans les autres et se compénètrent mutuellement. Cette idée d'un "imbriquement quasi infini" (ein fast unendliches Ineinander)  rejoint les critiques contemporaines des rationalités unilinéaires et unidimensionnelles, notamment les épistémologies philosophiques inspirées par les sciences physiques modernes de Heisenberg à Prigogine, de même que certaines audaces postmodernes.

(Robert Steuckers).

 

- Bibliographie complète, articles et discours universitaires et circonstantiels compris, dans E.R., "Johann Nepomuk Ringseis", Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie,  28. Band, Leipzig, Duncker & Humblot, 1889; comme textes principaux: Über den revolutionären Geist der deutschen Universitäten,  Rectoratsantrittsrede, Munich, 1833; Manifest der bayerischen Ultramontanen,  écrit anonyme, Munich, 1848; Über die Nothwendigkeit der Autorität in den höchsten Gebieten der Wissenschaft,  Rectoratsantrittsrede, Munich, 1855 (2ième et 3ième éd. complétées, 1856); Über die naturwissenschaftliche Auffassung des Wunders,  Munich, 1861; Über das Ineinander in den Naturdingen,  texte publié par les Dr. Schmauß et Geenen dans Beilage zum Tagblatt der 36. Versammlung deutscher Naturforscher und Aertze in Speyer,  1861.

- En français: références in Georges Gusdorf, L'Homme romantique,  Payot, 1984, pp. 273-277; Georges Gusdorf, Du néant à Dieu dans le savoir romantique,  Payot, 1983, pp. 242-245.  

 

El filosofo come intelectual pùblico

El filósofo como intelectual público

 

Alberto Buela (*)

Le ha pasado a muchos, y nos ha pasado también a nosotros, que después de dictar clase durante años en la universidad, dejaron la enseñanza para limitarse a la investigación propia, a pensar sin ataduras, programas ni horarios.

 

 

 

Pero, por qué se toma este tipo de decisión tan vital: a) Por la íntima y subjetiva convicción del filósofo (ocurre con otras disciplinas también), que si bien la práctica filosófica requiere como condición el ejercicio académico, al menos durante un tiempo, esa práctica filosófica no se agota en ejercicio académico. Y b) porque son  muy pocos los que pueden soportar la presión del ejercicio simultáneo de la filosofía en dos escenarios tan diferentes como el público y la academia. No sólo porque existen dos juegos de lenguajes: el propio de la academia con sus tecnicismos, cuanto más mejor, que circula en el interior de las facultades de filosofía y se expresa en las publicaciones especializadas. Esa verborrea bizantina que hizo exclamar a Nietzsche: “ciertos profesores de filosofía oscurecen las aguas para que parezcan más profundas” .

Y el propio de lo público, vinculado a las formas de opinión pública (TV, radio, diarios, conferencias abiertas) y al uso del lenguaje cotidiano. Y en este campo vale el apotegma de Ortega: “la claridad es la cortesía del filósofo”.

A esto hay que agregar que, quien decide intervenir sobre lo público corre el riesgo de perder el empleo público como profesor universitario o investigador. La reticencia de los académicos a pegar el salto es más bien por este último motivo que por el anterior.

Además desde el lado académico se lo comienza a considerar en una categoría menor como la de “ensayista”.  Dice Owe Wikstrom en Elogio de la lentitud  que el ensayo es un intento, ese es su sentido etimológico, donde el autor mezcla lo pequeño y lo grande de manera personal [1]. Y agregamos nosotros, El ensayo llega a conclusiones, enumera las pruebas más que detenerse en el método que convalida las pruebas. Por otra parte el ensayo fue durante muchos años un producto típicamente hispanoamericano, tenido por un género menor por los autores de manuales académicos al estilo europeo.

 

Es interesante notar que la figura del intelectual público es tan vieja como el ejercicio de la filosofía, el ejemplo clásico es Sócrates. En cuanto al intelectual académico recién aparece con cierta regularidad a partir de la década del cuarenta del siglo XX. El caso argentino es emblemático, antes del 40 todos los filósofos, no había tantos, eran intelectuales públicos y es a partir de esos años que son incorporados a sueldo mensual en las plantillas universitarias. Esto produce un enriquecimiento de la Universidad que luce con las mejores ropas de toda su historia durante 15 años hasta que en 1955 es intervenida por el poder político de turno. Las consecuencias fueron nefastas pues la Universidad se encerró en sí misma y ya no produjo filósofos[2] sino, a lo sumo, buenos investigadores.

En estos últimos veinte años ha aparecido una variante del intelectual público, la del “yeite o curro filosófico”, para decirlo en lunfardo. La de aquellos profesores de filosofía que le han buscado la vuelta a tan noble disciplina para ganar dinero con ella. Así aparecieron los filósofos terapeutas como Lou Marinoff (Más Platón y menos Prozac), los filósofos de la vida que dictan seminarios en su casa, los filósofos mundanos como nuestro Sebrelli que dicta seminarios de verano en las playas de Punta del Este, los filósofos críticos de la sociedad que dictan sus clases en algún organismo internacional bien pagos, los filósofos que dictan ética empresaria, a empresarios ricos con empleados pobres, etc., etc.

 

La figura del intelectual público no es ni la de un académico erudito ni la de un experto “chanta o farabute” como los que acabamos de mencionar. Él posee una cultura general y se interesa en poner ideas nuevas o viejas, pero siempre diferentes en debate. Deja de lado las interpretaciones especializadas que los académicos discuten entre pares y busca o intenta la interpretación sencilla y general. Es que él, como buen filósofo, es un maestro en generalidades. Piensa a partir del disenso frente a lo políticamente correcto y al pensamiento único. Es no conformista y rechaza la especialización siempre vinculada a una pequeña elite. Es que la universidad moderna ha legitimado un saber de eruditos y ha terminado minando la cultura intelectual común de los pueblos. Su saber no es un saber ilustrado, un saber sólo de libros, sino que intenta un saber sobre las cosas que son y suceden en la vida pública, que no es otra cosa, reiteramos, que la vida de los pueblos.

El filósofo como intelectual público pierde mucho tiempo de su vida hablando con unos y con otros, en reuniones infinitas y en conferencias multitudinarias en donde no se sabe bien qué es lo que llega a entender el receptor. De ahí su exigencia de claridad expositiva. Se le va gran parte de su vida tratando de construir una opinión distinta a la dada en o sobre personajes que puede llegar a tener alguna ingerencia política o social. Trabaja sobre “lo que es” pero con vistas “al deber ser”, pues para él, el ser es lo que es más lo que puede ser. Ningún profesor de filosofía de los miles de cagatintas que existen puede llegar a pensar así, pues sólo recitará al respecto las lecciones de Aristóteles o Heidegger.

 

Hace unos años apareció un libro de Richard Posner Intelectual público, un estudio de su decadencia [3] en donde sostiene que “el intelectual público es un no especialista y eso mismo era, tradicionalmente, el filósofo” [4], y a reglón seguido nombra todos “paisanos” como él (¡qué vocación de autobombo que tienen!) Nussbaum, Habermas, Dworkin, Nagel, Singer, Putman, etc., cuando en realidad son otros los genuinos intelectuales públicos en el mundo: los Franco Cardini, Massimo Cacciari, Marco Tarchi, Pietro Barcelona, Giacomo Marramao, Marcello Veneziani, Gustavo Bueno, Fernández de la Mora, Aquilino Duque, Sánchez Dragó, Javier Ruiz  Portella, Javier Esparza, Claude Rousseau, Alain de Benoist, Julián Freund, Michel Maffesoli, Jean Cau, Tomislav Sunic, Günter Maschke, Ernst Nolte, Alexander Dugin et alli. Y aquí en nuestro medio se destacan Silvio Maresca, Máximo Chaparro, Luís María Bandieri, Jorge Bolivar, Alberto Caturelli, Oscar del Barco, González Arzac y tantos otros.

Tenemos también nosotros, hoy como moda, otros intelectuales mucho más promocionados y publicitados por los mass media como Feimann, Forster, Aguinis, Kovaldoff, T. Abraham, Rotzitchner, pero no pueden ser considerados “intelectuales públicos” porque son intelectuales orgánicos del gobierno de turno o del régimen político. O peor aún están al servido del lobby  explotador del pobrerío más poderoso de Argentina.

Es que el intelectual público tiene como método el disenso sobre el orden constituido que siempre le parece un poco injusto. La premisa que guía su pensamiento es aquella de Platón: “la filosofía es ruptura con la opinión”, y sobre todo con la “opinión publicada”. Y este el es criterio para juzgar adecuadamente a un intelectual público.

 

Es apropiado distinguir que lo público está constituido por el ámbito de interés compartido de las fuerzas de una sociedad. Cuando a partir de los años 80 se limitó lo público al espacio se le castró su sentido, su finalidad y al ser reducido solo a espacio (el gravísimo error de Habermas) pasó a ser entendido como de nadie y por lo tanto lo puedo tomar. Claro está, esto no pasa en Alemania que son todos ilustrados, pero sucede a diario en todo el mundo bolita que es el nuestro.

Lo público debe de ser pensado como función (vgr.: la empresa pública, la tierra pública, la televisión pública) no puede ni debe quedar reducido a espacio público donde la práctica deliberativa de la democracia discursiva (sic Habermas) tiene lugar. El espacio público como lugar de la asamblea. Esto es una estupidez, un engaña pichanga, un gatopardismo para que todo siga igual[5].

 

De modo que el intelectual público no es un simple discutidor, un charlatán, un hablador por hablar sino que antes que nada y sobre todo tiene que tener en cuenta la función o finalidad de lo público y de aquellas cosas que se presentan como problemas públicos-políticos.

De modo tal que si juntamos ruptura con la opinión publicada, práctica del disenso y producción de sentido obtendremos un genuino intelectual público

 

(*) [e-mail] – Univ.Tec. Nac. (UTN)

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[1] Owe Wikstrom: Elogio de la lentitud, Ed. Norma, Bs.As. 2005

[2] Nunca más filósofos de la talla de un Luís Juan Guerrero, Saúl Taborda, Nimio de Anquín, Miguel Ángel Virasoro, Alberto Rougés. Una de las grandes mentiras es que la decadencia de la universidad de Buenos Aires se produjo en 1966 durante el gobierno de Onganía. Eso es lo que nos ha hecho creer el pensamiento políticamente correcto de los marxistas, los liberales, los democristianos y los progresistas, el golpe de gracia a la Universidad se lo dio la intervención de la revolución “entregadora” de 1955.

[3] Postner, Richard: Public intellectuals. A study of decline, Cambridge, Harvard University Pres, 2001

[4] Ibídem, p. 323

[5] Cfr. Nuestro artículo en Internet 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Algo sobre lo público

 

 

 

L'ennui et la condition humaine

L’ennui et la condition humaine

par Pierre LE VIGAN

Le Magazine littéraire consacrait jadis un dossier à l’ennui (n° 400, juillet – août 2001) sous le titre : « Éloge de l’ennui. Un mal nécessaire ». En d’autres termes, il s’agissait d’une interrogation sur la positivité de l’ennui au travers une enquête sur l’ennui au travers le travail de divers écrivains, notamment Flaubert, Proust, Pascal, Beckett, Moravia, Cioran.

Le point de départ littéraire de la question se justifie. Montaigne relève que l’écriture est un remède contre l’angoisse de lire. La lecture est en effet inséparable de l’ennui. Plus précisément, elle se pratique sur fond de vacuité : sur ce fond sans fond que Flaubert appelle « marinade ». Mais de quel ennui est-il question ? C’est selon. C’est pourquoi une  généalogie de la notion est ici nécessaire.

Sénèque distingue l’ennui du chagrin. Ce dernier a généralement des causes précises, comme la douleur. L’ennui est plus vague et plus insidieux. Dans les Lettres à Lucilius, Sénèque voit bien que l’ennui peut aller avec l’agitation, et donc peut être une « activité oisive » : un divertissement impuissant à guérir de l’ennui. Comme remède à l’ennui, Sénèque propose l’activité qui remplit la vie, mais une activité sans se projeter dans l’avenir, une activité d’ici et pour maintenant. Parmi ces activités peut se situer l’écriture, non pas comme divertissement, non plus comme recherche esthétique (une création qui ne serait pas tout à fait une activité), mais comme art de s’appliquer dans l’effectuation des choses. Comme art, aussi, de gérer son emploi du temps. Car l’ennui, comme état de « plein repos » (Pascal), est le fond de la condition de l’homme. Quand l’homme est en repos, il repose sur quoi ? Sur rien. D’où la nécessité de se détourner du repos – d’un repos comme gouffre, d’un repos sans fatigue qui n’est alors qu’une chute. Corollaire inquiétant : si l’homme ne doit jamais être en repos, ne doit-il jamais faire retour sur soi ? L’état de réflexion serait en lui-même  source d’angoisse, de rupture de l’élan vital, d’acédie et d’ennui. C’est contre cette conception pessimiste – la lucidité inséparable de la dépression – que s’élève le janséniste Nicole. « L’ennui, soutient Nicole, touche l’âme quand elle est privée de cet aliment indispensable que sont pour elle les pensées » (Laurent Thirouin).

Pascal, de son côté, ne considère pas que les divertissements suppriment les côtés positifs de l’ennui que sont le sentiment de la gravité des choses et de la fragilité de notre être dans le monde. La légèreté du divertissement n’est pas une faute : elle protège, et c’est tant mieux, contre l’excès d’angoisse. C’est au fond une  forme de lucidité que de rechercher le divertissement. Il faut savoir « être superficiel par profondeur », comme Nietzsche le disait des Grecs. En d’autres termes, pour Pascal, c’est parce que l’ennui a sa place, mais ne doit avoir rien que sa place, que le divertissement a aussi sa place. Même si le seul vrai divertissement positif, c’est-à-dire le seul remède authentique à l’ennui, devrait venir de l’intérieur, et être la recherche constante du chemin qui mène à Dieu.

Dans la grande réhabilitation d’une nature humaine sans Dieu qu’opèrent les philosophes des Lumières, l’ennui comme péril devient le moteur de la recherche du beau, mais aussi bien du terrifiant que du « sublime » (Burke). Face à l’ennui d’un bonheur possible mais qui n’est jamais gai, l’effusion religieuse, ou amoureuse, ou les deux à la fois, apparaît une voie naturelle. Comme les Anciens, les philosophes des Lumières redécouvrent que la vie ne peut qu’osciller entre une léthargie qui n’est pas sérénité, et une inquiétude qui pousse, au mieux, à l’action pour l’action, au pire à l’agitation. « Vous me mandez que vous vous ennuyez, et moi je vous réponds que j’enrage. Voilà les deux pivots de la vie, de l’insipidité ou du vide », écrit Voltaire. « Ou l’on baille ou l’on est ivre », résume de son côté Diderot.  L’équilibre est ainsi difficile « entre la léthargie et la convulsion » (Sénac de Meilhan).

Le romantisme fait une grande place à l’ennui : « ennui d’exister » chez Senancour, désabusement chez Mme de Staël, « analyse perpétuelle » incapacitante chez Benjamin Constant. De son côté, Chateaubriand donne de l’ennui une interprétation particulière en écrivant : « On habite avec un cœur plein un monde vide; et sans avoir joui de rien, on est désabusé de tout ». L’ennui peut ainsi se nourrir du sentiment de n’être pas né pour le monde tel qu’il est : pas né pour le monde de la Révolution française (Adolphe de Custine), pas né non plus pour le monde de la Restauration et de la France post-napoléonienne et post-héroïque (Julien Sorel).

Au-delà de l’esprit du temps, ou du désaccord avec l’esprit du temps, l’ennui, comme le voit bien Stendhal, est une disposition psychologique, un sentiment profond d’incomplétude, d’impossibilité de saisir et de se saisir. « Notre plus grand ennemi est le temps » explique de son coté Alfred de Vigny. Et c’est de l’usure du temps, de l’usure par  le temps qu’il s’agit dans le romantisme. De fait, quand le temps ne permet pas une mise en tension du présent, ce dernier s’étire à l’infini, dans une durée torpide et Pise. Mais une durée qu’un souffle suffit à soulever. « L’ennui du constamment nouveau, l’ennui de découvrir sous la différence des choses et des idées, la permanente identité de tout, […] l’éternelle concordance de la vie avec elle-même, la stagnation de tout ce que je vis, au premier mouvement tout s’efface » (F. Pessoa, Le livre de l’intranquillité, Christian Bourgois Éditions, 1988). L’action sauve de l’ennui, d’où la supériorité de l’écriture sur la lecture.

Cet ennui qui est presque une figure du mal, voire du péché se trouve telle une « torture morale » (Pierre-Marc de Biasi) chez Baudelaire. L’introspection amène l’homme à se voir lui-même comme « une oasis d’horreur dans un désert d’ennui ». Cet ennui écœuré est tout différent de la sensibilité atmosphérique de Gustave Flaubert. Car c’est la question de l’identité, vue d’une façon très moderne, qui est au cœur non pas de l’ennui flaubertien mais bien plutôt de la mélancolie flaubertienne c’est-à-dire de son extrême et douloureuse attention aux questions du sens. « Quelque chose d’indéfini vous sépare de votre propre personne et vous rive au non – être », écrit-il. Ce « quelque chose d’indéfini », c’est l’énigme de l’« ennui profond » (Heidegger), c’est cette profondeur sans fond qui est l’exister lui-même. L’ennui, ainsi, n’est pas le contraire de la jouissance. Il en est la mesure même. C’est parce que l’ennui menace toujours que la jouissance est possible et qu’elle est nécessaire. Car l’ennui est moins ce qui est  que ce qui éloigne de ce qui est. Il est une fatigue comme prédisposition de l’être. Il est ce qui « suscite le désir de rien » (Jean Roudaut). Mais le désir de rien est encore un désir; c’est l’ennui des bouddhistes : un vide qui manifeste le plein. Un vide qui est volupté.

Tout autre est l’ennui qui vient de la révélation que « tout est déjà fini », que l’adhésion aux choses est précisément la chose la plus difficile du monde. C’est l’ennui de Cioran, l’ennui occidental, ennui d’une civilisation du sujet, et à ce titre un ennui fécond, un ennui qui pousse à l’écriture, comme l’écrit encore Jean Roudaut à propos de Samuel Beckett : « Écrire du coup est bien plus que faire l’exercice intellectuel de la mort, au sens où Montaigne prenait le verbe philosopher. C’est l’habiter ». Telle est l’ambivalence de l’ennui, entre la mélancolie qui ouvre à l’homme un site (il y a une jubilation du spleen), et l’acédie qui est l’expérience extrême de la non-prise, de la déprise sur les choses et sur soi. La modernité aimerait bien nous débarrasser de l’ennui. Mais nous n’avons pas fini de nous ennuyer, c’est-à-dire d’éprouver notre condition humaine.

Pierre Le Vigan

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Article printed from Europe Maxima: http://www.europemaxima.com

Henry Williamson: Nature’s Visionary

Mark Deavin

 

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/

The fact that the name of Henry Williamson is today so little known across the White world is a sad reflection of the extent to which Western man has allowed himself to be deprived of his culture and identity over the last 50 years. Until the Second World War Williamson was generally regarded as one of the great English Nature writers, possessing a unique ability to capture the essential essence and meaning of the natural world in all its variety and forms.

His most famous Nature book, Tarka the Otter, was published in 1927 and became one of the best-loved children’s books of all time, with its vivid descriptions of animal and woodland life in the English countryside. It was publicly praised by leading English literary figures such as Thomas Hardy, Arnold Bennett, and John Galsworthy. Hardy called Tarka a “remarkable book,” while Bennett declared it to be “marvelous.” Even T. E. Lawrence, also known as Lawrence of Arabia, admitted that “the book did move me and gratify me profoundly.”

Tarka was awarded the coveted Hawthornden Prize for literature in 1928 and eventually attracted the interest of Walt Disney, who offered a small fortune for the film rights. Williamson, however, was concerned that such an arrangement might compromise his artistic integrity, and he rejected the offer.

Seventy years later, however, Tarka, like the majority of Williamson’s books, is relatively unknown and has only just become available in print again. The reason: Like several other leading European authors, Williamson was a victim of the Second World War. Not only did his naturalistic message conflict with the materialistic culture that has pervaded the Western world since 1945, but he himself was a political fighter who actively opposed the war on ideological grounds.

Born in Brockley, southeast London, in December 1895, Williamson was educated at Colfe’s Grammar School, Lewisham. He spent much of his early life exploring the nearby Kent countryside, where his love of Nature and animals and his artistic awareness and sensitivity were first stimulated. Never satisfied unless he had seen things for himself, he always made sure that he studied things closely enough to get the letter as well as the spirit of reality. This enabled him to develop a microscopic observational ability which came to dominate his life.

Williamson joined the British Army at the outbreak of war in 1914 and fought at the Battle of the Somme and at Passchendaele, where he was seriously wounded. It was this experience as a frontline soldier which was the redefining moment in his life and artistic development, stimulating in him a lifelong Faustian striving to experience and comprehend the “life flow” permeating his own, and all, existence.

His spiritual development continued after the war. In 1919 he read for the first time the visionary The Story of My Heart, which was written by the English Nature writer Richard Jefferies and published in 1893. For Williamson, discovering Jefferies acted as a liberation of his consciousness, stimulating all the stored impressions of his life to return and reveal a previously smothered and overlaid self. It was not just an individual self that he discovered, however, but a racial self in which he began to recognize his existence as but a link in an eternal chain that reached back into the mists of time, and which — if it were permitted — would carry on forever.

Williamson sensed this truth in his own feeling of oneness with Nature and the ancient, living, breathing Universe as represented by the life-giving sun. It also was reflected in his idea of mystical union between the eternal sunlight and the long history of the earth. For Williamson the ancient light of the sun was something “born in me” and represented the real meaning of his own existence by illuminating his ancestral past and revealing the truth of redemption through Nature. Like Jefferies before him, Williamson “came to feel the long life of the earth back in the dimmest past while the sun of the moment was warm on me … This sunlight linked me through the ages to that past consciousness. From all the ages my soul desired to take that soul-life which had flowed through them as the sunbeams had continually found an earth.” [1]

After the war Williamson became a journalist for a time while beginning work on his first novel, The Beautiful Years (1922). Finally he decided to break all contact with London and in 1922 moved to an ancient cottage in Georgham, North Devon, which had been built in the days of King John. Living alone and in hermit fashion at first, Williamson disciplined himself to study Nature with the same meticulous observations as Jefferies, tramping about the countryside and often sleeping out. The door and windows of the cottage were never closed, and his strange family of dogs and cats, gulls, buzzards, magpies, and one otter cub were free to come and go as they chose.

It was his experiences with the otter cub which stimulated Williamson to write Tarka. He had rescued it after its mother had been shot by a farmer, and he saved its life by persuading his cat to suckle it along with her kitten. Eventually the otter cub was domesticated and became Williamson’s constant companion, following him around like a dog. On one walk, however, it walked into a rabbit trap, panicked, and ran off. Williamson spent years following otters’ haunts in the rivers Taw and Torridge, hunting for his lost pet.

The search was in vain, but his intimate contact with the animal world gave him the inspiration for Tarka: “The eldest and biggest of the litter was a dog cub, and when he drew his first breath he was less than five inches long from his nose to where his tail joined his back-bone. His fur was soft and grey as the buds of the willow before they open up at Eastertide. He was called Tarka, which was the name given to the otters many years ago by men dwelling in hut circles on the moor. It means Little Water Wanderer, or Wandering as Water.”

Williamson never attempted to pass any kind of moral judgment on Nature and described its evolutionary realities in a manner reminiscent of Jack London:

Long ago, when moose roamed in the forest at the mountain of the Two Rivers, otters had followed eels migrating from ponds and swamps to the seas. They had followed them into shallow waters; and one fierce old dog had run through the water so often that he swam, and later, in his great hunger, had put under his head to seize them so often that he dived. Other otters had imitated him. The moose are gone, and their bones lie under the sand in the soft coal which was the forest by the estuary, thousands of years ago. Yet otters have not been hunters in water long enough for the habit to become an instinct.

Williamson actually rewrote Tarka 17 times, “always and only for the sake of a greater truth.” [2] Mere polishing for grace and expression or literary style did not interest him, and he strove always to illuminate a scene or incident with what he considered was authentic sunlight.

He also believed that European man could be spiritually healthy and alive to his destiny only by living in close accord with Nature. Near the end of Tarka, for instance, he delightfully describes how “a scarlet dragonfly whirred and darted over the willow snag, watched by a girl sitting on the bank … Glancing round, she realized that she alone had seen the otter. She flushed, and hid her grey eyes with her lashes. Since childhood she had walked the Devon rivers with her father looking for flowers and the nests of birds, passing some rocks and trees as old friends, seeing a Spirit everywhere, gentle in thought to all her eyes beheld.”

Williamson’s sequel to Tarka was Salar the Salmon, which was also the result of many months of intimate research and observation of Nature in the English countryside. Then came The Lone Swallow, The Peregrine’s Saga, Life in a Devon Village, and A Clear Water Stream, all of which, in the eyes of the English writer Naomi Lewis, displayed “a crystal intensity of observation and a compelling use of words, which exactly match the movement and life that he describes.”

To Williamson himself, however, his Nature stories were not the most important part of his literary output. His greatest effort went into his two semi-autobiographical novel groups, the tetralogy collected as The Flax of Dreams, which occupied him for most of the 1920s, and the 15-volume A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight, which began with The Dark Lantern in 1951 and ended with The Gale of the World in 1969.

Williamson’s experiences during the First World War had politicized him for life. A significant catalyst in this development was the Christmas truce of 1914, when British and German frontline soldiers spontaneously left their trenches, abandoned the fighting, and openly greeted each other as brothers.

Williamson later spoke of an “incoherent sudden realization, after the fraternization of Christmas Day, that the whole war was based on lies.” Another experience that consolidated this belief was when a German officer helped him remove a wounded British soldier who was draped over barbed wire on the front line. He was thus able to contrast his own wartime experiences with the vicious anti-German propaganda orchestrated by the British political establishment both during and after the war, and he was able to recognize the increasing moral bankruptcy of that establishment. In Williamson’s view the fact that over half of the 338 Conservative Members of Parliament who dominated the 1918 governing coalition were company directors and financiers who had grown rich from war profits was morally wrong and detestable.

This recognition, in itself a reflection of an already highly developed sense of altruism, meant that Williamson could never be content with just isolating himself in the countryside. He had to act to try to change the world for the better. Perhaps not surprisingly he came to see in the idea of National Socialism a creed which not only represented his own philosophy of life, but which offered the chance of practical salvation for Western Civilization. He saw it as evolving directly from the almost religious transcendence which he, and thousands of soldiers of both sides, had experienced in the trenches of the First World War. This transcendence resulted in a determination that the “White Giants” of Britain and Germany would never go to war against each other again, and it rekindled a sense of racial kinship and unity of the Nordic peoples over and above separate class and national loyalties. [3]

Consequently, not only was Williamson one of the first of the “phoenix generation” to swear allegiance to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists, but he quickly came to believe that National Socialist Germany, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, pointed the way forward for European man. Williamson identified closely with Hitler — “the great man across the Rhine whose life symbol is the happy child,” seeing him as a light-bringing phoenix risen from the chaos of European civilization in order to bring a millennium of youth to the dying Western world. [4]

Williamson visited Germany in 1935 to attend the National Socialist Congress at Nuremberg and saw there the beginnings of the “land fit for heroes” which had been falsely promised the young men of Britain during the First World War by the government’s war propagandists. He was very impressed by the fact that, while the British people continued to languish in poverty and mass unemployment, National Socialism had created work for seven million unemployed, abolished begging, freed the farmers from the mortgages which had strangled production, developed laws on conservation, and, most importantly, had developed in a short period of time a deep sense of racial community. [5]

Inspired to base their lives on a religious idea, Williamson believed that the German people had been reborn with a spiritual awareness and physical quality that he himself had long sought. Everywhere he saw “faces that looked to be breathing extra oxygen; people free from mental fear.” [6]

Through the Hitler Youth movement, which brought back fond memories of his own time as a Boy Scout, he recognized “the former pallid leer of hopeless slum youth transformed into the suntan, the clear eye, the broad and easy rhythm of the poised young human being.”

In Hitler’s movement Williamson identified not only an idea consistent with Nature’s higher purpose to create order out of chaos, but the physical encapsulation of a striving toward Godhood. Influenced by his own lifelong striving for perfection, Williamson believed that the National Socialists represented “a race that moves on the poles of mystic, sensual delight. Every gesture is a gesture from the blood, every expression a symbolic utterance … Everything is of the blood, of the senses.” [7]

Williamson always believed that any spiritual improvement could only take place as a result of a physical improvement, and, like his mentor Richard Jefferies, he was a firm advocate of race improvement through eugenics. He himself was eventually to father seven children, and he decried the increasing lack of racial quality in the mass of the White population. He urged that “the physical ideal must be kept steadily in view” and called for the enforcement of a discipline and system along the lines of ancient Sparta in order to realize it. [8]

In 1936 Williamson and his family moved to Norfolk, where he threw himself into a new life as a farmer, the first three years of which are described in The Story of a Norfolk Farm (1941). But with the Jews increasingly using England as a base from which to agitate for war against Germany, Williamson remained very active through his membership in the British Union of Fascists in promoting the idea of Anglo-German friendship. Until it was banned in 1940, Williamson wrote eight articles for the party newspaper Action and had 13 extracts reprinted from his book The Patriot’s Progress. He called consistently for Hitler to be given “that amity he so deserved from England,” so as to prevent another brothers’ war that would see the victory only of Asiatic Bolshevism and the enslavement of Europe. On September 24, 1939, for instance, he wrote of his continuing conviction that Hitler was “determined to do and create what is right. He is fighting evil. He is fighting for the future.”

Williamson viewed the declaration of war on Germany by Britain and France as a spiteful act of an alien system that was determined to destroy the prospect of a reborn and regenerated European youth. And his continued opposition to it led to his arrest and internment in June 1940, along with Mosley and hundreds of others. His subsequent release on parole was conditional upon his taking no further action to oppose the war. Silently, however, Williamson remained true to his convictions. Visiting London in January 1944, he observed with satisfaction that the ugliness and immorality represented by its financial and banking sector had been “relieved a little by a catharsis of high explosive” and somewhat “purified by fire.”

National Socialism’s wartime defeat, however, dealt Williamson a heavy blow. Decrying the death struggle of “the European cousin nations” he lamented that “the hopes that have animated or agitated my living during the past thirty years and four months are dead.” [9]

Consequently, his first marriage broke up in 1947, and he returned to North Devon to live in the hilltop hut which he had bought in 1928 with the prize money from Tarka.

But it was not in Williamson’s character to give up on what he knew to be true and right, and, as his most recent biographer makes clear, he never recanted his ideas about Hitler. [10]

On the contrary, he continued to publicly espouse what he believed, and he fervently contested the postwar historical record distorted by false Jewish propaganda — even though his effort resulted, as he realized it would, in his continued literary ostracism.

In The Gale of the World, the last book of his Chronicle, published in 1969, Williamson has his main character Phillip Maddison question the moral and legal validity of the Nuremberg Trials. Among other things, he muses why the Allied officers who ordered the mass fire bombing of Germany, and the Soviet generals who ordered the mass rape and mass murder during the battle for Berlin, were not on trial; and whether it would ever be learned that the art treasures found in German salt mines were put there purely to be out of the way of the Allied bombing. He also questions the official view of the so called “Holocaust,” stating his belief that rather than being the result of a mass extermination plan, the deaths in German concentration camps were actually caused by typhus brought about by the destruction of all public utility systems by Allied bombing.

In the book Williamson also reiterates his belief that Adolf Hitler was never the real enemy of Britain. And in one scene Phillip Maddison, in conversation with his girl friend Laura, questions whether it was Hitler’s essential goodness and righteousness that was responsible for his downfall in the midst of evil and barbarity:

Laura: I have a photograph of Hitler with the last of his faithful boys outside the bunker in Berlin. He looks worn out, but he is so gentle and kind to those twelve- and thirteen-year-old boys.

Phillip: Too gentle and kind Laura … Now the faithful will be hanged.

Williamson also remained loyal in the realm of political ideas and action. When Oswald Mosley had returned to public life in Britain in 1948 by launching the Union Movement, Williamson was one of the first to give his support for an idea which he had long espoused: the unity of Western man. Contributing an article to the first issue of the movement’s magazine, The European, he called for the development of a new type of European man with a set of spiritual values that were in tune with himself and Nature.

Such positive and life-promoting thinking did not endear Williamson to the powers that be in the gray and increasingly decadent cultural climate of post-Second World War Britain. His books were ignored, and his artistic achievement remained unrecognized, with even the degrees committee at the university to which he was a benefactor twice vetoing a proposal to award him an honorary doctorate. The evidence suggests, in fact, that Williamson was subject to a prolonged campaign of literary ostracism by people inside the British establishment who believed he should be punished for his political opinions.

For Williamson, however, the machinations of trivial people in a trivial age were irrelevant; what was important was that he remained true in the eyes of posterity to himself, his ancestors, and the eternal truth which he recognized and lived by. In fact, as one observer described him during these later years, he remained a “lean, vibrant, almost quivering man with … blazing eyes, possessing an exceptional presence [and a] … continued outspoken admiration for Hitler … as a ‘great and good man.’” [11]

Certainly, Williamson knew himself, and he knew what was necessary for Western man to find himself again and to fulfill his destiny. In The Gale of the World he cited Richard Jefferies to emphasize that higher knowledge by which he led his life and by which he was convinced future generations would have to lead their lives in order to attain the heights that Nature demanded of them: “All the experience of the greatest city in the world could not withhold me. I rejected it wholly. I stood bare-headed in the sun, in the presence of earth and air, in the presence of the immense forces of the Universe. I demand that which will make me more perfect now this hour.”

Henry Williamson’s artistic legacy must endure because, as one admirer pondered in his final years, his visionary spirit and striving “came close to holding the key to life itself.”

He died on August 13, 1977, aged 81.

Notes

[1] Ann Williamson, Henry Williamson: Tarka and the Last Romantic, (London, 1995), 65.

[2] Eleanor Graham, “Introduction” to the Penguin edition of Tarka the Otter (1985).

[3] Higginbottom, Intellectuals and British Fascism , (London, 1992), 10.

[4] Henry Williamson, The Flax of Dreams (London, 1936) and The Phoenix Generation (London, 1961).

[5] Henry Williamson, A Solitary War (London, 1966).

[6] Higginbotham, op. cit., 41-42.

[7] J. W. Blench, Henry Williamson and the Romantic Appeal of Fascism , (Durham, 1988).

[8] Henry Williamson, The Children of Shallow Ford, (London, 1939).

[9] Higginbotham, op. cit., 49.

[10] Ann Williamson, op. cit., 195.

[11] Higginbotham, op. cit., 53.

National Vanguard, 117 (1997), 17-20.

http://library.flawlesslogic.com/nv.html

Reflections on the Aesthetic & Literary Figure of the Dandy

Robert Steuckers

 

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/

Translated by Greg Johnson

Before getting to the quick of the subject, I would like to make three preliminary remarks:

I hesitated to accept your invitation to speak on the figure of the dandy, for this sort of issue is not my main subject of interest.

I finally accepted because I rediscovered a magisterial and lucid essay by Otto Mann, published many years ago in Germany: “Dandyism as Conservative Lifestyle” (“Dandysmus als konservative Lebensform”). This essay deserves to be republished, with commentaries.

My third remark is methodological and definitional. Before speaking of the “dandy,” and relating the subject to the excellent work of Otto Mann, I must set forth the different definitions of the “dandy.” These definitions are for the most part erroneous, or superficial and insufficient.

Some define the dandy as “a pure phenomenon of fashion,” as an elegant personage, nothing more, concerned only to dress himself in the latest style. Others define him as a superficial personage who loves the good life and wanders idly from cabaret to cabaret. Françoise Dolto has painted a psychological portrait of the dandy. Still others emphasize almost exclusively the homosexual dimension of certain dandies like Oscar Wilde. Less commonly, the dandy is assimilated to a sort of avatar of Don Juan, who filled his emptiness by racking up female conquests. These definitions are not those of Otto Mann, which I have adopted.

The Archetype: George Bryan Brummell

Following Otto Mann, I hold that the dandy has a far deeper cultural significance than superficial Epicureans, hedonists, homosexuals, Don Juans, and fashion victims. For Otto Mann, the model, the archetype of the dandy remains George Bryan Brummell, a figure of the early 19th century, which he opposed.

Brummell, contrary to certain later pseudo-dandies, was a discrete man, who did not seek to draw attention to himself by vestimentary or behavioral eccentricities. Brummell avoided loud colors, did not wear jewels, was not devoted to purely artificial social games. Brummell was distant, serious, dignified; he did not try to make an impression, as did later figures as varied as Oscar Wilde, Stefan George, or Henry de Montherlant. For him, spiritual tendencies predominate. Brummell engaged society, conversed, told stories, using irony and even mockery. To speak like Nietzsche or Heidegger, we could say that he rose above the “human, too human” or quotidian banality (Alltäglichkeit).

Brummell, a first generation dandy, incarnates a cultural form, a way of being, that our contemporary society should accept as valid, indeed as solely valid, but that it can no longer generate, or generate sufficiently. Which is why the dandy opposes our society. The principal reasons that underlie his opposition are the following: (1) society appears as superficial and marked with inadequacies and insufficiencies; (2) the dandy, as a cultural form, as the incarnation of a manner of being, poses as superior to this inadequate and mediocre society;  (3) the Brummellian dandy does nothing exaggerated or scandalous (sexually, for example), does not commit crimes, does not have political commitments (contrary to the dandies of the second generation like Lord Byron). Brummell himself could not maintain this attitude to the end of his days, because he was crippled by debts and died in poverty in a hospice in Caen. At a certain point, he had turned his back on the fragile equilibrium required by the initial posture of the dandy, of which he was the first incarnation.

An Ideal of Culture, Balance, & Excellence

If the dandy’s behavior and way of being contain no exaggeration, no flamboyant originality, then why does he appear important, or merely interesting, to us at all? Because he incarnates an ideal, which is to some extent, mutatis-mutandis, the same as Greek paiedeia or Roman humanitas. In Evola and Jünger, there is nostalgia for Latin magnanimitas, for the hochmuote of the Germanic knights of the 12th and 13th centuries, Roman or medieval avatars of a Persian proto-historical model, first advanced by Gobineau then by Henry Corbin. The dandy is the incarnation of this ideal of culture, balance, and excellence during one of the most trivial periods in history, where the crude, calculating bourgeois and the rowdy militant of the Hébertist or Jacobin sort took the place of the aristocrat, the knight, the monk, and the peasant.

At the end of the 18th century, with the French Revolution, these virtues, rising from the oldest proto-historical depths of European humanity, were completely called into question. First by the ideology of the Enlightenment and its corrolary, militant egalitarianism, which would erase all the visible and invisible traces of this ideal of excellence. Then, by the Sturm und Drang and Romanticism, which, by way of reaction, sometimes tilted toward ineffectual sentimentalism, which is also an expression of disequilibrium. The immemorial models, sometimes blurred and diffuse, the surviving archetypal attitudes . . . disappear.

The English first became aware of it, at the end of the 17th century, even before the upheavals of the 18th: Addison and Steele in the columns of the Spectator and the Tatler noted the urgent necessity of preserving and maintaining a system of education, a general culture able to guarantee the autonomy of man. A value that the current media do not promote, quiet proof that we have indeed fallen into an Orwellien world, which dons the mask of the “good democratic apostle,” inoffensive and “tolerant,” but pitilessly hounds down all residues of autonomy in the world today. In their successive articles, Addison and Steele bequeathed us an implicit vision of the cultural and intellectual history of Europe.

The Ideal of Goethe

The highest cultural ideal Europe has ever known is of course ancient Greek paideia. It had been reduced to naught by primitive Christianity, but, from the 14th century on, one sees throughout Europe a desire for ancient ideals to be reborn. The dandy, and, long before his emergence on the European cultural scene, the two English journalists Steele and Addison, wished to incarnate this nostalgia for paideia, in which the autonomy of each individual is respected. In fact, they try to concretely realize in society Goethe’s objective: to incite their contemporaries to forge and fashion a personality, which will be moderate in its needs, satisfied with little, but above all capable, through this quiet asceticism, of reaching the universal, of being a model for all, without betraying its original humanity (Ausbildung seiner selbst zur universalen und selbstgenugsamen Persönlichkeit).

This Goethean ideal, shared avant la lettre by the two English publicists then incarnated by Brummell, was not unscathed by the vicissitudes of the French Revolution, the industrial revolution, and the assorted scientific revolutions. Under the blows of modernity’s contempt for the Ancient, Europe found itself devoid of any substantial culture, any ethical backbone. The consequences are fully apparent today in the decline of education.

From 1789 throughout the 19th century, the cultural level steadily collapsed. Cultural decline started at the top of the social pyramid, henceforth occupied by the triumphant bourgeoisie which, contrary to the dominant classes of former times, has no moral (sittlich) base capable of maintaining a high level of civilization; it has no religious base, nor any real professional ethic, unlike the craftsmen and tradesmen once supervised by their guilds or corporations (Zünfte). The sole aim of the bourgeoisie is the contemptible accumulation of cash, which allows us to speak, following René Guénon, of a “reign of quantity” in which all quality is banished.

In the disadvantaged classes at the bottom of the social ladder, any element of culture is eradicated quite simply because the pseudo-elites no longer uphold a cultural standard; the people, alienated, insecure, proletarianized, are no longer a matrix of specific enthnically determined values, much less a matrix capable of generating an active counter-culture that could easily nullify what Thomas Carlyle called the “cash-flow mentality.” In short, we are witnessing the rise of an affluent barbarism (eine ökonomisch gehobene Barbarei), economically advanced and culturally void.

One cannot be rich in the bourgeois style and also refined and intelligent. This is obviously true: nobody cultivated wants to find himself at dinner, or in conversation, with billionaires like Bill Gates or Albert Frère, nor with bankers or manufacturers of automobiles or refrigerators. The true man of culture, who would be lost in the presence of such dismal characters, would continually have to repress yawns at their inept chatter. (Those of a more volcanic temperament would have to repress the desire to rub a pie in the fat faces of these nullities.) The world would be purer—and surely more beautiful—without such creatures.

The Mission of the Artist According to Baudelaire

For the dandy, it is necessary to reinject aesthetics into this barbarism. In England, John Ruskin (1819–1899), the Pre-Raphaelites with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris, went to work. Ruskin elaborated architectural projects to embellish the cities made ugly by the anarchic industrialization of the Manchesterian era. Specifially, this led to the construction of “garden cities.”  Henry van de Velde and Victor Horta, Belgian and German Art Nouveau or Jugendstil architects, took up this torch. But all the while, in spite of these concrete achievements—for architecture more easily allows concrete realization—the gulf between the artist and society never ceased growing. The dandy is like the artist.

In France, Baudelaire, in his theoretical writings, sets the artist up as the new “aristocrat,” whose attitude must be stamped with distant coldness, whose feelings should neither be excited nor irritated beyond measure, whose principal quality must be irony, along with the ability to tell pleasant anecdotes. The artistic dandy takes a distance from all the conventional hobby-horses of society.

Baudelaire’s views are summarized in the words of a character of Ernst Jünger’s novel Heliopolis: “I became a dandy, who makes the unimportant important, who smiles at the important” (“Ich wurde zum Dandy, der das Unwichtige wichtig nahm, das Wichtige belächelte”). Baudelaire’s dandy, following the example of Brummell, is thus not a scandalous and sulfurous character like Oscar Wilde, but a cold observer (or, to paraphrase Raymond Aron, a “disengaged spectator”), who sees the world as a mere theatre, often insipid, where characters without real substance move about and gesticulate. The Baudelairian dandy has a bit of a taste for provocation, but it remains confined, in most cases, by irony. These later exaggerations, often mistaken for expressions of dandyism, do not correspond to the attitudes of Brummell, Baudelaire, or Jünger.

Thus Stefan George, in spite of the great interest of his poetic work, pushes aestheticism to the point of self-parody. For George, it is a small price to pay in an era when the “loss of every happy medium” becomes the rule. (Hans Sedlmayr explained this loss of the “happy medium” quite clearly in a famous book on contemporary art, Verlust der Mitte.) Sedlmayr clarifies this urge to seek the “piquant.” George found it in the revival of classical Greece.

Oscar Wilde ultimately put only himself on stage, proclaiming himself “aesthetic reformer.” Art, from his point of view, is nothing more than a space of contestation destined ultimately to absorb all social reality, becoming the only true reality. The economic, social, and political spheres are devalued; Wilde denies them all substantiality, reality, concreteness. If Brummell retained an entirely sober taste, if he kept his head on his shoulders, Oscar Wilde posed from the start as a demigod, wore extravagant clothing, with loud colors, a bit like the Incroyables and the Merveilleuses of the French Revolution. A provocateur, he also started a negative process of “feminization/ devirilisation,” walking through the streets with flowers in his hand. One can regard it as a precursor of today’s “gay pride” parades. His poses are pure theatre, far removed from Brummell’s tranquil feeling of superiority, of virile dignity, of “nil admirari.”

Oscar Wilde, 1854–1900

Self-Satisfaction & the Expansion of the “Ego”

For Otto Mann, this quotation from Wilde is emblematic:

The gods had given me almost everything. I had genius, a distinguished name, high social position, brilliancy, intellectual daring: I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men and the colours of things: there was nothing I said or did that did not make people wonder: I took the drama, the most objective form known to art, and made it as personal a mode of expression as the lyric or the sonnet, at the same time that I widened its range and enriched its characterisation: drama, novel, poem in rhyme, poem in prose, subtle or fantastic dialogue, whatever I touched I made beautiful in a new mode of beauty: to truth itself I gave what is false no less than what is true as its rightful province, and showed that the false and the true are merely forms of intellectual existence. I treated Art as the supreme reality, and life as a mere mode of fiction: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram. Along with these things I had things that were different. (De Profundis)

The patent self-satisfaction, the expansion of the “ego,” reach the point of mystification.

These exaggerations kept growing, even in the orbit of the stoic virility dear to Montherlant. He too strikes exaggerated poses: as practitioner of an extremely ostentatious bullfighting, being photographed wearing the mask of a Roman Emperor, etc. Lesser followers risk falling into flashy “lookism” and bad taste, formalizing to the extreme the attitudes or postures of the poet or the writer. In any case, they are not a solution to the phenomenon of decadence.

As regards dandyism, the only way out is to return calmly to Brummell himself, before he sank under financial vexations. Because this return to Brummell is equivalent, if one remembers the earlier exhortations of Addison and Steele, to a more modern—more civil and perhaps more trivial—form of paideia or humanitas. But, trivial or not, these values would be still be maintained, would continue to exist and shape minds.

This mix of good sense and the dandy aesthetic would make it possible to pursue a practical political objective: to defend the school in the classical sense of the term, to increase its power to transmit the legacy of Hellenic and Roman antiquity, to envisage a new and effective pedagogy, which would mix the idealism of Schiller, traditional methods, and the methods inspired by Pestalozzi.

 

Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, 1893–1945

Return to Religion or “Unhappy Consciousness”?

The figure of the dandy must thus be put back in the context of the 18th century, when the ideals and classical models of traditional Europe were being battered and destroyed under the butcher’s blows of leveling modernity. The substance of religion—whether Christian or pre-Christian under Christian varnish—becomes hollow and exhausted. The Moderns take the place of the Ancients.  This process led inevitably to an existential crisis throughout European civilization.

Two paths are available to those who try to escape this sad destiny: (1) The return to religion or tradition, important paths that are not our topic today, to the extent that it represents an extremely vast continent of thought, deserving a complete seminar to itself. (2) To cultivate what the Romantics called Weltschmerz, the pain caused by a disenchanted world, which amounts to assuming an attitude of permanent critique toward the manifestations of modernity, developing an unhappy consciousness that generates a self-marginalizing culture where the political spirit can formulate an opposition to the mainstream.

For the dandy and the Romantic who oscillate between the return to religion and the feeling of Weltschmerz, the latter is most deeply felt. In the interiority of the poet or the artist this feeling will mature, grow, develop. To the point of becoming immune to the power of the unhappy consciousness to cause both languid and violent emotions. In the end, the dandy must become a cold and impartial observer in control of his feelings and emotions. If his blood boils at “economic horrors” it must quickly cool, leading to impassiveness, if he is to be able to face them effectively. The dandy who underwent this process thus reached a double impassibility: nothing external can shake him any longer; but neither can any interior emotion.

Pierre Drieu La Rochelle was never able to arrive at such a balance, which gives a very peculiar and seductive note to his work, quite simply because it reveals this process underway, with all its eddies, calms, and advances. Drieu suffers from the world, is tested on the front lines, is seduced by the discipline and “metallic” aspects of “immense and red” Fascism, on the march in his time, mentally accepts the same discipline in the Communists and Stalinists, but never really becomes a “cold and impartial observer” (Benjamin Constant). The work of Drieu La Rochelle is justly immortal because it reveals this permanent tension, this fear to falling into the ruts of a barren emotion, this joy at seeing vigorous alternatives to modern torpor, like Fascism or the satire of Doriot.

 

Ernst Jünger, 1895–1998

Strengthening Mind & Character

In short, the deconstruction of the ideas of ancient paideia and the deliquescence of immemorial religious substantialities beginning at the end of the 18th century, is equivalent to an existential crisis throughout all Western countries. The response of intelligence to this crisis is double: either it calls for a return to religion or it causes a deeply rooted pain in the depths of the soul, the famous Weltschmerz of the Romantics.

Weltschmerz is felt in the deepest interiority of the man who faces this crisis, but it is also in his interiority that he works silently to rise above this pain, to make it the material from which he forges the answer and alternative to this terrible loss of substantiality that is presided over by a deleterious economicism. It is thus necessary to harden the mind and character against the pangs entailed by the loss of substantiality without inventing out of whole cloth a rather lame substitute for what has been lost.

Baudelaire and Wilde think, each in his own way, that art will offer an alternative to the old substantialities that is almost identical in all ways but more flexible and moving. But in this case, art need not be understood as simple aestheticism. The toughening of the mind and character must serve to combat the ambient economicism, to fight against those who incarnate it, accept it, and puts their energies in its service. This toughness must be used as the firm moral and psychological base of the ideals of political and metapolitical struggle.

This toughness must be the carapace of what Evola called the “differentiated man,” he who “rides the tiger,” who wanders, unperturbed and imperturbable, “among the ruins,” the one Jünger called the “Anarch.” “The differentiated man who rides the tiger among the ruins” or the “Anarch” are described as impartial, impassive observers. These tough, differentiated men rise above two kinds of obstacles: external obstacles and those generated from their own interiority. That is to say, the impediments posed by inferior men and the weaknesses of a soul in distress.

Chandala Figures of Decadence

The existential crisis that began around the middle of the 18th century led to nihilism, quite judiciously defined by Nietzsche as an “exhaustion of life,” as a “devaluation of the highest values,” which is often expressed by a frantic agitation and the inability to really enjoy leisure, an agitation that accelerates the process of exhaustion.

The abstraction of existence is the clear indication that our “societies” no longer constitute “bodies” but, as Nietzsche says, mere “conglomerates of Chandalas,” in whom nervous and psychological maladies accumulate, a sign that the defensive power of strong natures is no more than a memory. It is precisely this “defensive power” that the “differentiated” man must—at the end of his search for traditional mysteries—reconstitute in himself.

Nietzsche very clearly enumerates the vices of the Chandala, the emblematic figure of European decadence, resulting from the existential crisis and nihilism: the Chandala suffers various pathologies: an increase in criminality, generalized celibacy and voluntary sterility, hysteria, constant weakening of the will, alcoholism (and various drug addictions as well), systematic doubt, a methodical and relentless destruction of any residue of strength.

Among the Chandala figures of decadence and nihilism, Nietzsche includes those he calls “official nomads” (Staatsnomaden), who are civil servants without real fatherlands, servants of the “cold monster,” with abstract minds that, consequently, generate always more abstractions, whose parasitic existence generates, by their appalling but persistent sluggishness, the decline of families, in a environment made of contradictory and crumbling diversities, where one finds the “discipline” (Züchtung) of characters to serve the abstractions of the cold monster—a generalized lubricity in the form of irritability and as the expression of an insatiable and compensatory need for stimuli and excitations—neuroses of all types—political “presentism” (Augenblickdienerei) in which long memory, deep perspectives, or a natural and instinctive sense for the right no longer prevail—pathological sensitiveness—barren doubts proceeding of a morbid fear of the unyielding forces that made and will still make history/power—a fear of mastering reality, of seizing the tangible things of this world.

Victor Segalen, 1878–1919

Victor Segalen in Oceania, Ernst Jünger in Africa

In this complex of frigidity, of agitated opposition to change, barren frenzies, and neuroses, one primary response to nihilism is to exalt and concretize the principle of adventure, in which the protester will leave the bourgeois world, with its tissue of artifices, moving towards virgin spaces that are intact, authentic, open, mysterious.

Gauguin left for the Pacific Islands.

Victor Segalen, in his turn, praises primordial Oceania and imperial China perishing under the blows of the Westernization. Segalen remains Breton, according to what he calls the “return to the ancestral marrow,” denounces the invasion of Tahiti by the “American romantics,” these “filthy parasites,” writes an “Essay on Exoticism” and “An Aesthetics of the Different.” The rejection of bits and pieces without much of a past cost Segalen an unjustified ostracism in his fatherland. From our point of view, he is an author worth rediscovering.

The young Jünger, still in adolescence, dreamed of Africa, the continent of elephants and other fabulous creatures, where spaces and landscapes are not ravaged by industrialization, where nature and indigenous people preserved a formidable purity, where everything was still possible. The young Jünger joined the French Foreign Legion to realize this dream, to be able to land on this new continent, glutted with mysteries and vitality.

The year 1914 gave him, and his whole generation, a chance to abandon an enervating existence. In the same vein, Drieu La Rochelle spoke of the élan of Charleroi. And later, Malraux, of “Royal roads.”

On the “left” (in so far as this political distinction has any meaning), one instead speaks of “engagement.” This enthusiasm was especially apparent at the time of the Spanish Civil War, where Hemingway, Orwell, Koestler, and Simone Weil joined the Republicans, and Roy Campbell the Nationalists, who were also lauded by Robert Brasillach.

The adventure and engagement, in the uniform of a soldier of the phalangist militia, in the ranks of the international brigades or the partisans, are perceived as antidotes to the hyperformalism of a colorless civilian life. “I was tired of civilian life, therefore I joined the IRA,” goes the Irish nationalist song, which, in its particular context, proclaims, with a jaunty tune, this great existentialist uprising of the early 20th century with all the ease, vivacity, rhythm, and humor of Green Éire.

Intoxication? Drugs? Amoralism?

But if political or military commitment fulfills the spiritual needs of those those who are bored by the unrelieved formalism of civilian life without traditional balance, the rejection of all formalism can lead to other less positive attitudes. The dandy, who departs from the balanced pose of Brummell or the delicately crafted criticism of Baudelaire, will want to experience ever new excitations, merely for the sterile pleasure of trying them.

Drugs, drug-addiction, the excessive consumption of alcohol constitute possible escapes: the romantic figure created by Huysmans, Des Esseintes, fled to liquor. Thomas De Quincey evoked “The Opiumeaters.” Baudelaire himself tried opium and hashish.

Falling into drug-addiction is explained by the closing of the world, after the colonization of Africa and other virgin territories; real, dangerous adventure is no longer possible there. War, tested by Jünger around the same time as “drugs and intoxications,” lost its attraction because the figure of the warrior becomes an anachronism as wars are excessively professionalized, mechanized, and technologized.

Amorality and anti-moralism are more dead-ends. Oscar Wilde frequented sleazy bars, ostentatiously flaunting his homosexuality. His character Dorian Gray becomes a criminal in order to press his transgressions ever further, with a pitiful sort of hubris. One might also recall Montherlant’s painful end and keep in mind his dubious heritage, continued to this day by his executor, Gabriel Matzneff, whose literary style is certainly quite brilliant but in whose wake the saddest scenarios unfold, carried on in secret, in closed circles, all the more perverse and ridiculous since the sexual revolutuion of the 1960s also allows enjoyment without petty moralism of many strong pleasures.

These drugs, transgressions, and sex-crazed buffooneries, are just so many existential traps and cul-de-sacs where unfortunates ruin themselves in search of their “spiritual needs.” They wish to “transgress,” but this, to the ironical observer, is nothing more than a sad sign of wasted lives, the absence of real vitality, and sexual frustrations due to defects or physical infirmities. Certainly, one cannot “ride the tiger”—indeed it would be hard to find one—in the salons where the old fop Matzneff lets drop tidbits of his sexual encounters to his creepy little admirers.

 

Frithjof Schuon, 1907–1998

Religious Asceticism

The true alternative to the bourgeois world of “little jobs” and “petty calculations” mocked by Hannah Arendt, in a world now closed, where adventures and discoveries are henceforth nothing but repetitions, where war is “high tech” and no longer chivalrous, lies in religious asceticism, in a certain return to the monarchism of meditation, in the return to Tradition (Evola, Guénon, Schuon). Drieu La Rochelle evokes this path in his “Journal,” after his political disappointments, and gives an account of his reading of Guénon.

The Schuon brothers are exemplary in this context: Frithjof joined the Foreign Legion, surveyed the Sahara, made the acquaintance of the Sufis and the marabouts of the desert and the Atlas Mountains, adhered to an Isamized Sufi mysticism, then went to the Sioux Indian reservations in the United States, and left a stunning and astounding body of pictorial work.

His brother, named “Father Galle,” surveyed the Indian reservations of North America, translated the Gospels into the Sioux language, withdrew to a Trappist monastery in Walloonia, where he trained young horses Indian-style, met Hergé, and became friends with him.

Their lives prove that adventure and total escape from the artificial and corrupting world of the Westernization (Zinoviev) remains possible and fruitful.

For the rebellion is legitimate, if one does not fall into the traps.

Contribution to the “SYNERGON-Deutschland” seminar, Lower Saxony, May 6, 2001.

http://www.voxnr.com/cc/dt_autres/EEukZAVyyutLZaTvmX.shtml

Leadership & the Vital Order

Leadership & the Vital Order:
Selected Aphorisms by Hans Prinzhorn, Ph.D., M.D.

Hans Prinzhorn

 

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/

Translated and edited by Joseph D. Pryce

The enduring fame of German psychotherapist Hans Prinzhorn (1886–1933) is based almost entirely upon one book, Bildnerei der Geisteskranken (Artistry of the mentally ill), that brilliant and quite unprecedented monograph on the artistic productions of the mentally ill, which appeared in 1922. Sadly, it is too often forgotten that Hans Prinzhorn was the most brilliant and independent disciple of Germany’s greatest 20th-Century philosopher, Ludwig Klages (1872–1956).

Although Prinzhorn himself would have protested against the oblivion into which his mentor’s life’s work has fallen, it is a fact that Prinzhorn is still a major presence in the technical literature, whilst his hero, paradoxically, has been “killed by silence.” One should be thankful for even the smallest mercies.

Prinzhorn is even now a not inconsiderable presence in the field that he made his own, and he will remain a major figure, albeit a controversial one, in the field of psychology, as long as his discoveries are cherished and his insights developed as a living heritage by those who recognize, and are willing to repay, at least some small portion of the debt that scholarship still owes to his memory.

Humanitarian Demagogues, Egalitarian Rabble. Whether today’s mechanistic and atomistic experiments with human beings originated in the Orient or in the Occident, the result is always the same: the tyranny of a clique in the name of the equality of all. And it is from this very tendency that the fantastic pipe dream of human individuals being reduced to the status of mere numbers arises. This wishful thinking is a symptom of the nihilistic Will to Power that conceals its true nature behind the cloak of such humanitarian ideals as humility, solicitude for the weak, the awakening of the oppressed masses, the plans for universal happiness, and the fever-swamp vision of perpetual progress. All of these lunatic projects invariably result in a demagogic assault on the part of the inferior rabble against the nobler type of human being. These mad projects, it need hardly be said, are always concocted in the name of “humanity,” in spite of the fact that decades earlier Nietzsche had conclusively demonstrated that it was the ressentiment, or “life-envy,” of those who feel themselves to be oppressed by fate that was at the root of all such tendencies. Indeed, it is even now quite difficult for the select few who have no wish to enroll themselves among the oppressed mob to understand the realities of their situation!

The Goals of Socialism. When we set our goals in the direction of socialism, whether in the sphere of politics, of welfare work, or of the ideal community, the fanaticism that inspires the socialist is customarily tinged with Christianity. Thus the socialist urges the citizen to progress from wicked egoism to a more social attitude. Even when we ignore the social, religious, or political nature of the ideologue’s desiderata, there is one positive aspect to this development, for socialism at least directs our attention away from the tyrannical ego and towards the world that surrounds us, thus calling upon the only one of socialism’s fundamental motives that we can regard as positive and biologically sensible.

Characterological Truth vs. Psychoanalytical Error. The most extensive, pleasant, and (one might even say) amusing effects wrought by the application of the psychoanalytic treatment depended on the fact that the most wretched and feeble blockhead was now able to convince himself that he was equal to Goethe in that the instincts that played so decisive a role in the cretin’s development were identical with those that were operative in the case of Goethe, and it was only a malicious practical joke on the part of Destiny that permitted Goethe to find in poetry a congenial sublimation of his sexuality.

The Psychopath and the Revolution. We can hold out no hope whatever for the successful creation of the sort of community that is constructed by ideologists on the basis of purely rational considerations, for the projects that are hatched out in the mind of the rationalist are most definitely not analogous to the development of living forms in nature, no matter how often the contrary position has been proclaimed by false prophets. Thus, the delusive hopes that are cherished for the successful implementation of the simple-minded schemes of our socialist and humanitarian ideologists must fail in the future as they have always failed in the past. The only tangible result of these schemes has been to intoxicate the isolated psychopath with an egalitarian frenzy, from which his tormented ego awakens, more desperate than ever, in order to plunge once again, with ever-increasing violence, into his political ecstasies, into bellowing his eulogies to those nameless “masses” who are so dear to the ideologue that he has appointed them to be the sole beneficiaries of his activism, now that he has been made sufficiently mad by a nebulous and insatiable longing for “liberation.” But the “sham” anonymity, which functions effectively as the cloak for politicians who pretend to act in the name of “the masses,” can only benefit clever, robust, and willful politicians, such as those who rule the Soviet Union; the real psychopath, on the other hand, who often possesses a taste for novel sensations and who, perhaps, may also be seeking personal publicity, will never be able to conform to the prescriptions of such an icy, strict self-discipline. As a result, he “breaks out,” and is soon overwhelmed by calamities from which he thinks he can only escape by resorting to even more violent attempts to achieve “liberation.” From the standpoint of psychology, the history of revolutions is very helpful to those who wish to increase their understanding of the “everyday” behavior—as well as the political actions—of his fellow human beings, not least to the physician who seeks enlightenment as to the nature of the motivations that drive men to perform violent deeds in situations to which they lend the halo of freedom, equality, and fraternity.

Heredity as Destiny (and Tabula Rasa as Sheer Nonsense). The life-curve of an individual’s development is a single event, which arrays itself along the lines of irrevocable changes. Strictly speaking, therefore, every occurrence, no matter how insignificant, involves an irrevocable change: in life nothing can be reversed, nothing repudiated, nothing ventured without an attendant responsibility, nothing can be annihilated: that formula constitutes the biological basis of destiny. Just as the individual must accept his biological heritage as a whole, whether he likes it or not, in precisely the same fashion must he accept the pre-ordained pattern of obscure rhythms transpiring within him.

Today we have become tragically unconcerned with our biological destiny, to say nothing of the fact that we refuse to feel the slightest reverence to the sphere of life, to which we owe everything. …That very attitude accounts for the success that has greeted the claims advanced by Alfred Adler and his followers, who advance the dogma that the hitherto customary views on heredity are fundamentally false, since man is born as a tabula rasa whereon his environment makes impressions that, by means of education, one can direct at will, and according to the capacity of that will, toward any desired goal. Adler compounds his felony by claiming that there is no such thing as inborn talent or traits of disposition. …

It would be impossible to reject the principles of biological theory more absolutely than Adler and his cohorts have done. Even that which we understand by the old, almost obsolescent name of “temperament”—that which represents the sum-total of the somatically connected, permanent tendencies of an individual—even this link between the purely psychological and the purely somatic view is repudiated by Adler in his grotesquely teleological and hyper-rationalist construction. … Since there is no biological basis whatsoever for his stupendous assertions, one must seek for such a basis in another sphere, viz., the author’s ideology. Sure enough, we learn that Adler is a fanatical believer in the coming Utopia of socialism, and, as we all recognize, no Utopia can prosper until a faceless equality of disposition has been forced upon every individual by the ideological zealots who will run the show. Therefore I denounce the politically tendentious World-View that Adler and his apostles put forward as “science,” for it is a perfect example of nihilism passing itself off as scholarship, and no cloak of pedantic and prudent caution can hide the fact.

Genetic Endowment and Environmental Conditioning. Upon his entry into individual existence, the human being’s development as a psychosomatic creature is determined as regards substance, capacity for expansion, and direction, in the first place by his genetic endowment as a whole; in the second place by his pre-natal environment; and lastly by the circumstances of his birth. That almost all the active factors rise and fall in varying phases, makes a rational interpretation and estimate of the state of things at any given moment impossible in the strictest sense of that word.

But the fact that such an admission of the difficulties that arise due to methodological limitations is exploited by false prophets in order to deceive the world as to the real nature of biological facts—usually in order to breathe some life into the defunct heresy of the infant born as a tabula rasa—is either a sad indication of their childish mentality or additional evidence that they are indulging their ideological proclivities in the wrong place. What Goethe described as “the law under which you entered the world,” what Kant, Schopenhauer, and others called the “intelligible character,” is the first unavoidable actuality that we must accept as the destiny of our being, and as the starting-point of all investigation and thinking that relates to the human being. All experience and all reasonable thinking drives us back to this basic fact.

The Occidental Observer, August 8, 2010, http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Pryce-Prinzhorn.html

Joseph Pryce (email him) is a writer and poet and translator from New York. He is author of the collection of mystical poems Mansions of Irkalla, reviewed here. His translation of the German philosopher Ludwig Klages’ work will be published shortly.

Paganismo y filosofia de la vida en Knut Hamsun y D. H. Lawrence

Paganismo y filosofía de la vida en Knut Hamsun y D.H. Lawrence

Robert STEUCKERS

Ex: http://algaida.wordpress.com/

Knut Hamsun en "Dikterstuen", Nørholm, 1930

Robert Steuckers*

 

El filólogo húngaro Akos Doma, formado en Alemania y los Estados Unidos, acaba de publicar una obra de exégesis literaria, en el que hace un paralelismo entre las obras de Hamsun y Lawrence. El punto en común es una “crítica de la civilización”. Concepto que, obviamente, debemos aprehender en su contexto. En efecto, la civilización sería un proceso positivo desde el punto de vista de los “progresistas”, que entienden la historia de forma lineal. En efecto, los partidarios de la filosofía del Aufklärung y los adeptos incondicionales de una cierta modernidad tienden a la simplificación, la geometrización y la “cerebrización”. Sin embargo, la civilización se nos muestra como un desarrollo negativo para todos aquellos que pretenden conservar la fecundidad inconmensurable de los veneros culturales, para quienes constatan, sin escandalizarse por ello, que el tiempo es plurimorfo; es decir, que el tiempo para una cultura no coincide con el de otra, en contraposición a los iluministas quienes se afirman en la creencia de un tiempo monomorfo y aplicable a todos los pueblos y culturas del planeta. Cada pueblo tiene su propio tiempo. Si la modernidad rechaza esta pluralidad de formas del tiempo, entonces entramos irremisiblemente en el terreno de lo ilusorio. 

Desde un cierto punto de vista, explica Akos Doma, Hamsun y Lawrence son herederos de Rousseau. Pero, ¿de qué Rousseau? ¿Quién que ha sido estigmatizado por la tradición maurrasiana (Maurras, Lasserre, Muret) o aquél otro que critica radicalmente el Aufklärung sin que ello comporte defensa alguna del Antiguo Régimen? Para el Rousseau crítico con el iluminismo, la ideología moderna es, precisamente, el opuesto real del concepto ideal en su concepción de la política: aquél es antiigualitario y hostil a la libertad, aunque reivindique la igualdad y la libertad. Antes de la irrupción de la modernidad a lo largo del siglo XVIII, para Rousseau y sus seguidores prerrománticos, existiría una “comunidad sana”, la convivencia reinaría entre los hombres y la gente sería “buena” porque la naturaleza es “buena”. Más tarde, entre los románticos que, en el terreno político, son conservadores, esta noción de “bondad” seguirá estando presente, aunque en la actualidad tal característica se considere en exclusiva patrimonio de los activistas o pensadores revolucionarios. La idea de “bondad” ha estado presente tanto en la “derecha” como en “izquierda”.

Sin embargo, para el poeta romántico inglés Wordsworth, la naturaleza es “el marco de toda experiencia auténtica”, en la medida en que el hombre se enfrenta de una manera real e inmediatamente con los elementos, lo que implícitamente nos conduce más allá del bien y del mal. Wordsworth es, en cierta forma, un “perfectibilista”: el hombre fruto de su visión poética alcanza lo excelso, la perfección; pero dicho hombre, contrariamente a lo que pensaban e imponían los partidarios de las Luces, no se perfecciona sólo con el desarrollo de las facultades de su intelecto. La perfección humana requiere sobre todo pasar por la prueba de lo elemental natural. Para Novalis, la naturaleza es “el espacio de la experiencia mística, que nos permite ver más allá de las contingencias de la vida urbana y artificial”. Para Eichendorff, la naturaleza es la libertad y, en cierto sentido, una trascendencia, pues permite escapar a los corsés de las convenciones e instituciones.

Con Wordsworth, Novalis y Eichendorff, las cuestiones de lo inmediato, de la experiencia vital, del rechazo de las contingencias surgidas de la artificialidad de los convencionalismos, adquieren un importante papel. A partir del romanticismo se desarrolla en Europa, sobre todo en Europa septentrional, un movimiento hostil hacia toda forma moderna de vida social y económica. Carlyle, por ejemplo, cantará el heroísmo y denigrará a la “cash flow society”. Aparece la primera crítica contra el reino del dinero. John Ruskin, con sus proyectos de arquitectura orgánica junto a la concepción de ciudades-jardín, tratará de embellecer las ciudades y reparar los daños sociales y urbanísticos de un racionalismo que ha desembocado en puro manchesterismo. Tolstoi propone una naturalismo optimista que no tiene como punto de referencia a Dostoievski, brillante observador este último de los peores perfiles del alma humana. Gauguin transplantará su ideal de la bondad humana a la Polinesia, a Tahití, en plena naturaleza.

Hamsun y Lawrence, contrariamente a Tolstoi o a Gauguin, desarrollarán una visión de la naturaleza carente de teología, sin “buen fin”, sin espacios paradisiacos marginales: han asimilado la doble lección del pesimismo de Dostoievski y Nietzsche. La naturaleza en éstos no es un espacio idílico propicio para excursiones tal y como sucede con los poetas ingleses del Lake District. La naturaleza no sólo no es un espacio necesariamente peligroso o violento, sino que es considerado apriorísticamente como tal. La naturaleza humana en Hamsun y Lawrence es, antes de nada, interioridad que conforma los resortes interiores, su disposición y su mentalidad (tripas y cerebro inextricablemente unidos y confundidos). Tanto en Hamsun como en Lawrence, la naturaleza humana no es ni intelectualidad ni demonismo. Es, antes de nada, expresión de la realidad, realidad traducción inmediata de la tierra, Gaia; realidad en tanto que fuente de vida.

 

D H Lawrence

Frente a este manantial, la alienación moderna conlleva dos actitudes humanas opuestas: 1.º necesidad de la tierra, fuente de vitalidad, y 2.º zozobra en la alienación, causa de enfermedades y esclerosis. Es precisamente en esa bipolaridad donde cabe ubicar las dos grandes obras de Hamsun y de Lawrence: Bendición de la tierra, para el noruego, y El arcoiris del inglés.
En Bendición de la tierra de Hamsun, la naturaleza constituye el espacio el trabajo existencial donde el hombre opera con total independencia para alimentarse y perpetuarse. No se trata de una naturaleza idílica, como sucede en ciertos utopistas bucólicos, y además el trabajo no ha sido abolido. La naturaleza es inabarcable, conforma el destino, y es parte de la propia humanidad de tal forma que su pérdida comportaría deshumanización. El protagonista principal, el campesino Isak, es feo y desgarbado, es tosco y simple, pero inquebrantable, un ser limitado, pero no exento de voluntad. El espacio natural, la Wildnis, es ese ámbito que tarde o temprano ha de llevar la huella del hombre; no se trata del espacio o el reino del hombre convencional o, más exactamente, el acotado por los relojes, sino el del ritmo de las estaciones, con sus ciclos periódicos. En dicho espacio, en dicho tiempo, no existen interrogantes, se sobrevive para participar al socaire de un ritmo que nos desborda. Ese destino es duro. Incluso llega a ser muy duro. Pero a cambio ofrece independencia, autonomía, permite una relación directa con el trabajo. Otorga sentido, porque tiene sentido. En El arcoiris, de Lawrence, una familia vive de forma independiente de la tierra con el único beneficio de sus cosechas.

Hamsun y Lawrence, en estas dos novelas, nos legan la visión de un hombre unido al terruño (ein beheimateter Mensch), de un hombre anclado a un territorio limitado. El beheimateter Mensch ignora el saber libresco, no tiene necesidad de las prédicas de los medios informativos, su sabiduría práctica le es suficiente; gracias a ella, sus actos tienen sentido, incluso cuando fantasea o da rienda suelta a los sentimientos. Ese saber inmediato, además, le procura unidad con los otros seres.

Desde una óptica tal, la alienación, cuestión fundamental en el siglo XIX, adquiere otra perspectiva. Generalmente se aborda el problema de la alienación desde tres puntos de vista doctrinales:

1.º Según el punto de vista marxista e historicista, la alienación se localizaría únicamente en la esfera social, mientras que para Hamsun o Lawrence, se sitúa en la naturaleza interior del hombre, independientemente de su posición social o de su riqueza material.

2.º La alienación abordada a partir de la teología o la antropología.

3.º La alienación percibida como una anomalía social.

 

D H Lawrence

En Hegel, y más tarde en Marx, la alienación de los pueblos o de las masas es una etapa necesaria en el proceso de adecuación gradual entre la realidad y el absoluto. En Hamsun y Lawrence, la alienación es un concepto todavía más categórico; sus causas no residen en las estructuras socioeconómicas o políticas, sino en el distanciamiento con respecto a las raíces de la naturaleza (que no es, en consecuencia, una “buena” naturaleza). No desaparecerá la alienación con la simple instauración de un nuevo orden socioeconómico. En Hamsun y Lawrence, señala Doma, es el problema de la desconexión, de la cesura, el que tiene un rango esencial. La vida social ha devenido uniforme, desemboca en la uniformidad, la automatización, la funcionalización a ultranza, mientras que la naturaleza y el trabajo integrado en el ciclo de la vida no son uniformes y requieren en todo momento la movilización de energías vitales. Existe inmediatez, mientras que en la vida urbana, industrial y moderna todo está mediatizado, filtrado. Hamsun y Lawrence se rebelan contra dichos filtros.

Para Hamsun y, en menor medida, Lawrence las fuerzas interiores cuentan para la “naturaleza”. Con la llegada de la modernidad, los hombres están determinados por factores exteriores a ellos, como son los convencionalismos, la lucha política y la opinión pública, que ofrecen una suerte de ilusión por la libertad, cuando en realidad conforman el escenario ideal para todo tipo de manipulaciones. En un contexto tal, las comunidades acaba por desvertebrarse: cada individuo queda reducido a una esfera de actividad autónoma y en concurrencia con otros individuos. Todo ello acaba por derivar en debilidad, aislamiento y hostilidad de todos contra todos.

Los síntomas de esta debilidad son la pasión por las cosas superficiales, los vestidos refinados (Hamsun), signo de una fascinación detestable por lo externo; esto es, formas de dependencia, signos de vacío interior. El hombre quiebra por efecto de presiones exteriores. Indicios, al fin y a la postre, de la pérdida de vitalidad que conlleva la alienación.
En el marco de esta quiebra que supone la vida urbana, el hombre no encuentra estabilidad, pues la vida en las ciudades, en las metrópolis, es hostil a cualquier forma de estabilidad. El hombre alienado ya no puede retornar a su comunidad, a sus raíces familiares. Así Lawrence, con un lenguaje menos áspero pero acaso más incisivo, escribe: “He was the eternal audience, the chorus, the spectator at the drama; in his own life he would have no drama” (“Era la audiencia eterna, el coro, el espectador del drama; pero en su propia vida, no había drama alguno”); “He scarcely existed except through other people” (“Apenas existía, salvo en medio de otras personas”); “He had come to a stability of nullification” (“Había llegado a una estabilidad que lo había anulado”).

En Hamsun y Lawrence, el Ent-wurzelung y el Unbehaustheit, el desarraigo y la carencia de hogar, esa forma de vivir sin fuego, constituye la gran tragedia de la humanidad de finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX. Para Hamsun el hogar es vital para el hombre. El hombre debe tener hogar. El hogar de su existencia. No se puede prescindir del hogar sin autoprovocarse una profunda mutilación. Mutilación de carácter psíquico, que conduce a la histeria, al nerviosismo, al desequilibro. Hamsun es, al fin y al cabo, un psicólogo. Y nos dice: la conciencia de sí es a menudo un síntoma de alienación. Schiller, en su ensayo Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, señalaba que la concordancia entre sentir y pensar era tangible, real e interior en el hombre natural, al contrario que en el hombre cultivado que es ideal y exterior (“La concordancia entre sensaciones y pensamiento existía antaño, pero en la actualidad sólo reside en el plano ideal. Esta concordancia no reside en el hombre, sino que existe exteriormente a él; se trata de una idea que debe ser realizada, no un hecho de su vida”).

Schiller aboga por una Überwindung (superación) de dicha quiebra a través de una movilización total del individuo. El romanticismo, por su parte, considerará la reconciliación entre Ser (Sein) y conciencia (Bewußtsein) como la forma de combatir el reduccionismo que trata de arrinconar la conciencia bajo los corsés de entendimiento racional. El romanticismo valorará, e incluso sobrevalorará, al “otro” con relación a la razón (das Andere der Vernunft): percepción sensual, instinto, intuición, experiencia mística, infancia, sueño, vida bucólica. Wordsworth, romántico inglés, representante “rosa” de dicha voluntad de reconciliación entre Ser y conciencia, defenderá la presencia de “un corazón que observe y apruebe”. Dostoievski no compartirá dicha visión “rosa” y desarrollará una concepción “negra”, donde el intelecto es siempre causa de mal, y el “poseso” un ser que tenderá a matar o a suicidarse. En el plano filosófico, tanto Klages como Lessing retomarán por su cuenta esta visión “negra” del intelecto, profundizando, no obstante, en la veta del romanticismo naturalista: para Klages, el espíritu es enemigo del alma; para Lessing, el espíritu es la contrapartida de la vida, que surge de la necesidad (“Geist ist das notgeborene Gegenspiel des Lebens”).

Lawrence, fiel en cierto sentido a la tradición romántica inglesa de Wordsworth, cree en una nueva adecuación del Ser y la conciencia. Hamsun, más pesimista, más dostoievskiano (de ahí su acogida en Rusia y su influencia en los autores llamados ruralistas, como Vasili Belov y Valentín Rasputín), nunca dejará de pensar que desde que hay conciencia, hay alienación. Desde que el hombre comienza a reflexionar sobre sí mismo, se desliga de la continuidad que confiere la naturaleza y a la cual debiera estar siempre sujeto. En los ensayos de Hamsun, encontramos reflexiones sobre la modernidad literaria. La vida moderna, ha escrito, influye, transforma, lleva al hombre a arrancarlo de su destino, a apartarlo de su punto de llegada, de sus instintos, más allá del bien y del mal. La evolución literaria del siglo XIX muestra una fiebre, un desequilibrio, un nerviosismo, una complicación extrema de la psicología humana. “El nerviosismo general (ambiente) se ha adueñado de nuestro ser fundamental y se ha fijado en nuestra vida sentimental”. El escritor se nos muestra así, al estilo de un Zola, como un “médico social” encargado de diagnosticar los males sociales con objeto de erradicar el mal. El escritor, el intelectual, se embarca en una tarea misionera que trata de llegar a una “corrección política”.

 

Nietzsche con el uniforme de artillero prusiano, 1868

Frente a esta visión intelectual del escritor, el reproche de Hamsun señala la imposibilidad de definir objetivamente la realidad humana, pues un “hombre objetivo” es, en sí mismo, una monstruosidad (ein Unding), un ser construido como si de un mecano se tratase. No podemos reducir al hombre a un compendio de características, pues el hombre es evolución, ambigüedad. El mismo criterio encontramos en Lawrence: “Now I absolutely flatly deny that I am a soul, or a body, or a mind, or an intelligence, or a brain, or a nervous system, or a bunch of glands, or any of the rest of these bits of me. The whole is greater than the part” (“Bien, yo niego absoluta y francamente ser un alma, o un cuerpo, o un espíritu, o una inteligencia, o un cerebro, o un sistema nervioso, o un conjunto de glándulas, o cualquier otra parte de mí mismo. El todo es más grande que las partes”). Hamsun y Lawrence ilustran en sus obras la imposibilidad de teorizar o absolutizar una visión diáfana del hombre. El hombre no puede ser vehículo de ideas preconcebidas. Hamsun y Lawrence confirman que los progresos en la conciencia de uno mismo no conllevan procesos de emancipación espiritual, sino pérdidas, despilfarro de la vitalidad, del tono vital. En sus novelas, son las figuras firmes (esto es, las que están arraigadas a la tierra) las que logran mantenerse, las que triunfan más allá de los golpes de suerte o las circunstancias desgraciadas.

No se trata, en absoluto, repetimos, de vidas bucólicas o idílicas. Los protagonistas de las novelas de Hamsun y Lawrence son penetrados o atraídos por la modernidad, los cuales, pese a su irreductible complejidad, pueden sucumbir, sufren, padecen un proceso de alienación, pero también pueden triunfar. Y es precisamente aquí donde intervienen la ironía de Hamsun o la idea del “Fénix” de Lawrence. La ironía de Hamsun taladra los ideales abstractos de las ideologías modernas. En Lawrence, la recurrente idea del “Fénix” supone una cierta dosis de esperanza: habrá resurrección. Es la idea de Ave Fénix, que renace de sus propias cenizas.

El paganismo de Hamsun y Lawrence

Si dicha voluntad de retorno a una ontología natural es fruto de un rechazo del intelectualismo racionalista, ello implica al mismo tiempo una contestación de calado al mensaje cristiano.

En Hamsun, se ve con claridad el rechazo del puritanismo familiar (concretado en la figura de su tío Han Olsen) y el rechazo al culto protestante por los libros sagrados; esto es, el rechazo explícito de un sistema de pensamiento religioso que prima el saber libresco frente a la experiencia existencial (particularmente la del campesino autosuficiente, el Odalsbond de los campos noruegos). El anticristianismo de Hamsun es, fundamentalmente, un acristianismo: no se plantea dudas religiosas a lo Kierkegaard. Para Hamsun, el moralismo del protestantismo de la era victoriana (de la era oscariana, diríamos para Escandinavia) es simple y llanamente pérdida de vitalidad. Hamsun no apuesta por experiencia mística alguna.

Lawrence, por su parte, percibe la ruptura de toda relación con los misterios cósmicos. El cristianismo vendría a reforzar dicha ruptura, impediría su cura, imposibilitaría su cicatrización. En este sentido, la religiosidad europea aún conservaría un poso de dicho culto al misterio cósmico: el año litúrgico, el ciclo litúrgico (Pascua, Pentecostés, Fuego de San Juan, Todos los Santos, Navidad, Fiesta de los Reyes Magos). Pero incluso éste ha sido aherrojado como consecuencia de un proceso de desencantamiento y desacralización, cuyo comienzo arranca en el momento mismo de la llegada de la Iglesia cristiana primitiva y que se reforzará con los puritanismos y los jansenismos segregados por la Reforma. Los primeros cristianos se plantearon como objetivo apartar al hombre de sus ciclos cósmicos. La Iglesia medieval, por el contrario, quiso adecuarse, pero las Iglesias protestantes y conciliares posteriores han expresado con claridad su voluntad de regresar al anticosmicismo del cristianismo primitivo. En este sentido, Lawrence escribe: “But now, after almost three thousand years, now that we are almost abstracted entirely from the rhythmic life of the seasons, birth and death and fruition, now we realize that such abstraction is neither bliss nor liberation, but nullity. It brings null inertia” (“Pero hoy, después de tres mil años, después que estamos casi completamente abstraídos de la vida rítmica de las estaciones, del nacimiento, de la muerte y de la fecundidad, comprendemos al fin que tal abstracción no es ni una bendición ni una liberación, sino pura nada. No nos aporta otra cosa que inercia”). Esta ruptura es consustancial al cristianismo de las civilizaciones urbanas, donde no hay apertura alguna hacia el cosmos. Cristo no es un Cristo cósmico, sino un Cristo rebajado al papel de asistente social. Mircea Eliade, por su parte, se ha referido a un “hombre cósmico”, abierto a la inmensidad del cosmos, pilar de todas las grandes religiones. En la perspectiva de Eliade, lo sagrado es lo real, el poder, la fuente de vida y de la fertilidad. Eliade nos ha dejado escrito: “El deseo del hombre religioso de vivir una vida en el ámbito de lo sagrado es el deseo de vivir en la realidad objetiva”.

Knut Hamsun, 1927

La lección ideológica y política de Hamsun y Lawrence

En el plano ideológico y político, en el plano de la Weltanschauung, las obras de Hamsun y de Lawrence han tenido un impacto bastante considerable. Hamsun ha sido leído por todos, más allá de la polaridad comunismo/fascismo. Lawrence ha sido etiquetado como “fascista” a título póstumo, entre otros por Bertrand Russell que llegó incluso a referirses a su “madness”: “Lawrence was a suitable exponent of the Nazi cult of insanity” (“Lawrence fue un exponente típico del culto nazi a la locura”). Frase tan lapidaria como simplista. Las obras de Hamsun y de Lawrence, sgún Akos Doma, se inscriben en un cuádruple contexto: el de la filosofía de la vida, el de los avatares del individualismo, el de la tradición filosófica vitalista, y el del antiutopismo y el irracionalismo.

1.º La filosofía de la vida (Lebensphilosophie) es un concepto de lucha, que opone la “vivacidad de la vida real” a la rigidez de los convencionalismos, a los fuegos de artificio inventados por la civilización urbana para tratar de orientar la vida hacia un mundo desencantado. La filosofía de la vida se manifiesta bajo múltiples rostos en el contexto del pensamiento europeo y toma realmente cuerpo a partir de la reflexiones de Nietzsche sobre la Leiblichkeit (corporeidad).

2.º El individualismo. La antropología hamsuniana postula la absoluta unidad de cada individuo, de cada persona, pero rechaza el aislamiento de ese individuo o persona de todo contexto comunitario, familiar o carnal: sitúa a la persona de una manera interactiva, en un lugar preciso. La ausencia de introspección especulativa, de conciencia y de intelectualismo abstracto hacen incompatible el individualismo hamsuniano con la antropología segregada por el Iluminismo. Para Hamsun, sin embargo, no se combate el individualismo iluminista sermoneando sobre un colectivismo de contornos ideológicos. El renacimiento del hombre auténtico pasa por una reactivación de los resortes más profundos de su alma y de su cuerpo. La suma cuantitativa y mecánica es una insuficiencia calamitosa. En consecuencia, la acusación de “fascismo” hacia Lawrence y Hamsun no se sostiene en pie.

3.º El vitalismo tiene en cuenta todos los acontecimientos de la vida y excluye cualquier jerarquización de base racial, social, etc. Las oposiciones propias del vitalismo son: afirmación de la vida / negación de la vida; sano / enfermo; orgánico / mecánico. De ahí, que no se pueda reconducirlas a categorías sociales, a categorías políticas convencionales, etc. La vida es una categoría fundamental apolítica, pues todos los hombres sin distinción están sometidos a ella.

4.º El “irracionalismo” reprochado a Hamsun y Lawrence, igual que su antiutopismo, tienen su base en una revuelta contra la “viabilidad” (feasibility; Machbarkeit), contra la idea de perfectibilidad infinita (que encontramos también bajo una forma “orgánica” en los románticos ingleses de la primera generación). La idea de viabilidad choca directamente con la esencia biológica de la naturaleza. De hecho, la idea de viabilidad es la esencia del nihilismo, como ha apuntado el filósofo italiano Emanuele Severino. Para Severino, la viabilidad deriva de una voluntad de completar el mundo aprehendiéndolo como un devenir (pero no como un devenir orgánico incontrolable). Una vez el proceso de “acabamiento” ha concluido, el devenir detiene bruscamente su curso. Una estabilidad general se impone en la Tierra y esta estabilidad forzada es descrita como un “bien absoluto”. Desde la literatura, Hamsun y Lawrence, han precedido así a filósofos contemporáneos como el citado Emanuele Severino, Robert Spaemann (con su crítica del funcionalismo), Ernst Behler (con su crítica de la “perfectibilidad infinita”) o Peter Koslowski. Estos filósofos, fuera de Alemania o Italia, son muy poco conocidos por el gran público. Su crítica a fondo de los fundamentos de las ideologías dominantes, provoca inevitablemente el rechazo de la solapada inquisición que ejerce su dominio en París.

Nietzsche, Hamsun y Lawrence, los filósofos vitalistas o, si se prefiere, “antiviabilistas”, al insistir sobre el carácter ontológico de la biología humana, se opusieron a la idea occidental y nihilista de la viabilidad absoluta de cualquier cosa; esto es, de la inexistencia ontológica de todas las cosas, de cualquier realidad. Buen número de ellos —Hamsun y Lawrence incluidos— nos llaman la atención sobre el presente eterno de nuestros cuerpos, sobre nuestra propia corporeidad (Leiblichkeit), pues nosotros no podemos conformar nuestros cuerpos, en contraposición a esas voces que nos quieren convencer de las bondades de la ciencia-ficción.

La viabilidad es, pues, el “hybris” que ha llegado a su techo y que conduce a la fiebre, la vacuidad, la ligereza, el solipsismo y el aislamiento. De Heidegger a Severino, la filosofía europea se ha ocupado sobre la catástrofe que ha supuesto la desacralización del Ser y el desencantamiento del mundo. Si los resortes profundos y misteriosos de la Tierra o del hombre son considerados como imperfecciones indignas del interés del teólogo o del filósofo, si todo aquello que ha sido pensado de manera abstracta o fabricado más allá de los resortes (ontológicos) se encuentra sobrevalorado, entonces, efectivamente, no puede extrañarnos que el mundo pierda toda sacralidad, todo valor. Hamsun y Lawrence han sido los escritores que nos han hecho vivir con intensidad dicha constante, por encima incluso de algunos filósofos que también han deplorado la falsa ruta emprendida por el pensamiento occidental desde hace siglos. Heidegger y Severino en el marco de la filosofía, Hamsun y Lawrence en el de la creación literaria, han tratado de restituir la sacralidad en el mundo y revalorizar las fuerzas que se esconden en el interior del hombre: desde ese punto de vista, estamos ante pensadores ecológicos en la más profunda acepción del término. El oikos nos abre las puertas de lo sagrado, de las fuerzas misteriosas e incontrolables, sin fatalismos y sin falsa humildad. Hamsun y Lawrence, en definitiva, anunciaron la dimensión geofilosófica del pensamiento que nos ha ocupado durante toda esta universidad de verano. Una aproximación sucinta a sus obras se hacía absolutamente necesaria en el temario de 1996.

________________

* Comentario al libro de Akos Doma, Die andere Moderne. Knut Hamsun, D.H. Lawrence und die lebensphilosophische Strömung des literarischen Modernismus (Bouvier, Bonn, 1995), leído como conferencia en Lombardía, en julio de 1996. Traducción de Juan C. García Morcillo.

[Tomo el artículo del archivo de su fuente primera, la asociación Sinergias Europeas, que editaba el boletín InfoEuropa. Ya no cabalgan.]

Heidegger “The Nazi”

Michael O'Meara

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/

Emmanuel Faye
Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy in Light of the Unpublished Seminars of 1933-1935
Trans. Michael B. Smith, foreword Tom Rockmore
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009

National Socialism was defeated on the field of battle, but it wasn’t defeated in the realm of thought.

Indeed, it’s undefeatable there because the only thing its enemies can do to counter its insidious ideas is to ban those thinkers, like Martin Heidegger, whose works might attract those wanting to know why National Socialism is undefeatable and why its world view continues to seduce the incredulous.

Or, at least, so thinks Emmanuel Faye in his recently translated Heidegger, l’introduction du nazisme dans la philosophie (Paris: Albin Michel, 2005).

Why, though, all this alarmed concern about a difficult, some say unreadable, philosopher of the last century?

The reason, Tom Rockmore says, is that he lent “philosophical cover to some of the darkest impulses that later led to Nazism, World War II, and the Holocaust.”

One.
The Scandal

Faye’s book is part of a larger publishing phenomenon — in all the major European languages — related to the alleged National Socialism of the great Freiburg philosopher.

Like many prominent German academics of his age, Heidegger joined Hitler’s NSDAP shortly after the National Revolution of 1933.

He was subsequently made rector of the University of Freiburg, partly on the basis of his party affiliation, and in a famous rectorial address — “The Self-Assertion of the German University” — proposed certain reforms that sought to free German universities from “Jewish and modernist influences,” reorienting it in this way to the needs and destiny of the newly liberated Volksgemeinschaft.

 

Heidegger’s role as a public advocate of National Socialist principles did not, however, last very long.  Within a year of his appointment, he resigned the rectorship.

As he told the de-Nazification tribunal in 1945, his resignation was due to his frustration in preventing state interference in university affairs, a frustration that soon turned him away from all political engagements.

The story he told to the liberal inquisitors (which most Heideggerians accepted up to about 1988) was one in which a politically naive academic, swept up in the revolution’s excitement, had impulsively joined the party, only to become quickly disillusioned.

The story’s “dissimulations and falsehoods” were, indeed, good enough to spare him detention in a Yankee prison — unlike, say, Carl Schmitt who was incarcerated for two years after the war (though the only “Americans” Schmitt ever encountered there were German Jews in the conquerors’ uniform) — but not good enough to avoid a five-year ban on teaching.

In any case, it has always been known that Heidegger had at least a brief “flirtation” with “Nazism.”

Given the so-called “negligibility” of his National Socialism, he was able, after his ban, to resume his position as Germany’s leading philosopher.  By the time of his death (1976), he had become the most influential philosopher in the Western world.  His books have since been translated into all the European languages (and some non-European ones), his ideas have come to dominate contemporary continental thought, and they have even established a beachhead in the stultifying world of the Anglo-American academy, renowned for its indifference to philosophical issues.

Despite Heidegger’s enormous influence as “the century’s greatest philosopher,” he never quite shed the stigma of his early brush with National Socialism.  This was especially the case after 1987 and 1988.

For in late 1987 a little known Chilean-Jewish scholar, Victor Farìas, produced the first book-length examination of Heidegger’s “brush” with National Socialist politics.

His Heidegger and Nazism was not a particularly well-researched work, and there was a good deal of speculation and error in it.

It nevertheless blew apart the story Heidegger had told his American inquisitors in 1945, revealing that he had been a party member between 1933 and 1945; that his National Socialism was something more than the flirtation of a politically naive philosopher; and that his affiliation with the Third Reich was anything but “fleeting, casual, or accidental but [rather] central to his philosophical enterprise.”

This “revelation” — that the greatest philosophical mind of the 20th century had been a devoted Hitlerite — provoked a worldwide scandal.

In the year following Farìas’ work, at least seven books appeared on the subject.

The most impressive of these was by Hugo Ott, a German historian, whose Martin Heidegger: A Political Life (1994) lent a good deal of historically-documented substance to Farìas’ charges.

In the decades since the appearance of Farìas’ and Ott’s work, a “slew” of books and articles (no one is counting any more) have continued to probe the dark recesses of Heidegger’s scandalous politics.

Almost every work in the vast literature devoted to Heideggerian philosophy must now, in testament to the impact of these studies, begin with some sort of “reckoning” with his “Nazism” — a reckoning that usually ends up erecting a wall between his philosophy and his politics.

In this context, Emmanuel Faye’s book is presently being touted as the “best researched and most damaging” work on Heidegger’s National Socialism — one that aims to tear down the wall compartmentalizing his politics and to brand him, once and for all, as an apologist for “the greatest crime of the 20th century.”

It’s fitting that Faye, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Paris-Nanterre, is French, for nowhere else have Heidegger’s ideas been as influential as in France.

Heidegger began appearing in French translation as early as the late 1930s.  The publication in 1943 of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, based on a misreading of Heidegger, gave birth to “existentialism,” which dominated Western thought in the late 1940s and 1950s, helping thus to popularize certain Heideggerian ideas.

At the same time, French thinkers were the first to pursue the issue of Heidegger’s alleged National Socialism.

Karl Löwith, one of the philosopher’s former Jewish students exiled in France, argued in 1946 that Heidegger’s politics was inseparable from his philosophical thought. Others soon joined him in making similar arguments.

Though Löwith’s critique of Heidegger appeared in Les Temps Modernes, Sartre’s famous journal, the ensuing, often quite heated, French controversy was mainly restricted to scholarly journals.  Faye’s father, Jean-Pierre Faye, also a philosopher, figured prominently in these debates during the 1960s.

It was, though, only with Farìas and Ott that the debate over Heidegger’s relationship to the Third Reich spread beyond the academic journals and touched the larger intellectual public.

This debate continues to this day.

Part of the difficulty in determining the exact degree and nature of Heidegger’s political commitment after 1933 is due to the fact that Heidegger’s thought bears on virtually every realm of contemporary European intellectual endeavor, on the right as well as the left, and that there’s been, as a consequence, a thoughtful unwillingness to see Heidegger’s National Socialism as anything other than contingent — and thus without philosophical implication.

This unwillingness has been compounded by the fact that the Heidegger archives at Marbach are under the control of Heidegger’s son, Hermann, who controls scholarly access to them, hindering, supposedly, an authoritative account of Heidegger’s thinking in the period 1933-1945.

Moreover, only eighty of the planned 120 volumes of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe have thus far appeared and, as Faye contends, these are not “complete,” for the family has allegedly prevented the more “compromising” works from being published.

The authority of Faye’s Heidegger — which endeavors to eliminate everything separating his politics from his philosophy — rests on two previously unavailable seminars reports from the key 1933-34 period, as well as certain documents, letters, and other evidence, which have appeared in little known or obscure German publications — evidence he sees as “proving” that Heidegger’s “Nazism” was anything but contingent — and that this “Nazism” was, in fact, not only inseparable from his thought, but formative of its core.

On this basis, along with Heidegger’s collaboration with certain NSDAP thinkers, Faye claims that the philosophy of the famous Swabian is so infused with National Socialist principles that it ought no longer to be treated as philosophy at all, but, instead, banned as “Nazi propaganda.”

Two.
Faye’s Argument

Heidegger’s seminars of 1933 and 1934, in Emmanuel Faye’s view, expose the “fiction” that separates Heidegger’s philosophy from his politics. For these seminars reveal a brown-shirted fanatic who threw himself into the National Revolution, hoping to become Hitler’s philosophical mentor.

At the same time, Faye argues that Heidegger’s work in the 1920s, particularly his magnum opus, Being and Time (1927), was already infected with pre-fascist ideas, just as his postwar work, however much it may have resorted to a slightly different terminology, would continue to propagate National Socialist principles.

Earlier, however, when the young Heidegger was establishing himself in the world of German academic philosophy (the 1920s), there is very little public evidence of racial or anti-Jewish bias in his work. To explain this, Faye quotes Heidegger to the effect that “he wasn’t going to say what he thought until after he became a full professor.” His reticence on these matters was especially necessary given that his “mentor,” Edmund Husserl, was Jewish and that he needed Husserl’s support to replace him at Freiburg.

(For those militant Judeophobes who might think this is somehow compromising, let me point out that Wilhelm Stapel [1882-1954], after also doing a doctorate in Husserlian phenomenology, was a Protestant, nationalist, and anti-Semitic associate of the Conservative Revolution who played an important early role in NSDAP politics.)

Faye nevertheless claims that Heidegger’s early ideas, especially those of Being and Time, were already disposed to themes and principles that were National Socialist in nature.

In Being and Time, for example, Heidegger rejects the Cartesian cogito, Kant’s transcendental analytic, Husserlian phenomenology — along with every other bloodless rationalism dominating Western thought since the 18th century — for the sake of an analysis based on “existentials” (i.e., on man’s being in the world).

Like other intellectual members of Hitler’s party, Heidegger disparaged all forms of universalist thought, dismissing not only notions of man as an individual, but notions of the human spirit as pure intellect and reason.

In repudiating universalist, humanist, and individualist thought associated with liberal modernity, Faye’s Heidegger is seen not as contesting the underlying principles of liberal modernity, which he, as a former Catholic traditionalist, thought responsible for the alienation, rootlessness, and meaninglessness of the contemporary world. Rather he is depicted as preparing the way for the “Nazi” notion of an organic national community (Volksgemeinschaft) based on racial and anti-Jewish criteria.

Revealingly, this is about as far as Faye goes in treating Heidegger’s early thought. In fact, there is very little philosophical analysis at all of Being and Time or any other work in his book. Every damning criticism he makes of Heidegger is based on Heidegger’s so-called affinity with National Socialist themes or ideas — or what a liberal defending a Communist would call guilt by association.

Worse, Faye lacks any historical understanding of National Socialism, failing to see it as part of a larger anti-liberal movement that had emerged before Hitler was even born and which influenced Heidegger long before he had heard of the Führer.

For our crusading anti-fascist professor, however, the anti-liberal, anti-individualist, and anti-modern contours of Heideggerian thought are simply Hitlerian — because of their later association with Hitler’s movement — unrelated to whatever earlier influences that may have affected the development of his thought. Q.E.D.

Faye, though, fails to make the case that Heidegger’s pre-1933 thought was “Nazi,” both because he’s indifferent to Heidegger’s philosophical argument in Being and Time, which he dismisses in a series of rhetorical strokes, and, secondarily, because he doesn’t understand the historical/cultural context in which Heidegger worked out his thought.

More generally, he claims Heidegger negated “the human truths that are the underlying principle of philosophy” simply because whatever doesn’t accord with Faye’s own liberal understanding of philosophy (which, incidentally, rationalizes the radical destructurations that have come with the “Disneyfication, MacDonaldization, and globalization” of our coffee-colored world) is treated as inherently suspect.

Only on the basis of the 1933-34 and ‘34-35 seminars does Faye have a case to make.

For the Winter term of 1933-34 Heidegger led a seminar “On the Essence and Concepts of Nature, History, and State.” If Faye’s account of the unpublished seminar report is accurate (and it’s hard to say given the endless exaggerations and distortions that run through his book), Heidegger outdid himself in presenting National Socialist doctrines as the philosophical basis for the new relationship that was to develop between the German people and their new state.

Like other National Socialists, Heidegger in this seminar views the “people” in völkisch terms presuming their “unity of blood and stock.”

Faye is particularly scandalized by the fact that Heidegger values the “people” (Volk) more than the “individual” and that the people, as an organic community of blood and spirit, excludes Jews and exalts its own particularity.

In this seminar, Heidegger goes even further, calling for a “Germanic state for the German nation,” extending his racial notion of the people to the political system, as he envisages the “will of the people” as finding embodiment in the will of the state’s leader (Führer).

Faye contends that people and state exist for Heidegger in the same relation as beings exist in relation to Being.

As such, Heidegger links ontology to politics, as the “question of all questions” (the “question of being”) is identified with the question of Germany’s political destiny.

Heidegger’s rejection of the humanist notion of the individual and of Enlightenment universalism in his treatment of Volk and Staat are, Faye thinks, synonymous with Hitlerism.

Though Faye’s argument here is more credible, it might also be pointed out that Heidegger’s privileging of the national community over the interests and freedoms of the individual has a long genealogy in German thought (unlike Anglo-American thought, which privileges the rational individual seeking to maximize his self-interest in the market).

The second seminar, in the Winter term of 1934-35, “On the State: Hegel,” again supports Faye’s case that Heidegger was essentially a “Nazi” propagandist and not a true philosopher. For in this seminar, he affirms the spirit of the new National Socialist state in Hegelian terms, spreading the “racist and human-life destroying conceptions that make up the foundations of Hitlerism.”

In both courses, Faye sees Heidegger associating and merging philosophy with National Socialism.

For this reason, his work ought not to be considered a philosophy at all, but rather a noxious political ideology.

Faye, in fact, cannot understand how Heidegger’s insidious project has managed to “procure a planetary public” or why he is so widely accepted as a great philosopher.

Apparently, Heidegger had the power to seduce the public — though on the basis of Faye’s account, it’s difficult to see how the political hack he describes could have pulled this off.

In any case, Faye warns that if Heidegger isn’t exposed for the political charlatan he is, terrible things are again possible. “Hitlerism and Nazism will continue to germinate through Heidegger’s writings at the risk of spawning new attempts at the complete destruction of thought and the extermination of humankind.”

Three.
Race and State

 

Martin Heidegger, 1889 - 1976

From the above, the reader might conclude that Faye’s Heidegger is a wreck of a book.  And, in large part, it is, as I will discuss in the conclusion.

However, even the most disastrous wrecks (and this one bears the impressive moniker of Yale University Press) usually leave something to be salvaged.  There are, as such, discussions on the subjects of “race” and “the state,” which I thought might interest TOQ readers.

A) Race

National Socialism, especially its Hitlerian distillation, was a racial nationalism.

Yet Heidegger, as even his enemies acknowledge, was contemptuous of what at the time was called “biologism.”

Biologism is the doctrine, still prevalent in white nationalist ranks, that understands human races in purely zoological and materialist terms, as if men were no different from the lower life forms — slabs of meat whose existence is a product of genetics alone.

Quite naturally, Heidegger’s anti-biologism was a problem for Faye, for how was it possible to claim that Heidegger was a “Nazi racist,” if he rejected this seemingly defining aspect of racial thought?

In an earlier piece (”Freedom’s Racial Imperative: A Heideggerian Argument for the Self-Assertion of Peoples of European Descent,” TOQ, vol. 6, no. 3), I reconstructed the racial dimension of Heidegger’s thought solely on the basis of his philosophy.

But Faye, who obviously doesn’t put the same credence in Heidegger’s thought, is forced, as an alternative, to historically investigate the different currents of NSDAP racial doctrine.

In his account (which should be taken as suggestive rather than authoritative), the party, in the year after the revolution, divided into two camps vis-à-vis racial matters: the camp of the Nordicists and that of the Germanists.

The Nordicists were led by Hans K. Günther, a former philologist, and had a “biologist” notion of race, based on evolutionary biology, which sought, through eugenics, to enhance the “Nordic blood” in the German population.

By contrast, the Germanists, led by the biologist Fritz Merkenschlager and supported especially by the less Nordic South Germans, held that blood implied spirit and that spirit played the greater role in determining a people’s character.  (This ought not to be confused with Klages’ “psychologism.”)

The Germanists, as such, pointed out that Scandinavians were far more Nordic than Germans, yet their greater racial “purity” did not make them a greater people than the Germans, as Günther’s criteria would lead one to believe.

Rather, it was the Germans’ extraordinary Prussian spirit (this wonder of nature and Being) that made them a great nation.

This is not to say that the Germanists rejected the corporal or biological basis of their Volk — only that they believed their people’s blood could not be separated from their spirit without misunderstanding what makes them a people.

For the Germanists, then, race was not exclusively a matter of biological considerations alone, as Günther held, but rather a matter of blood and spirit.

(As an aside, I might mention that Julius Evola, whose idea of race represents, in my view, the highest point in the development of 20th-century racial thought, was much influenced by this debate, especially by Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, whose raciology was a key component of the Germanist conception, emphasizing as it does the fact that one’s idea of race is ultimately determined by one’s conception of human being.)

Faye claims that, in a speech delivered in August 1933, Hitler emphasized the spiritual determinants of race, in language similar to Heidegger’s, and that he thus came down on the side of the Germanists.

The key point here is that, for Faye, the “völkisch racism” of the Germanists was no less “racist” than that of the biological racialists — implying that Heidegger’s Germanism was also as “racist.”

The Germanist conception, I might add, was especially well-suited to a “blubo” (a Blut-und-Boden nationalist) like Heidegger. Seeing man as Dasein (a being-there), situated not only in a specific life world (Umwelt), but in exchange with beings (Mitdasein) specific to his kind, his existence has meaning only in terms of the particularities native to his milieu, (which is why Heidegger rejected universalism and the individualist conception of man as a free-floating consciousness motivated strictly by reason or self-interest).

Darwinian conceptions of race for Heidegger, as they were for other  Germanists in the NSDAP, represented another form of liberalism, based on individualistic and universalist notions of man that reduced him to a disembedded object — refusing to recognize those matters, which, even more than strictly biological differences, make one people unlike another.

Without this recognition, Germanists held that “the Prussian aristocracy was no different from apples on a tree.”

B) The State

As a National Socialist, Faye’s Heidegger was above all concerned with lending legitimacy to the new Führer state.

To this end, Heidegger turned to Carl Schmitt, another of those “Nazi” intellectuals, who, for reasons that are beyond Faye’s ken, is seen by many as a great political thinker.

In his seminar on Hegel, Heidegger, accordingly, begins with the 1933 third edition of Schmitt’s Concept of the Political (1927).

 

There Schmitt defines the concept of the state in terms of the political — and the political as those actions and motives that determine who the state’s “friends” and who its “enemies” are.

But though Heidegger begins with Schmitt, he nevertheless tries to go beyond his concept of the political.

Accepting that the “political” constitutes the essence of the state, Heidegger contends that Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction is secondary to the actual historical self-affirmation of a people’s being that goes into founding a state true to the nation.

In Heidegger’s view, Schmitt’s concept presupposes a people’s historical self-affirmation and is thus not fundamental but derivative.

It is worth quoting Heidegger here:

There is only friend and enemy where there is self-affirmation. The affirmation of self [i.e., the Volk] taken in this sense requires a specific conception of the historical being of a people and of the state itself. Because the state is that self-affirmation of the historical being of a people and because the state can be called polis, the political consequently appears as the friend/enemy relation. But that relation is not the political.

Rather, it follows the prior self-affirmation.

For libertarians and anarchists in our ranks, Heidegger’s modification of Schmitt’s proposition is probably beside the point.

But for a statist like myself, who believes a future white homeland in North America is inconceivable without a strong centralized political system to defend it, Heidegger’s modification of the Schmittian concept is a welcome affirmation of the state, seeing it as a necessary stage in a people’s self-assertion.

Four.
Conclusion

From the above, it should be obvious that Faye’s Heidegger is not quite the definitive interpretation that his promoters make it out to be.

Specifically, there is little that is philosophical in his critique of Heidegger’s philosophy and, relying on his moralizing attitude rather than on a philosophical deconstruction of Heidegger’s work, he ends up failing to make the argument he seeks to make.

If Faye’s reading of the seminars of 1933-34 are correct, than Heidegger was quite obviously more of a National Socialist than he let on. But this was already known in 1987-88.

Faye also claims that Heidegger’s pioneering work of the 1920s anticipated the National Socialist ideas he developed in the seminars of 1933-34 and that his postwar work simply continued, in a modified guise, what had begun earlier. This claim, though, is rhetorically asserted rather than demonstrated.

Worse, Faye ends up contradicting what he sets out to accomplish. For his criticism of Heidegger is little more than an ad hominem attack, which assumes that the negative adjectives (”abhorrent,” “appalling,” “monstrous,” “dangerous,” etc) he uses to describe his subject are a substitute for either a proper philosophical critique or a historical analysis.

In thus failing to refute the philosophical basis of Heidegger’s National Socialism, his argument fails, in effect.

But even if his adjectives were just, it doesn’t change the fact that however “immoral” a philosopher may be, he is nevertheless still a philosopher. Faye here makes a “category mistake” that confuses the standards of philosophy with those of morality. Besides, Heidegger was right in terms of his morals.

Faye is also a poor example of the philosophical rationalism that he offers as an alternative to Heidegger’s allegedly “irrational” philosophy — a rationalism whose enlightenment has been evident in the great fortunes that Jews have made from it.

Finally, in insisting that Heidegger be banned because of his fascist politics, Faye commits the “sin” that virtuous anti-fascists always accuse their opponents of committing.

In a word, Faye’s Heidegger is something of a hatchet job that, ultimately, reflects more on its author’s peculiarities than on his subject.

Yet after saying this, let me confess that though Faye makes a shoddy argument that doesn’t prove what he thinks he proves, he is nevertheless probably right in seeing Heidegger as a “Nazi.”  He simply doesn’t know how to make his case — or maybe he simply doesn’t want to spend the years it takes to “master” Heidegger’s thought.

Even more ironic is the scandal of Heidegger’s “Nazism” seen from outside Faye’s liberal paradigm. For in this optic, the scandal is not that Heidegger was a National Socialist — but rather that the most powerful philosophical intelligence of the last century believed in this most demonized of all modern ideologies.

But who sees or cares about this real scandal?

We Anti-Moderns

Michael O'Meara

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/

Antoine Compagnon
Les antimodernes:
De Joseph de Maistre à Roland Barthes
Paris: Gallimard, 2005

“Ce qu’on appelle contre-révolution ne sera
point une révolution contraire, mais le
contraire de la révolution.”
—Joseph de Maistre

Though Antoine Compagnon’s eloquently written and extensively researched essay won a number of prizes and set off a stir among France’s literati, there is little to recommend it here—except for its central theme, which speaks, however implicitly, to the great question of our age in defining and classifying a form of thought whose mission is to arrest modernity’s seemingly heedless advance toward self-destruction.

The antimoderne, Compagnon argues, was born with the birth of liberal modernity. Neither a reactionary nor an antiquarian, the anti-modernist is himself a product of modernity, but a “reluctant” one, who, in the last two centuries, has been modernity’s most severe critic, serving as its foremost counter-point, but at the same time representing what is most enduring and authentic in the modern. This makes the antimoderne the modern’s negation, its refutation, as well as its double and its most authentic representative. As such, it is inconceivable without the moderne, oscillating between pure refusal and engagement. The anti-modernist is not, then, anyone who opposes the modern, but rather those “modernists” at odds with the modern age who engage it and theorize it in ways that offer an alternative to it.

Certain themes or “figures” distinguish anti-modernism from academism, conservatism, and traditionalism. Compagnon designates six, though only four need mentioning. Politically, the antimoderne is counter-revolutionary; unlike contemporary conservatives, his opposition to modernity’s liberal order is radical, repudiating its underlying premises. Philosophically, the antimoderne is anti-Enlightenment; he opposes the disembodied rationalism born of the New Science and its Cartesian offshoot, and he sides with Pascal’s contention that “the heart has its reasons that reason knows not.” Existentially, the antimoderne is a pessimist, rejecting the modern cult of progress, with its feel-good, happy-ending view of reality. Morally or religiously, the antimoderne accepts the doctrine of “original sin,” spurning Rousseau’s Noble Savage and Locke’s Blank Slate, along with all the egalitarian, social-engineering dictates accompanying modernity’s optimistic onslaught.

The greatest and most paradigmatic of the antimoderns was Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821). Prior to the Great Revolution of 1789, which ushered in the modern liberal age, Maistre had been a Freemason and an enthusiast of the Enlightenment. The Revolution’s wanton violence, combined with Burke’s Reflections, helped turn him against it. Paradoxically indebted to the style of Enlightenment reasoning, his unorthodox Catholic critique of the Revolution became the subsequent foundation not only for the most meaningful distillations of Continental conservatism, but of the antimodern project.

The tenor of Maistre’s anti-modernism is probably best captured in his contention that the counter-revolution would not be a negation of the Revolution, but its dépassement (i.e., its overtaking or transcendence). Unlike certain reactionary anti-revolutionaries who sought a literal restoration of the old regime, the grand Savoyard realized the Revolution had wreaked havoc upon Europe’s traditional order, and nothing could ever be done to undo this, for history is irreversible. The counter-revolution would thus have to be revolutionary, going back not to the old regime, but beyond it, to a new order representing both the Revolution’s completion and transcendence. In this sense, the anti-modern project—by rejecting what is decadent and perverted in the modern, while defending what is great and necessary in it—holds out the prospect of rebirth.

Between the Great Revolution and the Second World War, as anti-modernists were excluded from the leading spheres of French political and social life, they took refuge, Compagnon argues, in literature and letters—their “ideological resistance [being] inseparable from [their] literary audacity.” Balzac, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Proust, Péguy, Céline—to name those most familiar to English-speaking readers—are a few of the great figures of French literature who, in implicit dialogue with Maistre, resisted the modern world in modernist ways. (Not coincidentally, for it was also a European phenomenon, the great Welsh Marxist scholar, Raymond Williams, makes a similar argument for English literature in his Culture and Society, 1780–1950 [1958], though in anti-capitalist rather than anti-modernist terms.)

But if Compagnon develops a suggestive term to designate the nineteenth- and twentieth-century resistance to modern liberal dogmas, he himself is no anti-modernist—which is what one would expect from this professor of French literature occupying prestigious chairs at both the Sorbonne and Columbia University. For anti-modernism is not simply modernity’s aesthetic auxiliary, as Compagnon would have it, but an ideological-cultural tradition frontally challenging the modern order. Given, moreover, the anti-liberal and frequently anti-Semitic implications of the anti-modern temper, as well as its uncompromising resistance to the reigning powers, no feted representative of the system’s academic establishment could possibly champion its tenets. Thus, despite Compagnon’s invaluable designation of one of the great figures opposing modernity’s destructive onslaught, he not only characterizes the antimoderne in exclusively literary terms, missing thereby its larger historical manifestations and contemporary relevance, he never actually comes to term with its defining antonym: the “moderne.”

The concept of modernity, though, is crucial not only to an understanding of the anti-modern, but to an understanding of—and hence resistance to—the forces presently threatening the European life world. There are, of course, a number of different ways to understand these anti-white threats. In an earlier piece in TOQ, I argued that they stem ultimately from the ontological disorder (“consummate meaninglessness”) that marks the foundation of the modern age. Others in these pages have pointed to the Jewish “culture of critique” and the managerial revolution of the Thirties, both of which throw light on the subversive forces threatening us. At other venues, there are those emphasizing the predatory nature of international capitalism, the suicidal disposition of our secular, humanist civilization, or the complex and perplexing forces of modern structural differentiation, to mention just a few of the contending interpretations. Because the historical process is a complicated affair and rarely lends itself to a single monolithic interpretation, the wisest course is probably an eclectic one accommodating a variety of interpretations.

However, if it were necessary to put a single label on the historical process responsible for the “decomposition and involution” preparing the way for our collective demise as a race and a culture, the best candidate in my view is the admittedly imprecise and difficult to define term “modernity”—and its variants (modernism, modernization, modern times, etc.). Over the last century and a half, some of our greatest thinkers have wrestled with this term, offering a variety of not always compatible interpretations of that “certain something” which distinguishes modern life from all former or traditional modes of existence. Compagnon adopts the view of Baudelaire, who invented the term, defining “modernité” as an experience “which is always changing, which does not remain static, and which is most clearly felt in the [bustling] metropolitan center of the city [where everything is] constantly subject to renewal.” The Baudelairian conception, like other interpretations of the modern stressing its fleeting, fragmented, and discordant nature, relates back to the Latin modernus or the early French modo, meaning “just now”—that is, something that is of present and not of past or “old-fashioned” times. In this sense, it is associated, positively, with the new, the improved, the unquestionably superior; negatively, with the ephemeral, the fashionable, and the superficial.

Here is not the place to review the history of this key term. Suffice it to note that the modernist sees life in the present as fundamentally and qualitatively different from life in the past. In contrast to traditionalists, who view the present as a continuation, a transmission, and a recuperation of the past, modernists (and today we are all, to one degree or another, modernists) emphasize discontinuity, favoring reason’s endless capacity to create ever more desirable forms of existence, opposing, thus, the historic, organic, and traditional orders of earlier social forms and identities. Racially, culturally, and in other ways, modern civilization cannot, then, but pursue its abstract, disordering cult of progress in a manner that contests who we are.

There is also a geography to modernity. It began as a European idea, but its fullest historical realization came in lands where the European tradition was weakest, specifically in America (“the home of unrelenting progress . . . where tomorrow is always better than today”) and, to a lesser extent, Soviet Russia. Thus it was that up to 1945 anti-modernists dominated European literature and letters and anti-modernist principles not infrequently found their way into the European public sphere. Since das Jahre Null, however, all has changed, and anti-modernists have been largely exiled to Samizdat and marginal publications—a sign of modernity’s increasingly totalitarian disposition to regulate, level, and homogenize for the sake of America’s modern “way of life.”

Flawed as it may be, Compagnon’s book not only helps us rediscover the anti-modern tradition that stands as an antidote to a runaway modernity, it comes at a time when modern civilization, in the form of globalization, faces its gravest crisis. Phillipe Grasset (at dedefensa.org), arguably the greatest living student of modern, especially American, civilization, claims that a triumphant modernity is today completely unchained, drunk on its own power, as it remakes the planet and transforms our lives in ways that destructure all known identities and beliefs. Like earlier French Jacobins, who exported their revolution to the rest of Europe, American Jacobins in the White House and on Wall Street are today imposing their revolutionary disorder on the rest of the world, as they turn it into a monochrome, amorphous herd of consumers shorn of everything that has traditionally been the basis of our civilization.

A single force compels the spiritless modernism of these latter-day Jacobins: the chaos-creating imperatives of their techno-economic cult of progress, which runs roughshod over every organic, historic, and traditional reference. Evident in Iraq, along our southern border, and in the antechambers of the European Commission, they thrive not just on the illusion that the past is discontinuous with the present, but on a “virtualism” whose artificial and self-serving constructions bear little relationship to the realities they endeavor to affect. As one White House official said to a New York Times reporter (October 17, 2004) on the subject of Bush’s “faith-based community”: “When we act, we create our own reality.” The modernist is prone, thus, to taking refuge in the illusory idea he makes of reality. This “virtualist” affirmation of illusion as reality inevitably leads to chaos, madness, and a world which is no longer our own.

Because our age’s defining conflict increasingly revolves around the battle between a destructuring modernity, in the form of globalism, and the anti-modernist forces of order rooted in the cultural and genetic heritage defining the European, the anti-modernist project has never been more pertinent. In Grasset’s view, what is at stake in this conflict is “the consciousness of existing as a specific phenomenon”—that is, identity. For as the modernist impetus of an American-driven globalism imposes its virtualist identities (based on creedal abstractions, not history, nature, or tradition), it clashes with the anti-modern project of forging an identity based on a synthesis of primordial identities and modern imperatives, as the temporal and the untimely meet and merge in a higher dialectic.

Throughout the nineteenth century and into the first half of the twentieth century, anti-modernists commanding the cultural heights of modern civilization were able, at times, to mitigate modernity’s destructive import. Since the American triumph of 1945, especially since 1989, as liberals and globalists subjected the spirit to new, more iron forms of conformity, this has changed, and anti-modernist writers and critics have been systematically purged from the public sphere.

The anti-modern, though, is not so easily suppressed, for it is the voice of history, heritage, and a reality that refuses to adapt to the modernist’s Procrustean demands.

Banned now from literature and letters, it is shifting to other fields. With the terrorist assault of 9/11, fourth-generation war in Iraq, the European referendum of 2005, etc.—the anti-modern forces of history and heritage continue to make themselves felt, for as our clueless modernists fail to understand, the past is never dead and gone.

TOQ, vol. 7, no. 4, Winter 2007–2008