{"id":2390,"date":"2014-04-28T18:49:33","date_gmt":"2014-04-28T22:49:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/?p=2390"},"modified":"2014-04-29T15:38:25","modified_gmt":"2014-04-29T19:38:25","slug":"society-soschmiety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/?p=2390","title":{"rendered":"Society, Soschmiety"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few posts ago<\/a> I noted that Ernst Juenger, in defining the difference between the anarch and the forest-goer (aka the forest fleer) in his novel Eumeswil<\/em>, defined both of these figures in opposition to “society”:<\/p>\n

The difference is that the forest fleer has been expelled from society, while the anarch has expelled society from himself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How barbaric is that? Even most anarchists would say with Thomas Paine<\/a> that “Society in every state is a blessing,” while most libertarians would conclude with him that “government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.” (I, on the other hand, would say with Nietzsche<\/a> that “the song of the necessary [is] the single and irreplaceable melody,” and that what is necessary is not evil. I’d say with Tolkien that government is not some thing or institution, which can be in a better or worse “state,” but is only an act or process. I’d say with Isabel Paterson that this act or process originates in and proceeds from the\u00a0 individual’s<\/em> <\/em>moral faculty<\/em>, and that its defining purpose is only to inhibit those who won’t inhibit, i.e., govern, themselves. I’d say that the presumption of innocence, which rests in part on the likelihood that Tony Serra was right when he said<\/a> “We\u2019re all<\/em> either innocent or we\u2019re all<\/em> guilty”, is the song of the necessary in the act or process of governing. I’d say, in other words, that from both a materialistic \/ neurological and a metaphysical \/ religious perspective the existence of what is commonly called “free-will” is reasonably doubtful.)<\/p>\n

It’s logical to look for an answer to whether the anarch and the forest-goer are barbaric figures in Max Stirner<\/a>, on whose thinking Juenger expressly based his figure of the anarch:<\/p>\n

The word Gesellschaft<\/em> (society) has its origin in the word Sal<\/em> (hall). If one hall encloses many persons, then the hall causes these persons to be in society. They are<\/em> in society, and at most constitute a parlor-society by talking in the traditional forms of parlor speech. When it comes to real intercourse<\/em>, this is to be regarded as independent of society: it may occur or be lacking, without altering the nature of what is named society. Those who are in the hall are a society even as mute persons, or when they put each other off solely with empty phrases of courtesy. Intercourse is mutuality, it is the action, the commercium<\/em>, of individuals; society is only community of the hall, and even the statues of a museum-hall are in society, they are \u201cgrouped.\u201d People are accustomed to say \u201cthey haben inne<\/em> [\u201cOccupy\u201d; literally, \u201chave within\u201d] this hall in common,\u201d but the case is rather that the hall has us inne<\/em> or in it. So far the natural signification of the word society. In this it comes out that society is not generated by me and you, but by a third factor which makes associates out of us two, and that it is just this third factor that is the creative one, that which creates society. . . .<\/p>\n

Not isolation or being alone, but society, is man\u2019s original state. Our existence begins with the most intimate conjunction, as we are already living with our mother before we breathe; when we see the light of the world, we at once lie on a human being\u2019s breast again, her love cradles us in the lap, leads us in the go-cart, and chains us to her person with a thousand ties. Society is our state of nature<\/em>. And this is why, the more we learn to feel ourselves, the connection that was formerly most intimate becomes ever looser and the dissolution of the original society more unmistakable. To have once again for herself the child that once lay under her heart, the mother must fetch it from the street and from the midst of its playmates. The child prefers the intercourse<\/em> that it enters into with its fellows<\/em> to the society<\/em> that it has not entered into, but only been born in.<\/p>\n

But the dissolution of society<\/em> is intercourse<\/em> or union<\/em>. A society does assuredly arise by union too, but only as a fixed idea arises by a thought \u2014 to wit, by the vanishing of the energy of the thought (the thinking itself, this restless taking back all thoughts that make themselves fast) from the thought. If a union [Verein<\/em>] has crystallized into a society, it has ceased to be a coalition; [Vereinigung<\/em>] for coalition is an incessant self-uniting; it has become a unitedness, come to a standstill, degenerated into a fixity; it is \u2014 dead<\/em> as a union, it is the corpse of the union or the coalition, i.e.<\/em> it is \u2014society, community. A striking example of this kind is furnished by the party<\/em>. . . .<\/p>\n

No, community, as the \u201cgoal\u201d of history hitherto, is impossible. Let us rather renounce every hypocrisy of community, and recognize that, if we are equal as men, we are not equal for the very reason that we are not men. We are equal only in thoughts<\/em>, only when \u201cwe\u201d are thought<\/em>, not as we really and bodily are. I am ego, and you are ego: but I am not this thought-of ego; this ego in which we are all equal is only my thought<\/em>. I am man, and you are man: but \u201cman\u201d is only a thought, a generality; neither I nor you are speakable, we are unutterable<\/em>, because only thoughts<\/em> are speakable and consist in speaking.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The anarch, then, remains in society, but not of society (as the Christian remains “in the world but not of the world”). So, too<\/em>, does the forest-goer<\/a>: “Freedom is completely different to mere opposition, and cannot be achieved by flight. We called this place the forest. . . . Those for whom another form of existence is impossible are also forced to rely on following the forest way. . . . As far as its location is concerned, the forest is everywhere. It is in the wasteland and in the cities, wherever the follower of the forest way lives in hiding or concealed beneath the mask of his profession. . . . Freedom is the big issue today. It is the power that masters fear. It is the main concern of the free human being; not just freedom itself, but also the way in which it can effectively be represented and made visible in resistance.”<\/p>\n

Note that in Juenger’s definitions the anarch expels society from himself, which is clear enough, while it’s not specified who or what expels the forest-goer from society. Society is a wheel in the head, a spook, a fixed idea, the living corpse of a dead thought. “It,” therefore, does not expel anyone from it. But just because you<\/em> don’t believe in ghosts doesn’t mean that belief in ghosts isn’t alive and well. It is the believers<\/em> in society, rather than society itself, who give this ghost (which is all in their heads) their hands and arms, and who expel the forest-goer from “society.” On the other hand, the pervasiveness of this spectral infestation gives it certain definite contours, e.g., in its customs and laws, so that it can be said to take on, even for unbelievers, an effective reality of its own, somewhat apart from its carriers. Hence Nietzsche reified the state as “the coldest of all cold monsters.” Hence there is no hypocrisy in an unbeliever invoking, e.g., the Fifth Amendment of a Constitution whose authority he does not “acknowledge,” or endeavoring to avoid running afoul of society unnecessarily.<\/p>\n

In this day and age, both the expulsion from society and the passage into the forest are less literal and more symbolic than they were in Grettir’s day. After all, today there are few frontiers and wild places left to which one might actually flee from society, and, so far from society allowing the outlaw to follow his own lonely and perilous path away from it, it is most likely to cast him into society in its purest form — i.e., into prison. The forest-goer, then, is typically expelled from society while still remaining in the midst of society.<\/p>\n

It can also be said that, in the final analysis, while the anarch expels society from himself, the forest-goer (rather than society or the spooked) expels himself<\/em> from society, but that this expulsion is decided by an inner necessity. After all, there is comfort in “belonging,” in “fitting in,” in the hall, and being expelled from it is intrinsically painful. It’s not something one goes out of one’s way to incur, just for the hell of it. The anarch, Juenger wrote in Eumeswil<\/em>, “is and remains his own master in all circumstances. When he decides to flee to the forest, his decision is less an issue of justice and conscience for him than a traffic accident.” (What are “justice” and “conscience” in this context other than self-congratulatory names we give to things we want to do?)<\/p>\n

An intriguing example of the relationship and difference between the anarch and the forest-goer is supplied from the life story of Juenger himself. I mentioned a couple posts ago that in an interview Juenger gave when he was one hundred years old, a couple years before he died, he manifested a reluctance to commit himself to the anarch as a “position.” But in conversations about ten years earlier, published under the title The Details of Time,<\/em> he expressly said that “the anarch’s position . . . is the position that I favor at present.” He explains this position in this extraordinary exchange:<\/p>\n

HERVIER: May I quote you? On June 14, 1934, you wrote in the Nazi Party newspaper, Der Volkische Beobachter<\/em>: “My efforts are aimed at preventing even the slightest suspicion of ambiguity about the nature of my political substance.”<\/p>\n

JUNGER: Perfectly: but I wouldn’t do it again today. I made myself fairly vulnerable. And a quoi ca peut servir<\/em> [what good would it do]? I would willingly ask the question. Today, my mindset is that of an anarch, who says: “Go ahead, but as for me, I’m keeping quiet.” But anyway, I did it. Actually, I had largely forgotten about it; there are a whole series of proclamations along those lines. Incidentally, it was a Jewish researcher named Wulf who dug up all that business in the Prussian archives — especially the stories concerning the Pour le merite<\/em> decoration — and he published them in a book entitled Literature in the Third Reich<\/em>. I appear there as a rara avis<\/em>, in a class by myself; he cites a number of analogous items. Those are things that one forgets. But today, as I’ve said, I see all that from very far away, and I would act more prudently.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I assume the series of proclamations and analogous items Juenger was referring to here are essentially the same as those described in this paragraph from the Wikipedia article on Juenger:<\/p>\n

Never a member of the National Socialist<\/a> movement around Adolf Hitler<\/a>, J\u00fcnger refused a chair offered to him in the Reichstag<\/a> following the Nazi Party<\/a>‘s ascension to power in 1933, and he refused the invitation to head the German Academy of Literature (Die deutsche Akademie der Dichtung<\/i>).[6]<\/a><\/sup> On June 14, 1934, J\u00fcnger wrote a \u201cletter of rejection\u201d to the V\u00f6lkischer Beobachter<\/a><\/i>, the official Nazi newspaper, in which he requested that none of his writings be published in it.[7]<\/a><\/sup> J\u00fcnger also refused to speak on Goebbels\u2019s radio. He was one of the few \u201cnationalist\u201d authors whose name was never found on the frequent declarations of loyalty to Hitler. He and his brother Friedrich Georg quit the “Traditionsverein der 73er” (veteran\u2019s organization of the Hanoverian regiment they had served during World War I) when its Jewish members were expelled.[8]<\/a><\/sup> An attack on J\u00fcnger appeared in the Bavarian V\u00f6lkischer Beobachter<\/i> of October 22, 1932, with the title \u201cDas endlose dialektische Gesprach\u201d (the Endless Dialectical Discussion), taking J\u00fcnger to task for not being an adherent of Blood and Soil racial doctrine, and accusing him of being an “intellectualist” and a liberal.[9]<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These were acts characteristic not of an anarch but of a forest-goer. On the other hand, Juenger’s chilling description of an execution of a deserter he supervised during WWII, at the beginning of the following video, was characteristic of the position of an anarch:<\/p>\n