Anarchism and Friedrich Nietzsche
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Overview
During the last decade of the 19th century, Nietzsche was frequently associated with anarchist movements, in spite of the fact that in his writings he seems to hold a negative view of anarchists.[1] This may be the result of a popular association during this period between his ideas and those of Max Stirner.[3][4]
Spencer Sunshine writes that "[t]here were many things that drew anarchists to Nietzsche: his hatred of the state; his disgust for the mindless social behavior of 'herds'; his anti-Christianity; his distrust of the effect of both the market and the State on cultural production; his desire for an 'overman'—that is, for a new human who was to be neither master nor slave; his praise of the ecstatic and creative self, with the artist as his prototype, who could say, 'Yes' to the self-creation of a new world on the basis of nothing; and his forwarding of the 'transvaluation of values' as source of change, as opposed to a Marxist conception of class struggle and the dialectic of a linear history".[2]
For Sunshine, "[t]he list is not limited to culturally-oriented anarchists such as
As mentioned above, Nietzsche was highly critical of the state, something that is a common theme in Anarchist thinking as well as his critique of conventional morality, writing in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, that "State is the name for the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly, it tells lies; and this lie crawls out of it´s mouth: "I, the state, am the people."". Also, he would say, "This sign I give to you: every people speaks it´s own tongue of good and evil: this the neighbour does not understand. It has invented it´s own language of customs and rights." .[8]
Max Stirner and Nietzsche
Max Stirner was a Hegelian philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in historically-orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest and best-known exponents of individualist anarchism".[9] In 1844, his The Ego and Its Own (Der Einzige und sein Eigentum which may literally be translated as The Unique Individual and His Property[10]) was published, which is considered to be "a founding text in the tradition of individualist anarchism".[9]
The ideas of 19th-century German philosophers Max Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche have often been compared, and many authors have discussed apparent similarities in their writings, sometimes raising the question of influence.[3] In Germany, during the early years of Nietzsche's emergence as a well-known figure, the only thinker discussed in connection with his ideas more often than Stirner was Schopenhauer.[11] It is certain that Nietzsche read about Stirner's book The Ego and Its Own (Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, 1845), which was mentioned in Lange's History of Materialism (1866) and Eduard von Hartmann's Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869), both of which young Nietzsche knew very well.[12] However, there is no irrefutable indication that he actually read it, as no mention of Stirner is known to exist anywhere in Nietzsche's publications, papers or correspondence.[13]
And yet as soon as Nietzsche's work began to reach a wider audience the question of whether or not he owed a debt of influence to Stirner was raised. As early as 1891 (while Nietzsche was still alive, though incapacitated by mental illness) Eduard von Hartmann went so far as to suggest that he had plagiarized Stirner.[14] By the turn of the century the belief that Nietzsche had been influenced by Stirner was so widespread that it became something of a commonplace, at least in Germany, prompting one observer to note in 1907 "Stirner's influence in modern Germany has assumed astonishing proportions, and moves in general parallel with that of Nietzsche. The two thinkers are regarded as exponents of essentially the same philosophy."[15]
Nevertheless, from the very beginning of what was characterized as "great debate"[16] regarding Stirner's possible influence on Nietzsche—positive or negative—serious problems with the idea were noted.[17] By the middle of the 20th century, if Stirner was mentioned at all in works on Nietzsche, the idea of influence was often dismissed outright or abandoned as unanswerable.[18]
But the idea that Nietzsche was influenced in some way by Stirner continues to attract a significant minority, perhaps because it seems necessary to explain in some reasonable fashion the often-noted (though arguably superficial) similarities in their writings.[19] In any case, the most significant problems with the theory of possible Stirner influence on Nietzsche are not limited to the difficulty in establishing whether the one man knew of or read the other. They also consist in establishing precisely how and why Stirner in particular might have been a meaningful influence on a man as widely read as Nietzsche.[20]
Individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism in the United States
The two men were frequently compared by French "literary anarchists" and anarchist interpretations of Nietzschean ideas appear to have also been influential in the United States.[21] One researcher notes: "Indeed, translations of Nietzsche's writings in the United States very likely appeared first in Liberty, the anarchist journal edited by Benjamin Tucker." He adds "Tucker preferred the strategy of exploiting his writings, but proceeding with due caution: 'Nietzsche says splendid things, – often, indeed, Anarchist things, – but he is no Anarchist. It is of the Anarchists, then, to intellectually exploit this would-be exploiter. He may be utilized profitably, but not prophetably.'"[22]
Individualist anarchism in Europe
In European individualist anarchist circles his influence might have been stronger. As such French individualist anarchist and free love propagandist Émile Armand writes in mixed Stirnerian and Nietzschetian language[23] when he describes the anarchists as those who "are pioneers attached to no party, non-conformists, standing outside herd morality and conventional 'good' and 'evil', 'a-social'. A 'species' apart, one might say. They go forward, stumbling, sometimes falling, sometimes triumphant, sometimes vanquished. But they do go forward, and by living for themselves, these 'egoists', they dig the furrow, they open the broach through which will pass those who deny archism, the unique ones who will succeed them."[5]
Italian individualist anarchist and
Individualist anarchism in Latin America
Argentinian anarchist historian
Vicente Rojas Lizcano whose pseudonym was
Anarcho-syndicalists and anarcho-communists
The American anarchist publication
Rudolf Rocker was yet another anarchist admirer of Nietzsche. A proponent of anarcho-syndicalism, "Rocker invokes Nietzsche repeatedly in his tome Nationalism and Culture, citing him especially to back up his claims that nationalism and state power have a destructive influence on culture, since 'Culture is always creative', but 'power is never creative.' Rocker even ends his book with a Nietzsche quote."[2] Rocker begins Nationalism and Culture using the theory of will to power to refute Marxism, stating that "[t]he deeper we trace the political influences in history, the more are we convinced that the 'will to power' has up to now been one of the strongest motives in the development of human social forms. The idea that all political and social events are but the result of given economic conditions and can be explained by them cannot endure careful consideration."[28] Rocker's interpretation of Nietzsche is not only directed against right-wing extremist and Nazi appropriations of the German philosopher's works, but also serves as an explicit rebuttal of Oswald Spengler's deterministic view of history in his main book The Decline of the West.[29] Rocker also translated Thus Spoke Zarathustra into Yiddish.
Sunshine says that the "Spanish anarchists also mixed their class politics with Nietzschean inspiration". Murray Bookchin, in The Spanish Anarchists, describes prominent CNT–FAI member Salvador Seguí as "an admirer of Nietzschean individualism, of the superhombre to whom 'all is permitted'". Bookchin, in his 1973 introduction to Sam Dolgoff's The Anarchist Collectives, even describes the reconstruction of society by the workers as a Nietzschean project. Bookchin says that "workers must see themselves as human beings, not as class beings; as creative personalities, not as 'proletarians,' as self-affirming individuals, not as 'masses' [...] [the] economic component must be humanized precisely by bringing an 'affinity of friendship' to the work process, by diminishing the role of onerous work in the lives of producers, indeed by a total 'transvaluation of values' (to use Nietzsche's phrase) as it applies to production and consumption as well as social and personal life".[2]
"Alan Antliff documents [in I Am Not A Man, I Am Dynamite] how the Indian art critic and anti-imperialist
Anarcha-feminists
Although Nietzsche has been accused of
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman, in the introductory essay called "Anarchism: What It Really Stands For" from Another similar application of Nietzsche to feminist criticism happens in "Victims of Morality" where she states: "Morality has no terrors for her who has risen beyond good and evil. And though Morality may continue to devour its victims, it is utterly powerless in the face of the modern spirit, that shines in all its glory upon the brow of man and woman, liberated and unafraid."[32]
Later in a
In the controversial essay "Minorities Versus Majorities", clear Nietzschetian themes emerge when she manifests that "[i]f I were to give a summary of the tendency of our times, I would say, Quantity. The multitude, the mass spirit, dominates everywhere, destroying quality."[31] "Today, as then, public opinion is the omnipresent tyrant; today, as then, the majority represents a mass of cowards, willing to accept him who mirrors its own soul and mind poverty."[31] "That the mass bleeds, that it is being robbed and exploited, I know as well as our vote-baiters. But I insist that not the handful of parasites, but the mass itself is responsible for this horrible state of affairs. It clings to its masters, loves the whip, and is the first to cry Crucify!"[31]
Federica Montseny
Existentialist anarchism
In the United Kingdom Herbert Read, who was highly influenced by Max Stirner and later came close to existentialism (see existentialist anarchism), said of Nietzsche: "It was Nietzsche who first made us conscious of the significance of the individual as a term in the evolutionary process—in that part of the evolutionary process which has still to take place."[35]
Post-left anarchy and insurrectionary anarchism
A Nietzschean criticism of
Post-anarchism
Recently, the French anarchist and
According to a more recent study by Dominique Miething, who has compared anarchist readings of Nietzsche's philosophy in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States between 1890 and 1947, it is "not true that post-anarchists have introduced anything substantially new when they incorporated Nietzschean ideas into their variants of anarchism. Rather, many classical anarchists that learned from Nietzsche had already rejected typical modern ideas, for instance essentialist ontologies. It is just that post-anarchists lack the detailed knowledge of classical anarchist thought [...]".[44]
References
- ^ a b In Beyond Good and Evil (6.2:126) he refers to "anarchist dogs"
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "Spencer Sunshine: "Nietzsche and the Anarchists" (2005)". radicalarchives.org. May 18, 2010.
- ^ a b "Nietzsche's possible reading, knowledge, and plagiarism of Max Stirner's The Ego and Its Own (1845) has been a contentious question and frequently discussed for more than a century now." Thomas H. Brobjer, "Philologica: A Possible Solution to the Stirner-Nietzsche Question", in The Journal of Nietzsche Studies - Issue 25, Spring 2003, pp. 109–114
- ^ Bernd A. Laska: Nietzsche's initial crisis. New Light on the Stirner/Nietzsche Question In: Germanic Notes and Reviews, vol. 33, n. 2, fall/Herbst 2002, pp. 109–133 (German orig.)
- ^ a b The Anarchism of Émile Armand by Émile Armand
- ^ a b c Toward the Creative Nothing by Renzo Novatore
- ^ a b c d e "Camus also supported the Groupes de Liaison Internationale which sought to give aid to opponents of fascism and Stalinism, and which refused to take the side of American capitalism.""Albert Camus and the Anarchists" by ORGANISE! Archived 2008-05-16 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Nietzsche, Friedrich (2005). Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Oxford World´s Classices. p. 43.
- ^ a b Leopold, David (2006-08-04). "Max Stirner". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- ^ Moggach, Douglas. The New Hegelians. Cambridge University Press. p. 177
- ^ While discussion of possible influence has never ceased entirely, the period of most intense discussion occurred between c. 1892 and 1906 in the German-speaking world. During this time, the most comprehensive account of Nietzsche's reception in the German language, the 4 volume work of Richard Frank Krummel: Nietzsche und der deutsche Geist, indicates 83 entries discussing Stirner and Nietzsche. The only thinker more frequently discussed in connection with Nietzsche during this time is Schopenhauer, with about twice the number of entries. Discussion steadily declines thereafter, but is still significant. Nietzsche and Stirner show 58 entries between 1901 and 1918. From 1919 to 1945 there are 28 entries regarding Nietzsche and Stirner.
- ^ Nietzsche discovered Lange's book immediately after its appearance and praised it as "the most important philosophical work in decades" (letter to Hermann Mushacke, mid November 1866); as to Hartmann, who was also developing the ideas of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche singled out his book in his second Untimely Meditation for a caustic criticism, and concentrated on precisely the chapter dealing with Stirner, though he did not once mention Stirner's name; Hartmann wrote: ""Nietzsche does not mention at any place the name of Stirner or his writings. That he must have known my emphatic hint to Stirner's standpoint and its importance in the 'Philosophy of the Unconscious' arises from his polemic criticism of exactly that chapter which it contains. That he did not see himself prompted by this hint to get acquainted more closely with this thinker so congenial with himself is of little plausibility." Eduard von Hartmann, Ethische Studien, Leipzig: Haacke 1898, pp. 34–69
- ^ Albert Levy, Stirner and Nietzsche, Paris, 1904, p. 9
- ^ Eduard von Hartmann, Nietzsches "neue Moral", in Preussische Jahrbücher, 67. Jg., Heft 5, Mai 1891, S. 501–521; augmented version with more express reproach of plagiarism in: Ethische Studien, Leipzig, Haacke 1898, pp. 34–69
- JSTOR 2177913.
This author believes that one should be careful in comparing the two men. However, he notes: "It is this intensive nuance of individualism that appeared to point from Nietzsche to Max Stirner, the author of the remarkable work Der Einzige und sein Eigentum. Stirner's influence in modern Germany has assumed astonishing proportions, and moves in general parallel with that of Nietzsche. The two thinkers are regarded as exponents of essentially the same philosophy.
- S2CID 162027605.
[in the last years of the 19th century] The question of whether Nietzsche had read Stirner was the subject of great debate
- ^ Levy pointed out in 1904 that the similarities in the writing of the two men appeared superficial. Albert Levy, Stirner and Nietzsche, Paris, 1904
- S2CID 162027605.
- Lexington Books. p. 56., p197, Illinois, 2007
Stirner, like Nietzsche, who was clearly influenced by him, has been interpreted in many different ways
; Samek, R. A. (1981). The Meta Phenomenon. New York. p. 70.We do not even know for sure that Nietzsche had read Stirner. Yet, the similarities are too striking to be explained away.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link); Tom Goyens, (referring to Stirner's book The Ego and His Own) "The book influenced Friedrich Nietzsche, and even Marx and Engels devoted some attention to it." T. Goyens, Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City - ^ "We have every reason to suppose that Nietzsche had a profound knowledge of the Hegelian movement, from Hegel to Stirner himself. The philosophical learning of an author is not assessed by the number of quotations, nor by the always fanciful and conjectural check lists of libraries, but by the apologetic or polemical directions of his work itself." Gilles Deleuze (translated by Hugh Tomlinson), Nietzsche and Philosophy, 1962 (2006 reprint, pp. 153–154)
- ^ O. Ewald, "German Philosophy in 1907", in The Philosophical Review, Vol. 17, No. 4, Jul., 1908, pp. 400–426; T. A. Riley, "Anti-Statism in German Literature, as Exemplified by the Work of John Henry Mackay", in PMLA, Vol. 62, No. 3, Sep., 1947, pp. 828–843; C. E. Forth, "Nietzsche, Decadence, and Regeneration in France, 1891-95", in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 54, No. 1, Jan., 1993, pp. 97–117; see also Robert C. Holub's Nietzsche: Socialist, Anarchist, Feminist, an essay available online at the University of California, Berkeley website.
- ^ Robert C. Holub, Nietzsche: Socialist, Anarchist, Feminist Archived 2007-06-21 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "The life of Émile Armand (1872–1963) spanned the history of anarchism. He was influenced by Leo Tolstoy and Benjamin Tucker, and to a lesser extent by Whitman and Emerson. Later in life, Nietzsche and Stirner became important to his way of thinking."Introduction to The Anarchism of Émile Armand by Émile Armand
- ISBN 9789802761173– via Google Books.
- ^ PANCLASTA, Biófilo (1928): Comprimidos psicológicos de los revolucionarios criollos. Periódico Claridad, Bogotá, Nº 52, 53, 54, 55 y 56.
- ^ Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed. No. 70–71. Archived from the originalon 2012-03-06. Retrieved 2011-12-08.
- S2CID 170389740.
- ^ Rocker, Rudolf (1937). Nationalism and Culture. View online Archived 4 November 2009 at the Wayback Machine
- ISBN 978-3-8452-8012-7.
- ^ a b "Living My Life". www.revoltlib.com. January 23, 2017.
- ^ a b c d e Goldman, Emma. Anarchism and Other Essays – via Wikisource.
- ^ ""Victims of Morality" by Emma Goldman". Archived from the original on 2001-02-20. Retrieved 2009-11-04.
- ISBN 0-7425-1241-X.
- ^ "Albert Camus (1913—1960)" Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- ^ "The Philosophy of anarchism".
- ^ "Immediatism by Hakim Bey". Archived from the original on December 5, 2009.
- ^ a b "The ideology of victimization" by Feral Faun
- ^ a b c d e "Anarchism and the politics of ressentiment" by Saul Newman
- ^ Lewis Call. Postmodern Anarchism. Lexington: Lexington Books. 2002.
- ^ Lewis Call. Postmodern Anarchism. Lexington: Lexington Books. 2002. Pg. 33
- ^ "Michel Onfray : le post anarchisme expliqué à ma grand-mère – mag elle aime" [Michel Onfray: post anarchism explained to my grandmother – mag she likes] (in French). Archived from the original on November 22, 2009.
- ^ "qu'il considère comme une révolte nietzschéenne pour avoir mis fin à la Vérité "Une", révélée, en mettant en évidence la diversité de vérités, pour avoir fait disparaître les idéaux ascétiques chrétiens et fait surgir de nouvelles possibilités d'existence."Michel Onfray : le post anarchisme expliqué à ma grand-mère Archived 2009-11-22 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ De la sagesse tragique - Essai sur Nietzsche (Poche) de Michel Onfray (Auteur)
- ^ Seyferth, Peter (2021). "Review of Dominique F. Miething, Anarchistische Deutungen der Philosophie Friedrich Nietzsches (1890–1947), Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2016; 533pp; ISBN 9783848737116". Anarchist Studies. 29 (1): 118–119.
External links
- "Nietzsche and the Anarchists" by Spencer Sunshine
- I Am Not A Man, I Am Dynamite! Friedrich Nietzsche and the Anarchist Tradition. editor John Moore as editor, with Spencer Sunshine. Many articles by various authors about the relationship and new possibilities of it between anarchism and Nietzsche.
- "Anarchism and the politics of ressentiment" by Saul Newman
- "Nietzsche in the streets" by Ruud Kaulingfreks
- Nietzsche and Anarchy by Shahin