NATION AS GREAT AS REALITY AND (Robert Musil in TESTS), December 1921.
I
When I venture to address the issue of national sentiment as an issue, then it seems to appear since 1914, as a response, or statements denials also passionate and casual, and myself at risk in an extremely critical phase in our history when it seems appropriate to remove all doubts about the concept of nation, I must admit that to do so, I do not even have the excuse of new answer that the prophet would push me to proclaim. In fact, I only have partial answers, or partially satisfactory. But it was in that very lack, persisting despite efforts multiplied in order to obviate that I recognize the need to address this issue not with ready-made beliefs, but from the evident puzzlement of ours at all despite any phraseology, to it.
II
Those who deny outright the existence of the nation will make the task too easy. This spirit which in the name of the spirit, and proclaimed himself extraterritorial supranational practice, facing the scorn and tyranny facing us all, the policy of the ostrich buries it head in the sand, which n not prevent the grout which we all aim to reach that its feathers are attached. But separatism
individualistic mind fails something else: the famous experiment of the summer 14 which should be the starting point of a great era - and this point is not of pure irony. On the contrary: what was initially stammered, then degenerated into empty words, that the war was a strange experience, not unlike the religious experience, undoubtedly refers to a fact; degeneration proves nothing against the original character. If this is turned into empty words, it's normal process, that is to say, precisely because it was classified as religious experience, decked out in a mask and archaic Instead of analyzing what woke there with a singular violence a world of images and feelings long dormant, there is no denying however, that humanity at this time - and naturally, all people the same way - has been shaken by something irrational, foolish, but huge, something foreign to familiar world, something that the very fact that its wave nature can be neither enter nor fix was played even before the disillusionment of the war per se, like a hallucination or a ghost.
But this experience has also included the uplifting feeling to have for the first time something in common with all Germans. It suddenly became a single particle embedded in a humble event supra staff wrapped by the nation, we could almost feel it was like if primitive mythical character who slept for centuries to protect a word awoke suddenly, as real as factories and offices morning. We need to forget that, once the composure recovered, having a short memory, or consciousness broad. Even those few individuals who wanted to escape that tremendous pressure could not do so by passive resistance, but only by cons-mines. Whoever was against the war from the outset had to be with fanaticism: he spat in the face of the nation, whom he stabbed in the back, not showing well ... a fascination with the opposite sign.
Do we want to now bring to nothing the fact that millions of men who had previously lived only for their interests and in a poorly disguised anguish of death, were suddenly offered cheerfully to die for the nation? We should have a good ear unprepared to listen to life for the pacifist voice of conscience alone could cover the voice of the event. And even if millions of men would have sacrificed their lives, the purpose of their lives, their families, all their capital to an illusion of heroism: could we simply, then, as we wake after a drinking bout, go home, claiming that not everything was qu'ivresse, psychosis, mass hallucination, mirage capitalist, nationalist, or whatever? We certainly can not do without backing up the same time an experience that is far from being liquidated, and sow and in the soul of the nation the seeds of a monstrous hysteria!
individualistic mind fails something else: the famous experiment of the summer 14 which should be the starting point of a great era - and this point is not of pure irony. On the contrary: what was initially stammered, then degenerated into empty words, that the war was a strange experience, not unlike the religious experience, undoubtedly refers to a fact; degeneration proves nothing against the original character. If this is turned into empty words, it's normal process, that is to say, precisely because it was classified as religious experience, decked out in a mask and archaic Instead of analyzing what woke there with a singular violence a world of images and feelings long dormant, there is no denying however, that humanity at this time - and naturally, all people the same way - has been shaken by something irrational, foolish, but huge, something foreign to familiar world, something that the very fact that its wave nature can be neither enter nor fix was played even before the disillusionment of the war per se, like a hallucination or a ghost.
But this experience has also included the uplifting feeling to have for the first time something in common with all Germans. It suddenly became a single particle embedded in a humble event supra staff wrapped by the nation, we could almost feel it was like if primitive mythical character who slept for centuries to protect a word awoke suddenly, as real as factories and offices morning. We need to forget that, once the composure recovered, having a short memory, or consciousness broad. Even those few individuals who wanted to escape that tremendous pressure could not do so by passive resistance, but only by cons-mines. Whoever was against the war from the outset had to be with fanaticism: he spat in the face of the nation, whom he stabbed in the back, not showing well ... a fascination with the opposite sign.
Do we want to now bring to nothing the fact that millions of men who had previously lived only for their interests and in a poorly disguised anguish of death, were suddenly offered cheerfully to die for the nation? We should have a good ear unprepared to listen to life for the pacifist voice of conscience alone could cover the voice of the event. And even if millions of men would have sacrificed their lives, the purpose of their lives, their families, all their capital to an illusion of heroism: could we simply, then, as we wake after a drinking bout, go home, claiming that not everything was qu'ivresse, psychosis, mass hallucination, mirage capitalist, nationalist, or whatever? We certainly can not do without backing up the same time an experience that is far from being liquidated, and sow and in the soul of the nation the seeds of a monstrous hysteria!
III
But those who deny the idea of supranationalism is too easy things too. Is it necessary to say?
If not needed, why do we so rarely hear an accuser stand against the deception which we have been victims at the end of the war, thanks to Wilson and his Trojan horse, the Fourteen Points? Doubtless we were desperate, but at the moment we lay these weapons became an object of disgust, Was it the strength or the Blarney who had knocked out of our hands? Do not ruled it as a universal atmosphere of Easter: Premature like a warm February day, the belief that a new era dawned for mankind? But the wait also measured denied she wiped staggering, was qu'ivresse, psychosis, mass hallucination and mirage.
So we had two great illusions opposite, then their shipwreck to both, and more painfully than other nations, is it any wonder that we have been intellectually broken? The fierce hatred that erupted in the German nation between supporters and opponents of the revival of energy, calls conflicting national uprising style uprising in 1813 and international Muscovite, the contrast between the pacifist incensing Agreement and assassinations against our own politicians, between the tears shed over the loss of our independence and suspicious traffic with foreign countries, the proliferation of hucksters, dance halls and all kinds of success if not illegal, at least indecent, Finally, the immense mental fatigue and spalling of the nation particulate exhausted, gloomy, suddenly strangers to each other: while this is not only the severity of damage, but manifest a profound disturbance of the mind.
If not needed, why do we so rarely hear an accuser stand against the deception which we have been victims at the end of the war, thanks to Wilson and his Trojan horse, the Fourteen Points? Doubtless we were desperate, but at the moment we lay these weapons became an object of disgust, Was it the strength or the Blarney who had knocked out of our hands? Do not ruled it as a universal atmosphere of Easter: Premature like a warm February day, the belief that a new era dawned for mankind? But the wait also measured denied she wiped staggering, was qu'ivresse, psychosis, mass hallucination and mirage.
So we had two great illusions opposite, then their shipwreck to both, and more painfully than other nations, is it any wonder that we have been intellectually broken? The fierce hatred that erupted in the German nation between supporters and opponents of the revival of energy, calls conflicting national uprising style uprising in 1813 and international Muscovite, the contrast between the pacifist incensing Agreement and assassinations against our own politicians, between the tears shed over the loss of our independence and suspicious traffic with foreign countries, the proliferation of hucksters, dance halls and all kinds of success if not illegal, at least indecent, Finally, the immense mental fatigue and spalling of the nation particulate exhausted, gloomy, suddenly strangers to each other: while this is not only the severity of damage, but manifest a profound disturbance of the mind.
IV
To regain its footing, it is indeed a lucid mind and firm, it is true that these illusions and their collapse have weakened, and that we suffered essentially a kind of vacuum mental, we have nothing more pressing to do than to define our attitude toward them.
As she is vain, childish loophole alas! too often heard in Germany: "It's not that we did it! These are the emperors, generals, diplomats! "No doubt it's us who did it: we let it happen, it happened without us trying to prevent it. This is true also of the adversary. No less vain and that other common cause, that we would only have failed to resolve and we would be left dizzy. It really forget the goal towards which the new will was so tense. But, we reread the French press in the history of the Versailles negotiations, we see elaborated slyly, no, almost mechanically, irretrievably, necessarily, that tended to cast doubt, as is also with us, this will, to make it suspect in light of past experience, to finally create an atmosphere where the young germ could inevitably atrophy. Versailles has been to European political thought a burning glass. Yet before 1914, during the summer 14, at Brest-Litovsk, at the time of the Fourteen Points and Versailles, the individual had remained the same in France as in Germany. Simply, he has suffered the most appalling contradictions without realizing, or nearly so, transitions; simply, it has proved capable of anything, and he let it go, with the illusion to obey his own will, he followed, without a will, the movement. Yes, it's us who've done is they who have done or rather, this person is, if that.
Let us examine what "it".
say that the will of the community is not equivalent to the sum of individual wills is not a new idea is already playing an important role in Lagarde, if not earlier, and since then she has been the subject of much debate and further analysis. Even a direct vote not only expresses the voice of the consultees, but also that of the device with which they are submitted, the voice of the people he is not short, it is conditioned by the various units of the bureaucracy, legislation, journals, and other economic institutions, not to mention Achievements seemingly most individual and yet partially dependent on literature. A nation is the sum of its individuals increased their organization, and as that organization leads in many respects, independent living, the result - if one takes into account the element still extremely variable climate of the opinion at a given time - the "it" in question. In the pages that follow, we assume his training sufficiently known, but poorly understood. It is strange that so few people can exploit these truths yet established, and if I tried to list them here would be very long and mediocre profit.
What to Look For in contrast with the most careful precautions, the threshold for any reform is ideological in the garment which said "that" arises.
As she is vain, childish loophole alas! too often heard in Germany: "It's not that we did it! These are the emperors, generals, diplomats! "No doubt it's us who did it: we let it happen, it happened without us trying to prevent it. This is true also of the adversary. No less vain and that other common cause, that we would only have failed to resolve and we would be left dizzy. It really forget the goal towards which the new will was so tense. But, we reread the French press in the history of the Versailles negotiations, we see elaborated slyly, no, almost mechanically, irretrievably, necessarily, that tended to cast doubt, as is also with us, this will, to make it suspect in light of past experience, to finally create an atmosphere where the young germ could inevitably atrophy. Versailles has been to European political thought a burning glass. Yet before 1914, during the summer 14, at Brest-Litovsk, at the time of the Fourteen Points and Versailles, the individual had remained the same in France as in Germany. Simply, he has suffered the most appalling contradictions without realizing, or nearly so, transitions; simply, it has proved capable of anything, and he let it go, with the illusion to obey his own will, he followed, without a will, the movement. Yes, it's us who've done is they who have done or rather, this person is, if that.
Let us examine what "it".
say that the will of the community is not equivalent to the sum of individual wills is not a new idea is already playing an important role in Lagarde, if not earlier, and since then she has been the subject of much debate and further analysis. Even a direct vote not only expresses the voice of the consultees, but also that of the device with which they are submitted, the voice of the people he is not short, it is conditioned by the various units of the bureaucracy, legislation, journals, and other economic institutions, not to mention Achievements seemingly most individual and yet partially dependent on literature. A nation is the sum of its individuals increased their organization, and as that organization leads in many respects, independent living, the result - if one takes into account the element still extremely variable climate of the opinion at a given time - the "it" in question. In the pages that follow, we assume his training sufficiently known, but poorly understood. It is strange that so few people can exploit these truths yet established, and if I tried to list them here would be very long and mediocre profit.
What to Look For in contrast with the most careful precautions, the threshold for any reform is ideological in the garment which said "that" arises.
V
Without doubt would there be few people questioned point blank to confuse nation and race (everyone knows, after all, that nations are mixtures of races) n prevents that in life, but oddly spontaneously, it supports the concept of a nation constantly on the race, and that the way it was as unequivocal as that of the cube: this phenomenon it is necessary to review. Far be it from me to dwell on the racial problem, but to identify the ethical significance of the idea of race, we must first examine the theoretical specificity.
If, from one point, the tables were to multiply by generation and not on command, we would soon rise to currently existing tables - with the same evidence that makes us recognize in the Frisian a Frisian - the races of Rectangular-to-four-foot, oval-to-one-foot, and so on. He would do anything unusual past, except that each pair of tables would cause a third as they resemble some characters metering law, and possesses the property of reproducing the same way. The fact that some of the characters for generations, can be transmitted only in the seeds without manifesting itself also does not change to that everything happens exclusively between individuals and on individuals. In any case, race has nothing to do, it ends up being out there, because they can be anywhere elsewhere: just as the rain drops when there is falling from the sky. The race has the ability to access real being as individuals, and no other results than theirs, yet what type of existence, if not a life thought, a collective concept? Races exist, certainly, but it is individuals who make them.
If that is the state of things, nothing can justify his overthrow, this quasi-theological distortion that this would make the individual races. Yet, as we know, the usual formula.
If we adopt, there is not more man than what remains a low once all its mesh Slipper. Without doubt this is usually for ease of comprehension that a man is defined by its group membership - if it can be the X family, why not the Germanic race?; Today already, we seems almost natural to hear Bismarck said that "logging is not a specialty Germanic, Slavic, but" pretend Jew or a critic, about the book Wassermann, Mein Weg als Deutscher und Jude, that " it is impossible for a Jew to become an authentic German artist "it is not less, precisely in cases of no consequence, a dangerous concession to vicious habits of thought. We know the literature that created and they have engendered. It is not about the cephalic index, eye color and proportions of the skeleton, details that do not interest many people, but properties such as the religious sense, fairness, energy policy, the scientific spirit, intuition, artistic talent and tolerance, all things that we would just say what they are, and it grants or denies, in his bad Latin anthropologist, in the alleged race, believing power instill dignity to the nation by the ear before taking her strange ventriloquist's voice millennia.
There is no denying that this disease is not thought much of our national idealism.
It is not difficult to see where it goes. Reject any responsibility for the good or bad either on the individual, but on race, is to hide behind another perpetually; it follows not only a numbing of truth and intellectual subtlety, but degeneration germ cells of morality. Where virtue is nationalized by predestination, the vineyards of the Lord are expropriated, and nobody feels the need to work there. We do believe that the individual it has everything you need, if he is faithful to the virtues of his race, and our Blessed Germany can not, morally speaking, a country of plenty, where the virtues we all fall roasted in the mouth
It seems harder to understand the origin of this attitude. We are talking anti-Semitism, but this is hardly just another word for the same phenomenon: the essential is that there is hidden behind a genuine idealism, a typical case of this regressive need to bring every thought to other earlier, eternal, sublime considered, instead of thinking all the way: in a word, the very thing that happens here for idealism. This mentality produces man to strict formulas, with simple rules and dispense with the sublime adventure of the mind: the Pharisee. A strange and extremely dangerous habit has implanted in us: that the spirit of contempt on behalf of the German spirit. Many of our compatriots, and it is tempting to say the best-intentioned, have become indifferent to the content of a work to do try more than its origin and more or less compliance with their system of prejudices and the extent is it measured the narrowness, the diversity of the mind to one of its products; attention shifted values circumstances accessories, from reality to the hypothesis, and a sectarian claim to know everything has gripped people rather made to be followers. With it you can not relate to an entity as primitive as race anything but primitive virtues, even the spirits who may rely on the same blood as their judges eventually be denied the benefit of the nation if do not write like Walter Bloem or does not think like Mr. Hilthy, that is to say they are not loyal, valiant and chaste, and not only the other five virtues attributed to the Sioux the German race. In this context idealistic, idea race has become for the German nation, for so many years she abused. a cancer.
If, from one point, the tables were to multiply by generation and not on command, we would soon rise to currently existing tables - with the same evidence that makes us recognize in the Frisian a Frisian - the races of Rectangular-to-four-foot, oval-to-one-foot, and so on. He would do anything unusual past, except that each pair of tables would cause a third as they resemble some characters metering law, and possesses the property of reproducing the same way. The fact that some of the characters for generations, can be transmitted only in the seeds without manifesting itself also does not change to that everything happens exclusively between individuals and on individuals. In any case, race has nothing to do, it ends up being out there, because they can be anywhere elsewhere: just as the rain drops when there is falling from the sky. The race has the ability to access real being as individuals, and no other results than theirs, yet what type of existence, if not a life thought, a collective concept? Races exist, certainly, but it is individuals who make them.
If that is the state of things, nothing can justify his overthrow, this quasi-theological distortion that this would make the individual races. Yet, as we know, the usual formula.
If we adopt, there is not more man than what remains a low once all its mesh Slipper. Without doubt this is usually for ease of comprehension that a man is defined by its group membership - if it can be the X family, why not the Germanic race?; Today already, we seems almost natural to hear Bismarck said that "logging is not a specialty Germanic, Slavic, but" pretend Jew or a critic, about the book Wassermann, Mein Weg als Deutscher und Jude, that " it is impossible for a Jew to become an authentic German artist "it is not less, precisely in cases of no consequence, a dangerous concession to vicious habits of thought. We know the literature that created and they have engendered. It is not about the cephalic index, eye color and proportions of the skeleton, details that do not interest many people, but properties such as the religious sense, fairness, energy policy, the scientific spirit, intuition, artistic talent and tolerance, all things that we would just say what they are, and it grants or denies, in his bad Latin anthropologist, in the alleged race, believing power instill dignity to the nation by the ear before taking her strange ventriloquist's voice millennia.
There is no denying that this disease is not thought much of our national idealism.
It is not difficult to see where it goes. Reject any responsibility for the good or bad either on the individual, but on race, is to hide behind another perpetually; it follows not only a numbing of truth and intellectual subtlety, but degeneration germ cells of morality. Where virtue is nationalized by predestination, the vineyards of the Lord are expropriated, and nobody feels the need to work there. We do believe that the individual it has everything you need, if he is faithful to the virtues of his race, and our Blessed Germany can not, morally speaking, a country of plenty, where the virtues we all fall roasted in the mouth
It seems harder to understand the origin of this attitude. We are talking anti-Semitism, but this is hardly just another word for the same phenomenon: the essential is that there is hidden behind a genuine idealism, a typical case of this regressive need to bring every thought to other earlier, eternal, sublime considered, instead of thinking all the way: in a word, the very thing that happens here for idealism. This mentality produces man to strict formulas, with simple rules and dispense with the sublime adventure of the mind: the Pharisee. A strange and extremely dangerous habit has implanted in us: that the spirit of contempt on behalf of the German spirit. Many of our compatriots, and it is tempting to say the best-intentioned, have become indifferent to the content of a work to do try more than its origin and more or less compliance with their system of prejudices and the extent is it measured the narrowness, the diversity of the mind to one of its products; attention shifted values circumstances accessories, from reality to the hypothesis, and a sectarian claim to know everything has gripped people rather made to be followers. With it you can not relate to an entity as primitive as race anything but primitive virtues, even the spirits who may rely on the same blood as their judges eventually be denied the benefit of the nation if do not write like Walter Bloem or does not think like Mr. Hilthy, that is to say they are not loyal, valiant and chaste, and not only the other five virtues attributed to the Sioux the German race. In this context idealistic, idea race has become for the German nation, for so many years she abused. a cancer.
VI
But of all the envelopes in which to clothe ideological nation, the body is even more the state. One is even tempted to say that he is her real body, it was, alas! more: his soul, or nearly so! See the former German Empire, see both the new Russia. The state is a protective capsule which proliferates even in the most remote folds of the body.
It is curious to see how regularly alternated quasi-swinging, in the history of thought from the Greeks to the present day, overcharging and also excessive depreciation of the state. The latter is sometimes regarded as the supreme Institute of humanity, the quintessence of all the property, sometimes as a Leviathan that devours any higher reality, something probably necessary, but can be bad. It is clear that such flagrant contradictions may be only theoretical: if a compromise had found himself at length, as in all intellectual problems. They also appear independent of the main types of philosophies: Greece, Catholic Middle Ages and the Age of Enlightenment is due to an equal place at one and the other attitude. If this conflict can be resolved is likely to be related to a sense of context, but as it is no less alien to the strongest fluctuations in our sense of the world, he should return to a more profound difference : one is tempted to seek it in opposition to the individual and the social back, beyond the primitive human societies, until the animal society, and that each carries in himself. Each individual is torn between love and hatred of society, even if the circumstances Life often obliterate one of those two feelings, or to weaken both indifference.
Yet this contradictory attitude of man towards the State is also expressed in the formidable problem of arithmetic: if we deny the excesses of racism, people are all alone in the different states, roughly similar, the states themselves, as apparatus, are all alike. However, adding "people + State" produced the fatal objections that are released in the wars and are expressed in time of peace, by the strange ritual of embassies - notes, hearings, approaches - so similar to that rule, in the street, meeting canines. Do we want to resolve the contradiction that the same men, organized in the same manner, continue to compete, it is in the form of their organization that we must seek its origin. If one accepts this view, the most superficial examination will suffice to note that the State is a kind of shriveled skin, closed surface inward which rejects most of the forces acting on it, and did let out a much smaller proportion: an insulator. The flow of ideas, transportation, intellectual organization, the religious community, even socialism, all these "force fields" are much more diffuse outside and inside. Is that the state is almost alone in developing
'bodies' assets: the nation does not almost, it was those are precisely the state. Therefore, in most cases, it thinks, feels, decides and acts for individuals with a general proxy subtracted out of control, since control, if one takes the concept of State in a broad sense, it's still him. This unit of the alleged common intention is not composed only of government and executive bodies, but still parties and various representations of interest. There is a law of general education, histological somehow, that the elements of the organization are themselves as organizations: apparently more sensitive than is the further democratization. Democracy is not the sovereignty of the demos, but that of its partial organizations.
However, when a group acts in the place of individuals, it is still a form of sacrifice or event, and unless a large momentum, commitment to a particular company, a high fever does sweep, or do not allow access to consciousness. In groups as large as little as homogeneous and sclerotic States, this can not happen in exceptional moments of elation, usually when the state comes in contact with the individual, Rather, "weighed" on him. Thus one can not be anti-statist, fully recognize the importance of the state and do not see unless, under these conditions, only unrealistic ideology can see in him the representative of the highest goods, because that are common to all, give him the coup a kind of super-or will see it in any form whatsoever, school enhancement humanity. This idea is a legacy of the authoritarian state that had found refuge in slogans educators of the young German Reich, it unfortunately seems poised to reappear in the ethos of socialism seems to have reduced to a selfless brotherhood. This is another example of this
"idealism" token "that allows the man incapable of giving dignity to his personal life to dismiss the charge on his background: race, the emperor, as particular association, the sublimity of the moral law or any other pretext.
It is curious to see how regularly alternated quasi-swinging, in the history of thought from the Greeks to the present day, overcharging and also excessive depreciation of the state. The latter is sometimes regarded as the supreme Institute of humanity, the quintessence of all the property, sometimes as a Leviathan that devours any higher reality, something probably necessary, but can be bad. It is clear that such flagrant contradictions may be only theoretical: if a compromise had found himself at length, as in all intellectual problems. They also appear independent of the main types of philosophies: Greece, Catholic Middle Ages and the Age of Enlightenment is due to an equal place at one and the other attitude. If this conflict can be resolved is likely to be related to a sense of context, but as it is no less alien to the strongest fluctuations in our sense of the world, he should return to a more profound difference : one is tempted to seek it in opposition to the individual and the social back, beyond the primitive human societies, until the animal society, and that each carries in himself. Each individual is torn between love and hatred of society, even if the circumstances Life often obliterate one of those two feelings, or to weaken both indifference.
Yet this contradictory attitude of man towards the State is also expressed in the formidable problem of arithmetic: if we deny the excesses of racism, people are all alone in the different states, roughly similar, the states themselves, as apparatus, are all alike. However, adding "people + State" produced the fatal objections that are released in the wars and are expressed in time of peace, by the strange ritual of embassies - notes, hearings, approaches - so similar to that rule, in the street, meeting canines. Do we want to resolve the contradiction that the same men, organized in the same manner, continue to compete, it is in the form of their organization that we must seek its origin. If one accepts this view, the most superficial examination will suffice to note that the State is a kind of shriveled skin, closed surface inward which rejects most of the forces acting on it, and did let out a much smaller proportion: an insulator. The flow of ideas, transportation, intellectual organization, the religious community, even socialism, all these "force fields" are much more diffuse outside and inside. Is that the state is almost alone in developing
'bodies' assets: the nation does not almost, it was those are precisely the state. Therefore, in most cases, it thinks, feels, decides and acts for individuals with a general proxy subtracted out of control, since control, if one takes the concept of State in a broad sense, it's still him. This unit of the alleged common intention is not composed only of government and executive bodies, but still parties and various representations of interest. There is a law of general education, histological somehow, that the elements of the organization are themselves as organizations: apparently more sensitive than is the further democratization. Democracy is not the sovereignty of the demos, but that of its partial organizations.
However, when a group acts in the place of individuals, it is still a form of sacrifice or event, and unless a large momentum, commitment to a particular company, a high fever does sweep, or do not allow access to consciousness. In groups as large as little as homogeneous and sclerotic States, this can not happen in exceptional moments of elation, usually when the state comes in contact with the individual, Rather, "weighed" on him. Thus one can not be anti-statist, fully recognize the importance of the state and do not see unless, under these conditions, only unrealistic ideology can see in him the representative of the highest goods, because that are common to all, give him the coup a kind of super-or will see it in any form whatsoever, school enhancement humanity. This idea is a legacy of the authoritarian state that had found refuge in slogans educators of the young German Reich, it unfortunately seems poised to reappear in the ethos of socialism seems to have reduced to a selfless brotherhood. This is another example of this
"idealism" token "that allows the man incapable of giving dignity to his personal life to dismiss the charge on his background: race, the emperor, as particular association, the sublimity of the moral law or any other pretext.
VII
The general attitude adopted by the individual against an organization as large as the state is the "laissez faire" as these words are they now one of the key formulas of our time. Interpersonal relations now form a fabric so vast and so tight that no light, no will can embrace more than plot, and that each of us, out of his field ever smaller business, is bound to adopt 'leave it as a minor child to others: never again subordinates intellect was not so limited today, where he created everything. He likes it or not, the individual is forced to let go, and does nothing. English and Americans have not done, but left starving children in Central Europe; ourselves, although the perpetrators of war crimes, have not done, but only left to do our part. We want to change this, we must first measure clearly necessary. Let those who think - they are numerous enough, apparently, and just the most zealous - that we could succeed in replacing the Cold organization heat of the heart open any newspaper in the morning and do it on behalf of suffering and misery it would be possible to avoid daily: do not leave if they wanted to, if they only had the ability to represent concretely, let alone to make it only the confused idea that the word "compassion" requires each ... they would go mad! The active during this laissez-faire is the summary treatment, general, administrative and human problems: the symbol of the indirect relationship between man and the state is the case. That's life reduced to essentially odorless, tasteless and weightless, which button is pressed: this gesture causes he died a man, we did not, since the whole field consciousness was filled with the delicate manipulation of the button. The record is the verdict of the Court, the gas attack fighter, good conscience our tormentors, is sharing the most fatal of man into two: the private person and public servant. But the indirect nature of this relationship is, in current circumstances, a seemingly essential hygiene. The simple man
corrects the imbalance that results in turning the steering wheel and regulations as he can. In fact, it remains outside the system that influences almost deemed illegal or illicit: the free exchange of goods, opinions and life. Despite all obstacles, he keeps the thoughts that arise eventually slightly deflect the course of evolution, the heretical act on the Church nationalized, and state control over the mind of the individual writers, but the main counterweight to the organization, it is still the passions - including, regulatory and sovereign, the passion for money. Instead of simply condemning them, we should understand that they are necessary to fix Luciferian god that is very imperfect state. Augustine distinguished between the state and the civitas Dei, the sphere of the kingdom of God where the individual is exempt from the affected community. Today, the city of God rushed to the cinema, dedicated his life to shimmy and by dint of traffic on the currency, pushing unscrupulous state at the edge of the abyss. That, of course, the degeneracy, but it is more important to recognize that it is also, secondly, the simple reversal of the state, its inevitable complement, the ghost of the human victim in walled foundations of the cathedral.
We could not find the nation in the race, either in the state, it nevertheless sought there. German thought sometimes relied on racial fantasies, sometimes on a philosophy of sacrifice that amount of all sums what was supposed to be the state, in expiation of some kind of original sin the individual who could not be achieved by the annihilation in the Whole. Besides these two formulas, there existed a third, the city of God, which is a third hypothesis already mentioned in passing, the nation as spirit. Our Ciceros say: "The property supra-personal ideals, the spirit of community, institutions from the common will, common cultural tradition - all of which state is named a party - have built the nation . "Without wishing to contest a claim where among many true, one can oppose him for a still more accurate. Is there a common spirit universities and prisons? Both institutions are home nonetheless representatives of the two activities most developed nowadays. Is there a common spirit to Mr. Anton Wildgans and Nietzsche? There surely, but so difficult to define it is better to avoid. Design rather gathered there several million individuals who, within a space of time singularly gaping head were stuffed in a world they understand to an extent and in a very different, they expect different things, not least, a world which they see and hear a great uproar absurd in which a sound, far away, makes them prick up their ears. This enormous mass, heterogeneous, which can not print anything deeply into the mind, nor fully express the composition of which varies each day depending on the stimuli it undergoes, this mass wavering between solid and liquid, this non-mass, not devoid of feelings, thoughts and resolutions set out, well, if not the nation, at least the substance that feeds it.
This substance can not see any ideological clothing that "we" inauthentic, "us" unrelated to reality. "We Germans "Fiction of a community between teachers and laborers, hucksters and idealists, writers and filmmakers, that does not exist. The real "us" is expressed by the formula: we did nothing of each other. We're capitalists, proletarians, intellectuals, Catholics ... much more connected, in fact, our interests - beyond all boundaries - that together. For what he really cares, the German peasant is closer to the French peasant as the German city. We - every nation in itself - we misunderstand each other, we fight or we flouons whenever possible. Probably be able to lay our hat under one when it comes to the press on the head of another nation, then, yes, we know the bliss of mystical experience community, but it is permissible assume that if this experience is mystical, because it becomes so rare for us to reality. This truth, once again, applies to the other, but in our crises, we, us Germans, the invaluable advantage to discern more clearly than they the combination authentic and upon this truth that we should base our patriotism, and not on the illusion that we are the people of Goethe and Schiller, or that of Voltaire and Napoleon.
always kept at all times, an insufficient sense of coincidence between public life and private life, but are there any events of public history that can never be a true expression of it? Myself as an individual, suisje what I'm doing, or what I do is there a compromise to achieve, between forces inarticulate in my heart and pre-existing forms and capable of transformation? In the relationship with the Almighty, that little nuance is important hundredfold. An association of interest can not be artificially maintained at less than a stubborn inertia, if there a common interest in using violence against others, though not necessarily that of the war. But when we say that when a war breaks out, the phenomena of collective suggestion are at stake, this must be understood solely as the rupture of an order that was not enough concern about his involuntary tension. This explosive momentum in which the man was released and, leaping into the air, found his fellow, was the denial of bourgeois life, the choice of the disorder instead of the old order, the jump into the unknown - whatever the names that are more moral baptized. War is the flight from peace.
corrects the imbalance that results in turning the steering wheel and regulations as he can. In fact, it remains outside the system that influences almost deemed illegal or illicit: the free exchange of goods, opinions and life. Despite all obstacles, he keeps the thoughts that arise eventually slightly deflect the course of evolution, the heretical act on the Church nationalized, and state control over the mind of the individual writers, but the main counterweight to the organization, it is still the passions - including, regulatory and sovereign, the passion for money. Instead of simply condemning them, we should understand that they are necessary to fix Luciferian god that is very imperfect state. Augustine distinguished between the state and the civitas Dei, the sphere of the kingdom of God where the individual is exempt from the affected community. Today, the city of God rushed to the cinema, dedicated his life to shimmy and by dint of traffic on the currency, pushing unscrupulous state at the edge of the abyss. That, of course, the degeneracy, but it is more important to recognize that it is also, secondly, the simple reversal of the state, its inevitable complement, the ghost of the human victim in walled foundations of the cathedral.
We could not find the nation in the race, either in the state, it nevertheless sought there. German thought sometimes relied on racial fantasies, sometimes on a philosophy of sacrifice that amount of all sums what was supposed to be the state, in expiation of some kind of original sin the individual who could not be achieved by the annihilation in the Whole. Besides these two formulas, there existed a third, the city of God, which is a third hypothesis already mentioned in passing, the nation as spirit. Our Ciceros say: "The property supra-personal ideals, the spirit of community, institutions from the common will, common cultural tradition - all of which state is named a party - have built the nation . "Without wishing to contest a claim where among many true, one can oppose him for a still more accurate. Is there a common spirit universities and prisons? Both institutions are home nonetheless representatives of the two activities most developed nowadays. Is there a common spirit to Mr. Anton Wildgans and Nietzsche? There surely, but so difficult to define it is better to avoid. Design rather gathered there several million individuals who, within a space of time singularly gaping head were stuffed in a world they understand to an extent and in a very different, they expect different things, not least, a world which they see and hear a great uproar absurd in which a sound, far away, makes them prick up their ears. This enormous mass, heterogeneous, which can not print anything deeply into the mind, nor fully express the composition of which varies each day depending on the stimuli it undergoes, this mass wavering between solid and liquid, this non-mass, not devoid of feelings, thoughts and resolutions set out, well, if not the nation, at least the substance that feeds it.
This substance can not see any ideological clothing that "we" inauthentic, "us" unrelated to reality. "We Germans "Fiction of a community between teachers and laborers, hucksters and idealists, writers and filmmakers, that does not exist. The real "us" is expressed by the formula: we did nothing of each other. We're capitalists, proletarians, intellectuals, Catholics ... much more connected, in fact, our interests - beyond all boundaries - that together. For what he really cares, the German peasant is closer to the French peasant as the German city. We - every nation in itself - we misunderstand each other, we fight or we flouons whenever possible. Probably be able to lay our hat under one when it comes to the press on the head of another nation, then, yes, we know the bliss of mystical experience community, but it is permissible assume that if this experience is mystical, because it becomes so rare for us to reality. This truth, once again, applies to the other, but in our crises, we, us Germans, the invaluable advantage to discern more clearly than they the combination authentic and upon this truth that we should base our patriotism, and not on the illusion that we are the people of Goethe and Schiller, or that of Voltaire and Napoleon.
always kept at all times, an insufficient sense of coincidence between public life and private life, but are there any events of public history that can never be a true expression of it? Myself as an individual, suisje what I'm doing, or what I do is there a compromise to achieve, between forces inarticulate in my heart and pre-existing forms and capable of transformation? In the relationship with the Almighty, that little nuance is important hundredfold. An association of interest can not be artificially maintained at less than a stubborn inertia, if there a common interest in using violence against others, though not necessarily that of the war. But when we say that when a war breaks out, the phenomena of collective suggestion are at stake, this must be understood solely as the rupture of an order that was not enough concern about his involuntary tension. This explosive momentum in which the man was released and, leaping into the air, found his fellow, was the denial of bourgeois life, the choice of the disorder instead of the old order, the jump into the unknown - whatever the names that are more moral baptized. War is the flight from peace.
VIII
Strictly speaking, in all versions that has data, the nation is a fiction.
It is not pleasant to admit at a time when other nations swell of illusions and we have imposed to us citizens of German, the solidarity of the deprivation of rights, status of exploited and enslaved. Therefore be objected that it would be better, in the present circumstances, even if patriotism, nation and other similar entities are illusions, do not tell. Regardless of whether the nation exists or not, assuming it exists has its value, perhaps he should mention his presence even more suggestively than unity in practice is doubtful! This is the opinion in particular, those who see the nation an ideal attainable only in the long term and to try again from time to time for the people that it is purified from his sight. But such an ideal that never really blossomed purifying influences the holidays, so to speak, or on occasions such as mobilizations general is reminiscent of a house where the tenant does not sleep that week four Thursday, preferring to sleep, the rest of the time in the swampy meadows in side, an ideal that does so can not be particularly appropriate or beneficial.
Yes, we can say all the cases we have reviewed so far have been as special cases of misuse of the ideal. Just as we did not design the assumption of race as progressive as a goal, but as regressive as a fetish mystic, was sublimated state by subtracting the desire disrespectful consider the conversion, much like any apartment, and the concept of nation was not recognized, institutes, as a matter inform, but proclaimed, constitutively, as a given that the term would only imperfectly. This way to use all our ideals is probably a legacy of days when it was still difficult to enforce the simplest rules other than declaring them taboo. Our ethos is still present the kind of prehistoric taboo. We attribute our ideals of tenure and the indestructibility of the Platonic-Pythagorean ideas, and when reality does not comply, we do not hesitate to define as the very criterion of ideality this "impurity" of their achievement. We try to approximate the curve to be difficult to calculate the rigid polygon delineated by the fixed points of our moral breaking new angles constantly straight line with our principles, never reach so far to coincide with this curve. It may be that the inner life has the same need for solid points of support that thought, but they, in their ideal form, led us to a level that can hardly be overcome. It is indeed necessary - everyone knows - require each ideal, closer to the real, so many restrictions and amendments that eventually did nothing to stay. When a white background is entirely covered with dark spots, the time is not far when thinking work with a dark-stained white in ethics, we're not there yet, far from it. This way of "conspiring" with the reality is unfortunately just the opposite of what we see as idealistic ideality. Call idealism is to form the reality of ideas - and idealism in the second degree only, the fact to submit to these ideas imposed until either reaches the next level of achievement, therefore, if life does not submit to a system of ideals, I can not recognize in them a lot of idealism. It should understand once and that if life does not comply, it is not simple insubordination schoolboy, is that the ideals themselves are at fault. A moral
anxious today to move beyond mending, I mean a morality simply "civilizing" with the sacrifice of what this beautiful atavism Kultur - whose release can be deduced, incidentally, the above-, must build on this formlessness that European civilization and the extraordinary development of its trade we have imposed. I think the experiences since 1914 have taught most of us that from an ethical standpoint, man is almost a reality without form, strangely malleable, capable of anything, in which good and evil can lean to one side and the other as far as the needle of a highly sensitive balance. That will probably get worse, and the men escape increasingly across ethical, indeed almost powerless, that we erect around them. It is permissible to imagine the man, originally as a creature either good or bad, that is to say, selfish or social - not to mention the right amount of selfishness that includes the social, but interest to which it is involved today are so numerous, the world around him so tight, the body politic so bad conductor of intellectual stimuli that at the time of the operation on him ever shall affect only a fraction of possible ethical determinants. Therefore, any ethical event, today it is really lived, has several "sides" of the good one, bad one, it is a third side, something we not know whether to judge good or bad. The property appears not as a constant, but as a variable function. It is only the weight of thought that we did not find to express this function, which satisfies the logical formula the need for uniqueness without stifling ambivalence facts: manners do not suffer more than the math is dead when it was discovered that the same number could be squared with two different numbers.
It is not pleasant to admit at a time when other nations swell of illusions and we have imposed to us citizens of German, the solidarity of the deprivation of rights, status of exploited and enslaved. Therefore be objected that it would be better, in the present circumstances, even if patriotism, nation and other similar entities are illusions, do not tell. Regardless of whether the nation exists or not, assuming it exists has its value, perhaps he should mention his presence even more suggestively than unity in practice is doubtful! This is the opinion in particular, those who see the nation an ideal attainable only in the long term and to try again from time to time for the people that it is purified from his sight. But such an ideal that never really blossomed purifying influences the holidays, so to speak, or on occasions such as mobilizations general is reminiscent of a house where the tenant does not sleep that week four Thursday, preferring to sleep, the rest of the time in the swampy meadows in side, an ideal that does so can not be particularly appropriate or beneficial.
Yes, we can say all the cases we have reviewed so far have been as special cases of misuse of the ideal. Just as we did not design the assumption of race as progressive as a goal, but as regressive as a fetish mystic, was sublimated state by subtracting the desire disrespectful consider the conversion, much like any apartment, and the concept of nation was not recognized, institutes, as a matter inform, but proclaimed, constitutively, as a given that the term would only imperfectly. This way to use all our ideals is probably a legacy of days when it was still difficult to enforce the simplest rules other than declaring them taboo. Our ethos is still present the kind of prehistoric taboo. We attribute our ideals of tenure and the indestructibility of the Platonic-Pythagorean ideas, and when reality does not comply, we do not hesitate to define as the very criterion of ideality this "impurity" of their achievement. We try to approximate the curve to be difficult to calculate the rigid polygon delineated by the fixed points of our moral breaking new angles constantly straight line with our principles, never reach so far to coincide with this curve. It may be that the inner life has the same need for solid points of support that thought, but they, in their ideal form, led us to a level that can hardly be overcome. It is indeed necessary - everyone knows - require each ideal, closer to the real, so many restrictions and amendments that eventually did nothing to stay. When a white background is entirely covered with dark spots, the time is not far when thinking work with a dark-stained white in ethics, we're not there yet, far from it. This way of "conspiring" with the reality is unfortunately just the opposite of what we see as idealistic ideality. Call idealism is to form the reality of ideas - and idealism in the second degree only, the fact to submit to these ideas imposed until either reaches the next level of achievement, therefore, if life does not submit to a system of ideals, I can not recognize in them a lot of idealism. It should understand once and that if life does not comply, it is not simple insubordination schoolboy, is that the ideals themselves are at fault. A moral
anxious today to move beyond mending, I mean a morality simply "civilizing" with the sacrifice of what this beautiful atavism Kultur - whose release can be deduced, incidentally, the above-, must build on this formlessness that European civilization and the extraordinary development of its trade we have imposed. I think the experiences since 1914 have taught most of us that from an ethical standpoint, man is almost a reality without form, strangely malleable, capable of anything, in which good and evil can lean to one side and the other as far as the needle of a highly sensitive balance. That will probably get worse, and the men escape increasingly across ethical, indeed almost powerless, that we erect around them. It is permissible to imagine the man, originally as a creature either good or bad, that is to say, selfish or social - not to mention the right amount of selfishness that includes the social, but interest to which it is involved today are so numerous, the world around him so tight, the body politic so bad conductor of intellectual stimuli that at the time of the operation on him ever shall affect only a fraction of possible ethical determinants. Therefore, any ethical event, today it is really lived, has several "sides" of the good one, bad one, it is a third side, something we not know whether to judge good or bad. The property appears not as a constant, but as a variable function. It is only the weight of thought that we did not find to express this function, which satisfies the logical formula the need for uniqueness without stifling ambivalence facts: manners do not suffer more than the math is dead when it was discovered that the same number could be squared with two different numbers.
IX
This corporation would be up to the facts of our life, it goes without saying that we did not. However, our consciousness of a transition now requires that we treat the state and the nation rather than as ideals, but simply as objects summoned to meet their goals. But for those who change with time, nobody can say anything conclusive, except that we must leave the task of civilization from the development itself. But this means, if one adopts the "pessimistic optimism" that should be - without imagining that the myth, intuition or classical ideal can be of any help to a generation of builders and sellers of machinery, without estimating either the energies that bubble up in the excesses of this culture - this means that we want the men to the extent compatible with life in common, care to seek their own path and obey their own interests. Is this not also a principle that we use at school tongue? Since it has proved to produce better students, it is time to extend it to adults. Proletarians, capitalists, ichthyologists, painters, etc.., Here today of International Associations natural - even if they do not, in all national languages, as sub-associations. It slowly begins to realize that the economy is a very international and it is pure myopia than selfishly pursue a national economic policy instead of making the organization work wholesale, and he must give evidence actual character of international intellectual interests ? In diplomatic conferences expected to resolve disputes of states, the disparity between the expenditure and the result is so huge that it comes to judging these methods inevitably unable to advance a step change, and the League of Nations in its current form of state banquets, appears more and more like a farce. Overthrow the state but could not at the cost of a global revolution: the program of organization of life after the death of the old order is ready, or waiting for it not rather that the evolution. through a long revolutionary thinking, relieves you of responsibility a decision? Anyway, nothing can hinder a more natural articulation of the human society to rise above these human ideals: the state and nation. The only solution is to work to promote development that goes on outside of them, to awaken and keep alive the belief of their obsolescence.
be objected that, wherever international associations gain ground, very large material interests behind, and any organization requiring large resources can be established only if a glimpse of hit material . Just Moreover, a look at domestic politics to see that no company can prosper disinterested, that only the most palpable interests manage to unite people, not to speak in our political parties, perverse-links allow old beauty ideal to be maintained by material needs. You end up thinking that even the internal legal order which is the origin of civilization could be established initially than imposed by force, and that Bolshevism also feels obliged to support the strength of the idea. It may be that the truly modern way of life discussed here can also be achieved without resorting to force. But the ideas, rather than showing a path to the future, merely suggest a direction and they are nets that are thrown on the future for the capture and the latter, if the tear in places, never destroys it entirely. What is the future that awaits us? Will it be a gradual restoration of our old corpulent who comforts us harm suffered? Revenge, in the absence - because we were deprived - of any political purpose? Or: the invention of a goal of world politics? When war broke out, the church was challenged, socialism has been challenged, both under pressure an ideology of "either ... or "that was in fact a pseudoidéologie. The people who will step out of the impasse of imperialism nationalism to a new world order and opportunity that will give momentum for future initiatives will soon have all its leadership in the world and victory will make its wishes legitimate. Today, nobody can accurately plot the way forward, what is needed is to create without delay a state of mind that allows entering.
be objected that, wherever international associations gain ground, very large material interests behind, and any organization requiring large resources can be established only if a glimpse of hit material . Just Moreover, a look at domestic politics to see that no company can prosper disinterested, that only the most palpable interests manage to unite people, not to speak in our political parties, perverse-links allow old beauty ideal to be maintained by material needs. You end up thinking that even the internal legal order which is the origin of civilization could be established initially than imposed by force, and that Bolshevism also feels obliged to support the strength of the idea. It may be that the truly modern way of life discussed here can also be achieved without resorting to force. But the ideas, rather than showing a path to the future, merely suggest a direction and they are nets that are thrown on the future for the capture and the latter, if the tear in places, never destroys it entirely. What is the future that awaits us? Will it be a gradual restoration of our old corpulent who comforts us harm suffered? Revenge, in the absence - because we were deprived - of any political purpose? Or: the invention of a goal of world politics? When war broke out, the church was challenged, socialism has been challenged, both under pressure an ideology of "either ... or "that was in fact a pseudoidéologie. The people who will step out of the impasse of imperialism nationalism to a new world order and opportunity that will give momentum for future initiatives will soon have all its leadership in the world and victory will make its wishes legitimate. Today, nobody can accurately plot the way forward, what is needed is to create without delay a state of mind that allows entering.
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