Commentary on a passage by Stirner by Carlo Michelstaedter

'Man, your head is haunted; you have bats in your belfry! You're imagining big things and painting for yourself a whole world of gods that is there for you, a haunted realm to which you are called, an ideal that beckons to you. You have a fixed idea! Do not think that I am joking or speaking figuratively when I look upon those who cling to something higher, and, since this includes the vast majority, almost the whole human world, as veritable fools, fools in a madhouse. What, then, is called a "fixed idea"?'

Max Stirner, the sad philosopher of anarchy, asks this question, and does not think that those fixed ideas bend man not because he is compelled by something that is outside him, but because he loves them. And if this love is not a necessity, it does not mean that outside of it there is no necessity. It is a part of the unified love, a perpetual reason for life, a perpetual necessity that is expressed in us, in all our desires, as in every beast, as in every plant, as in any part of nature. Our will is nothing but the act of this necessity passed through the "necessary" distance of our soul. And what about freedom? And what about free will then? ... All illusions for those who know no other state but slavery, to which therefore slavery does not exist. Such are the beasts. And so men believe in free will as they have settled into slavery so as to proclaim the only truth, the only love the chain that binds them to the wrists and the jailer - as they are beasts.

Whoever leaves this illusion immediately feels the weight of the yoke, feels the desperate pain of slavery. He could annihilate himself and be free in death. But before annihilating himself he must materially annihilate himself morally, killing the affections that bind him ... but here is the supreme mockery of the inexorable necessity. He cannot dissolve what he did not tie himself to. - I also want freedom, and I will be able to reach it ... or I will succumb. - And if I can no longer buy the illusion of freedom at the price of "enmity", nor can I stretch my back over a mountain peak irradiated by the sun, raise my eyes to the sky and contemplate, I want and can shape my life like a 'work of art, to feel in everything the infinite beauty of nature (in the broadest sense) and of the "first engine", as Leonardo da Vinci says, and to draw from every vision from every happy or sad feeling an exaltation of strength , an increase in my individuality and an increase in my vitality, and escape the necessity of things, idealizing them, ideally mastering them.

But sometimes I feel weak in the face of this ambitious dream, but free from what is commonly called ambition, a dream that does not give joy to me and to those who loved in me not the "man who lives" - that is, the one that only family members love, but the personality that transcends the petty terms of life ... I sometimes feel weak and small, and I see with horror the "animal transport" train that warns me that it should take me to the bourgeois world, triumphantly stupid ...

This short text shows Michelstaedter's own take on anarcho-egoism. Not at all unfamiliar to Stirner, but whereas Stirner is a sort of optimistic nihilist, seeing the world as his playground, a sort of "philosophy of enjoyment", Michelstaedter's egoistic vision is more pessimistic, taking a bit from Schopenhauer as well. 

Courage by Carlo Michelstaedter

Michele Ardan goes to the moon as a joke. The ship that carries the French expedition to the North Pole is baptized "Pourquioi-pas?" For the sake of the beauty of an instant and of a gesture, the French puts into play the highest human values. The beauty of a gesture is a small work of art. And if in this small work the heroic act is a necessary aesthetic element, the Frenchman becomes an hero for the sake of aesthetics, he is not an hero, he is an aesthete. But where is the reason for the beauty of a gesture? Evidently in a stronger ray in which a personality is better revealed. At the bottom of this work of art is the criterion of the value of the personality - the "moral criterion". Whether the point is high or low where the value of this personality culminates, which is to say, whether artistic intuition is vast or restricted, the relationship it has with the individual who feels it is always constant; whenever an individual dreams of moral perfection or senses an artistic harmony, he gives form - as far as his individual personality is worth - to the aspiration that ultimately exists in every man towards truth: his interest is an universal interest: the act that results from this interest in life is an act of development - of improvement,  it is an act of reduction of the cause under the rule of reason (or transformation of the ratio into causa): It's a "good" act.

But one can reply: when analyzing the moral vision of this man we find that it has the form that has become necessary and that is defined by the position that this man occupies in life: it is the result of his particular, more or less selfish interests: of his affections and his temperament. His contemplation does not transcend the elements of his life, so the interest of utilitarian coordination of the various elements of his nature - is an interest that does not go beyond the limits of his individuality: the act that results from them is a selfish act.

Certainly, contemplation does not transcend the elements of his life, but he does not contemplate them in relation to present life. Man as he contemplates has theoretical interest. The criterion of contemplation is no longer the value of the elements for life but its intrinsic reason. The lowest man can consider the moral values he attributes to things, consider it in their mutual relations, etc., and reach a moral vision much higher than he himself - considered sub specie aeterni- offers.

But this low man must then ipso facto become an elevated man, or is it necessary to say that for the translation in act of the achieved moral perfection, the intervention of a new element is necessary?

I believe that in the moment that the man with full persuasion states his thought he is - from the point of view of honesty of the intention - "absolutely good", and on the other hand with respect to a criterion of absolute judgment he has so much more value the more vast and universal it's conception is. This is the case regardless of whether he acts or not. But when his conception becomes obscure and disintegrates from that luminous point of perfect conscience and "persuasion" which he had obtained, he falls into the pettiness of his particular interests: he is "dishonest". Now, if a man has a strong theoretical interest in living a large part of life in that luminous persuasion, this man - whatever his moral baseness may have been due to the strange contingency of cases - this man will not be able not to conform his whole life to that persuasion. - And given a limited potential of conception results in him "mysticism". If the potential rises to its highest degree and we have the persistent and absolute persuasion of the truth, it can only give rise to the abnegation of individuality and death. - The world of the living is therefore exhausted all by the "mystics" and the "dishonest". There is no third party.

Every hero is a mystic - every "good" man (in the sense that was said in the first §) is a hero.

Better the Hatred by Carlo Michelstaedter

With a certain heroic air, men say that objects that do not have any commercial value are dearer to them than objects which do. Indeed, sticking to those is less expensive than sticking to those other ones - as dead Capital.
In fact, it is good prudence to place one's affection in those, which would cost them too much.

Better the hatred than the affection of the family.

TOWARDS PEACE by Carlo Michelstaedter

TOWARDS PEACE

On Rhetoric

It is concluded that rhetoric has no value in the walk towards peace, if it does not coincide with the dialectic. In effect, rhetoric is an instrument of life, and life is the end of rhetoric. Now, what is, oh Socrates, life? I would ask. It should be stressed that I do not say "which is life" but "what is". What does it mean for you and me that we talk? What is the point of life? I know well what you will answer me, arguing in speech: "What is this life, oh my dear Carlo, of which you want me to tell you what it is?". Then I will tell you: "Precisely what you and Plato in the Republic consider superior life: hic Rhodus, hic salta [Prove what you can do, here and now.]". Here, I believe, my dear, you would fall silent - through Hades - the last remedy that truly brings a good end, the one you used then in prison. But I, and with me the divine Hegesias, the Persuader of death, we will act as a benevolent chorus of this last admonition of yours, saying that life has no other purpose than life itself.

Socrates was Michelstaedter's personal idol. He is constantly referenced in his short writings, referenced as a "persuaso [persuaded person]" and Michelstaedter even wrote several dialogues in the Socratic tradition. 

Speech To The People by Carlo Michelstaedter

You beat me and you are in the right to do so! You'll kill me and you'll still be in the right! But my right is that of the free word, and your duty is to listen to me. For if the act was brutal and if it justifies the brutal expression of your surprise, it was not brutal the intentional, it was not your enemy. It is love for you, for the idea that today brings you together that has made me rebel and rebel against an enthusiasm that does not correspond to your will, O brothers, to that will that makes you strong against the tyranny of Spain. If tomorrow you still had to reunite and not with the indeterminate outrage of today, but with fresh indignation, with a fresh wound, with the threat present, if you were to meet here tomorrow and affirm your will to the end, to make success with the facts and in the present life, and for the personal interests in each and every single one of you - against the authority constituted by the law, against the authority constituted by money, against the government and the bourgeoisie - that ideal that moves you now, brothers, that marvelous instrument that you have now applauded would measure strength on you - and shots from above would respond from front, back and center; and at the sides other shots to sow death among your ranks, to drown your anger in blood, to bring down forever your most cherished hopes. As long as these hopes are vague and distant, as long as you suffer your material and social miseries in silence, you are an innocuous bunch of unhappy ones to be exploited; and bourgeois society exploits you, in peace and in silence; and as it holds on to the yoke of your need and your weakness, there is no need to make you feel the deadly force of your weapons.But it prepares its weapon in silence and peace and she knows how to cover them with the luminous appearances of humanity and progress, and you - you applaud them! ... But the day that you acquire full awareness of your rights and your strength, the day you will be gathered around your heroes, around the "Ferrer" [reference to Francisco Ferrer y Guardia, anarchist thinker and agitator] of your revolution, under the banner of liberty for the people, the day you want to affirm the beginning of a new life of justice and faith - that day, brothers, the humanity and the progress of the bourgeoisie will reveal their true face, they will hold you in a circle of iron and fire, without mercy for the slaves who rebel. - You will be slaves forever if you fail to unmask the miserable hypocrisy of the bourgeois power, which covers its defenses with flowers and hides the dagger in its bosom. But the power is yours, brothers, to you belongs the future, because you have "faith", and yours is the right. - Bourgeois society, because it has usurped power that does not belong to it, with the strength that comes only from your current weakness, since it has no other faith than the thirst for profit, no other right than tyranny, needs the science that encapsulates in it the opprobri of its arrogance, the science that gives her the immeasurable weapons of strength and devices of war that dominate the sea, the earth and the sky, needs the government that draws from your own ranks the men necessary to keep you slaves, guards, riflemen , soldiers. Brothers, you have applauded the symbol of the power that crushes you.- But you will shake yourself out of your inertia, you will all join together, you will each bear the contribution of your brotherly love and of your desperate strength, born out of daily suffering - and then you will be invincible, then this vain bourgeois power building that dominates you and that you respect, that dominates you only because you respect it, it will crumble with all its laws, its institutions, its vain science, its hypocritical morality, the armies of the preparers, the armies of the executors of the tyranny will disappear: scientists, clerks, soldiers will be extinct races, in this new world.- And it will be a world where "man" will reign, the man of work, the man who is sane of body and mind, the man who will not have a need for unjust laws, unjust because they're complicated, to be protected by his brother, not by militias and weapons laboriously devised to protect his enemies: but his faith, and the common work, and the close team of fraternal love, will be his government and law and defense in the realm of work and justice. Brothers, this man sleeps in each of you and waits for the day he will awaken-brothers, I may be a dark one, but in me sleeps the voice of that man. As soon as I go out and go back into the darkness, these are my first words and they will be my last. Tomorrow perhaps in the hands of bourgeois justice lurking around us I will suffer the fate that awaits Derrer. But if it can enlighten your conscience, hasten your awakening and approximate the advent of "man" and of the subrum, then I will be pleased with my death. Goodbye brothers - long live work and justice - death to the bourgeoisie

This speech, despite being hair-raising at times (such as briefly dismissing scientists as bourgeois), remains a rousing call for the masses to take up either Marxism or Anarchism (which one it isn't clear).

.

Friendship With A Dog by Carlo Michelstaedter

The following is a translation of the short story "Amicizia Verso Un Cane" by Carlo Michelstaedter:

The black dog came to the houses of men from a place of hunger and thirst. He feared these people, yes, but he was in no spirit to run away; because he was starving for food. And the wise man saw the black dog, as trembling and hungry and reduced to the extreme as he was, and took pity on him. He welcomed the dog into his house and gave him something to eat and drink, and he loved this animal, recognized him as a living being and rejoiced in the dog's enjoyment and in his restoration; he did not notice that he loved his own life. But the landlords came, as did the parents of the wise man, and they became very angry with him, it seemed to them that he had acted as a boy rather than a man, and they chased away with strong force and great fanfare the poor, frightened dog. The wise man was indignant at seeing this, seeing them being so selfish, but said nothing; because he realized  his own attachment to life, and that he blindly placed his love on nothing, and that he himself was nothing. And he was indignant towards himself and towards his own disdain, and the intensity of life and his own demand for good made him tremble, just as attachment to life had made the dog tremble. And he feared the Night, mother of the Eumenides and punishing the blind and seers, and wished for death. But again and in pain and activity, and in love of Good and in death he recognized the attachment to life. Peace, on the other hand, has nothing to do with these things.

Cucù cantaba la rana
cucù debajo del rio.

[Spanish for:
Peekaboo sang the frog
Peekaboo at the bottom of the river.]

Because everything is nothing.

This characteristically brutal and pessimistic story reflects Michelstaedter's concepts of rettorica (societal Rhetoric to which people are enslaved by, such as the wise man) and philopsychia (Greek for "Love of Life", which also enslaves man, in a manner similar to the slave in Hegel's master-slave dialectic). Be sure to cherish your own dog, because you never know when you no longer will be able to!