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Some Philosophical and Moral Problems of
National-Socialism
Introduction
This essay is a brief analysis of the National-Socialist
weltanschauung, as manifested in National-Socialist Germany, and
according to the philosophical and ethical criteria of my Numinous
Way, and which criteria derive from the principles of empathy,
compassion, and personal honour.
Empathy, as understood by my philosophy of The Numen [1],
establishes a particular ontology and epistemology; Being, the
source of beings, as both causal and acausal, and of an acausal
knowing distinct from the causal knowing of conventional philosophy
and empirical science [2]. The ethical criteria are manifest in both
compassion and honour [3], so that:
"the morality of The Numinous Way is therefore defined
by a personal honour, a personal compassion, and the personal
virtue of justice. For justice is not some abstract concept, but
rather a personal virtue, as εὐταξία
is a personal virtue. For justice is the personal virtue of
fairness; the quality of balance." War and Violence in the
Philosophy of The Numinous Way
The National-Socialism evident in NS Germany was a way of life
centred around concepts such as duty, kampf, nation, and
race. Thus, the individual was judged by, and expected to judge
others by, the criteria of race, with particular races assigned a
certain value (high or low), as individuals were judged by how well
they adhered to the duty they were expected to do in respect of
their nation (their land, their people) and the race they were said
to belong to or believed they belonged to. In addition, kampf between individuals, races, and nations was considered healthy and
necessary, with such struggle revealing the worth of individuals and
thus those considered fit to lead and assume positions of authority.
Collectivism, Nationalism, and Race
The National-Socialist way of life was - given such concepts as kampf,
nation and race - a collective one, with one of the highest virtues
being the willingness of individuals, if necessary, to sacrifice
their own happiness and welfare, and even their lives, for the good
of their people, their land, their race. The necessity of this
virtue was explained, in part, by the belief that the German volk
had an historic mission, a particular destiny, so that - coupled
with the ideas of race and kampf - the individual was
expected to define themselves, to understand themselves, as Germans
and as having particular duties and obligations; in effect, to
replace their own self-identity with the collective identity of the
volk.
In order to establish, maintain, and expand this collectivism,
certain measures were regarded as necessary, as morally correct,
with such measures including military conscription, laws designed to
criminalize certain activities, both political and personal, and
harsh punishment of those contravening such laws.
In addition, the führerprinzip was applied to most
aspects of life, with individuals expected to accept and obey the
authority so established, since such authority was considered to
manifest the will, the ethos, of the volk. Hence the loyalty
individuals gave, as an expression of their recognized duty as
Germans, was personal; not to 'the State' nor even to 'the nation',
and certainly not to some government, but rather to individuals who
were regarded as embodying the will, the identity, of the volk. In
practice, this meant Adolf Hitler and those appointed by him or by
his representatives, and it was this collectivism, this binding of
the volk by the führerprinzip, that Heidegger
tried to philosophically express in his now controversial remarks
regarding the Volksgemeinschaft and by quoting some words
attributed to Aeschylus [4].
There are thus six elements that, from the philosophical and ethical
viewpoint of The Numinous Way, may be said to define the
National-Socialism of Adolf Hitler. These are: (i) a collective
identity and its acceptance; (ii) authority and its acceptance
manifest in specific individuals and expected obedience to such
authority; (iii) mandatory enforceable punishment of those
contravening or not accepting such authority and the laws made by
such authority; (iv) the use of particular abstractions (for example
nation and race) as a criteria for judgement and for evaluating
individual worth; (v) the use of particular abstractions as a
criteria for identity; and (vi) the use and acceptance of a
particular abstraction - kampf - as an embodiment and
expression of human nature.
Contra The National-Socialism of Adolf Hitler
In purely practical terms, the acceptance and use of the principle
of kampf together with the acceptance of Hitler as embodying
the collective will of the volk, inevitably led to the
military defeat of NS Germany. For all mortals are fallible and
military defeat is always inevitable, given time and even if such a
defeat has internal, not external, causes. For tyrants and monarchs
die, are overthrown, or are killed; Empires flourish for a while - a
few centuries perhaps, at most - and then invariably decline and
fade away; oligarchies come and go with monotonous regularity,
lasting a decade or perhaps somewhat longer; rebellions and
revolutions will break out, given sufficient time, and will often
succeed given even more time - decades, centuries - and even
following repeated and brutal repression.
Thus, philosophically, the general error here by Hitler and his
followers was the obvious one of ὕβρις. A lack of
understanding, an unknowing, of the natural balance - of δίκη -
as well as a lack of empathy, manifest as this unknowing, this lack,
was in the arrogant belief of a personal and a volkish 'destiny'
combined with a belief in kampf as a natural and necessary
expression of human nature. And ὕβρις φυτεύει τύραννον
- that is, ὕβρις plants, is the seed of, the τύραννον.
Thus, symbolically, we might justifiably say that the Ἐρινύες took their revenge, for Hitler and his followers had forgotten, scorned,
or never known the wisdom, the truth, that their fallible mortal
lives are subject to, guided by, Μοῖραι τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ᾽
Ἐρινύες [5]. Thus their fate was destined, a fate
that Sophocles expressed so well in respect of Oedipus, tyrannus:
ὦ πάτρας Θήβης ἔνοικοι, λεύσσετ᾽, Οἰδίπους ὅδε,
ὃς τὰ κλείν᾽ αἰνίγματ᾽ ᾔδει καὶ κράτιστος ἦν ἀνήρ,
οὗ τίς οὐ ζήλῳ πολιτῶν ἦν τύχαις ἐπιβλέπων,
εἰς ὅσον κλύδωνα δεινῆς συμφορᾶς ἐλήλυθεν.
ὥστε θνητὸν ὄντα κείνην τὴν τελευταίαν ἰδεῖν
ἡμέραν ἐπισκοποῦντα μηδέν᾽ ὀλβίζειν, πρὶν ἂν
τέρμα τοῦ βίου περάσῃ μηδὲν ἀλγεινὸν παθών. [6]
In effect, therefore, and in general terms, the National-Socialism
of Adolf Hitler was un-wise; based on a mis-understanding of human
nature, and he himself shown, despite his remarkable achievement of
gaining power, as lacking a reasoned, a well-balanced, judgement [σωφρονεῖν]
- since such a balanced judgement would, as Aeschylus explained in
the Oresteia, reveal that πόλεμος [7] always
accompanies ὕβρις and that only by acceptance of the
numinous authority of πάθει μάθος (the new law presented to
mortals by immortal Zeus) could the tragic cycle of ἔρις be
ended.
A Numinous View of The National-Socialism of Adolf Hitler
Let us now consider the six points enumerated above, in respect of
the philosophical and ethical viewpoint of The Numinous Way.
As mentioned in my essay A Brief Numinous View of Religion,
Politics, and The State:
" The essence of the numinous view - of the ethical way
posited by the Philosophy of The Numen - is empathy and thus the
acausal (the affective and effecting) connexion we, as
individuals, are to all life, sentient and otherwise, with empathy
being the foundation of our conscious humanity.
The practical criteria which empathy implies is essentially
two-fold: the criteria of the cessation of suffering, and the
criteria of the individual, personal, judgement in the immediacy
of the moment. For the Philosophy of The Numen, these two criteria
manifest the natural character of rational, conscious, empathic,
human beings and thus express the nature of our humanity and of
human culture, and which nature is manifest in a practical way in
compassion and in personal honour.
Hence these two criteria are used, by The Numinous Way - by the
Philosophy of The Numen - to judge our actions, our personal
behaviour, and also all the abstractions we manufacture or may
manufacture and which thus affect us, as individuals."
(i) A collective identity and its acceptance.
Empathy, as a natural if still under-used and under-developed human
faculty, is only and ever individual and of the immediacy of the
living moment. [8] It is always personal, individual, and cannot
cannot be abstracted out from an individual living being - that is,
it cannot have any causal ideation or be represented by or expressed
by someone else.
There is the personal, individual, freedom that the knowing that
empathy uniquely presents to the individual, and therefore no need
of, no sense of, belonging to other than one's immediate
surroundings, and no sense of identity beyond the personally known,
for all human beings encountered are encountered and empathically
known as they uniquely are: as individuals with their own lives,
feelings, hopes, and with their own potential and their own past.
Which in essence means The Numinous Way is the way of individuals,
and an individual manner of living to be accepted or rejected
according to the individual. Thus such a collective identity - and a
desire for and acceptance of such an identity - is contrary to this
very individual numinous way.
What matters for The Numinous Way is the individual; their empathy,
their honour; their personal judgement. What does not matter are
supra-personal manufactured abstractions such as a 'nation'.
Consequently, the empathic, honourable, individual only has a duty
to themselves, to their immediate kin, and to those personally given
a pledge of loyalty: not a duty or obligations to some manufactured
collective identity however such identity be expressed.
(ii) Authority and its acceptance manifest in specific individuals
and expected obedience to such authority.
As I wrote in Authority and Legitimacy in the Philosophy of The
Numinous Way:
" For The Numinous Way, it is the exercise of the
judgement of the individual - arising from the use of empathy and
the guidance that is personal honour - that is paramount, and
which expresses our human nature.
That is, it is honour, the understanding that empathy provides,
and the judgement of the individual, that are legitimate, moral,
numinous, and thence the basis for authority. This means that
authority resides in and extends only to individuals - by virtue
of their honour, their empathy, and manifest in their own personal
judgement, and therefore this always personal individual authority
cannot be abstracted out from such personal judgement of
individuals. In practical terms, this is a new type of authority -
that of the individual whose concern is not power over others but
over themselves, and which type of power is manifest in a living
by honour, and thence in their self-responsibility and in how they
interact with others."
Thus, such non-individual authority, acceptance of and obedience to
such authority, is contrary to The Numinous Way.
(iii) Mandatory enforceable punishment of those contravening or not
accepting such authority and the laws made by such authority.
Given that, for The Numinous Way, authority and justice are
individual and manifest in individual judgement and through personal
honour, such mandatory punishment by some abstract authority is
quite contrary to The Numinous Way.
(iv) The use of particular abstractions (for example nation and
race) as a criteria for judgement and for evaluating individual
worth.
According to both empathy and honour, such a judgement of others,
such prejudice, on the basis of some abstraction such as perceived
race or 'nationality' is immoral [9]. The only moral, honourable,
criteria is to judge individuals as individuals, sans all
abstractions, on the basis of a personal knowing of them extending
over a duration of causal Time. To judge en masse, without
such a direct, personal, extended, personal knowing of each and
every individual is reprehensible.
In addition, it is immoral - unempathic, uncompasionate,
dishonourable - to treat people on the basis of their assumed or
alleged race or nationality. Thus, the enforced herding of people
into 'concentration camps' on the basis of alleged, assumed, race or
nationality is quite unjustifiable, inhuman.
(v) The use of particular abstractions as a criteria for identity.
Such abstractions included 'blood' and nationality, so that identity
became a matter of individuals being classified - by themselves,
others, and by the State - according to certain chosen abstract
criteria based on 'race' and heritage. Thus there were distinct
notions, distinct levels, of separateness.
Empathy, however, presents us with an acausal-knowing of life, human
and otherwise, and this knowing is of ourselves as but one fallible,
biologically fragile, mortal, microcosmic nexion, and thus of how
our self, our perceived and singular separate self-identity, is
appearance and not an expression of the true nature of our being
[10], which nature is one of connexions, between living emanations,
not one of separations.
Such a revealing of our nature reveals that we should act with
empathy and honour in the knowledge that our actions affect others
or can affect others, directly, indirectly, emotionally, and
acausally. That their joy, their pain, their suffering, their fate
is ours by virtue of us as a connexion to them - as a connexion to
all life; as one emanation of ψυχή [11].
What abstractions do is that they conceal our true empathic,
compassionate, honourable nature and, ultimately, sever the
connexion we are to ψυχή, to The Numen.
As mentioned in On The Nature of Abstractions:
" The error of abstractionism - of using existing
abstractions and manufacturing other abstractions and using these
as the source of ethics, of judgement, and so ascribing a value to
them - is the error of ὕβρις (hubris). That is, the
error of unbalance: of neglecting or being unaware of empathy, and
of neglecting or being unaware of or profaning the numinous. In
the personal and social sense, ὕβρις is revealed in a
lack of compassion, a lack of balanced reasoning, and not only
ascribing to one's self (or some other abstraction, such as a
nation-State) what is assumed to be the perfection of right and of
good (or the best current approximation of it) but also acting on
that presumption to the detriment, the harm, of others.
This is unethical - as all abstractions are inherently unethical -
because what is ethical is determined by empathy, and thus cannot
be abstracted out of that direct, immediate, and personal knowing
which presences empathy in us, as human beings."
(vi) The use and acceptance of a particular abstraction - kampf
- as an embodiment and expression of human nature.
As mentioned previously, in the Contra The
National-Socialism of Adolf Hitler section, kampf as
principle, as abstraction, is a manifestation of the error of ὕβρις
and of a lack of empathy.
For empathy, and the cultivation of σωφρονεῖν, incline us
toward - or should incline us, as individuals, toward - a
letting-be; to wu-wei; to a living in the immediacy-of-the-moment.
To being compassionate and honourable human beings, concerned only
with our own affairs, that of our family, and that of our immediate
locality where we dwell, work, and have-our-being.
In addition:
" In The Numinous Way, a distinction is made between war
and combat in that combat refers to gewin -
similar to the old Germanic werra, as distinct from the
modern krieg. That is, combat refers to a more personal
armed quarrel between much smaller factions (and often between
just two adversaries - as in single combat, and trial by combat)
when there is, among those fighting, some personal matter at stake
or some personal interest involved, with most if not all of those
fighting doing so under the leadership of someone they personally
know and respect and with the quarrel usually occurring in the
locality or localities where the combatants live.
Thus, war is contrary to The Numinous Way - to the Cosmic Ethic -
not only because of the impersonal suffering it causes, but also
because it is inseparably bound up with individuals having to
relinquish their own judgement, with them pursuing some lifeless
un-numinous abstraction by violent means, and with the development
of supra-personal abstract and thus un-numinous notions of
'justice' and law.
Hence, there is, for The Numinous Way, no such thing as a 'just
war' - for war is inherently unjust and un-numinous. What is
just and lawful are honourable individuals and their actions, and
such combat as such individuals may honourably and personally
undertake, and such violence as they may honourably and of
necessity employ in pursuit of being fair and ensuring fairness."
War and Violence in the Philosophy of The Numinous Way
Conclusion
It should thus be quite clear why The Numinous Way is contrary to
and incompatible with the National-Socialism of Adolf Hitler that
was manifest in National-Socialist Germany.
David Myatt
January 2012 ce
(Revised JD2455956.107)
Notes
[1] Refer, for example, to Introduction to The Philosophy of The
Numen and also The Natural Balance of Honour - Honour,
Empathy, and Compassion in the Philosophy of The Numinous Way,
from which this is a quote:
"As used and defined by The Numinous Way, empathy - ἐμπάθεια
- is a natural human faculty: that is, a noble intuition about
another human being or another living being. When empathy is
developed and used, as envisaged by The Numinous Way, it is a
specific and extended type of συμπάθεια. That is, it is a
type of and a means to knowing and understanding another human
being and/or other living beings - and thus differs in nature from
compassion."
[2] See: (i) An Introduction To The Ontology of Being; (ii)
Some Notes Concerning Causality, Ethics, and Acausal Knowing;
(iii) Acausality, Phainómenon, and The Appearance of
Causality.
[3] qv. The Natural Balance of Honour.
[4] In his 1933 speech at the University of Freiburg, where he
quoted the following verse (v.514) from Prometheus Bound [my translation] -
τέχνη δ᾽
ἀνάγκης ἀσθενεστέρα
μακρῷ.
How so very feeble Craft is before
Compulsion!
[5]
τίς οὖν ἀνάγκης ἐστὶν οἰακοστρόφος.
Μοῖραι τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ᾽ Ἐρινύες
Who then compels to steer us?
Trimorphed Moirai with their ever-heedful Furies!
Aeschylus (attributed), Prometheus Bound,
515-6 [My translation]
[6]
You natives of Thebes: Observe – here is Oedipus,
He who understood that famous enigma and was a strong man:
What clansman did not behold that fortune without envy?
But what a tide of problems have come over him!
Therefore, look toward that ending which is for us mortals,
To observe that particular day – calling no one lucky until,
Without the pain of injury, they are conveyed beyond life’s
ending.
Oedipus Tyrannus, vv. 1524-1530 [My
translation]
[7] In respect of πόλεμος see my The Abstraction of
Change as Opposites and Dialectic where I suggest that as used
by Heraclitus it implies neither kampf nor conflict, but rather - as
a quote from Diogenes Laërtius suggests - what lies behind or
beyond Phainómenon; that is, non-temporal, non-causal, Being.
πόλεμος is thus that which is or becomes the genesis of
beings from Being, and also that which manifests as δίκη
and accompanies ἔρις because it is the nature of Πόλεμος
that beings, born because of and by ἔρις, can be returned to
Being (become bound together - be whole - again) by enantiodromia.
[8] Refer, for example, to Introduction to The Philosophy of The
Numen
[9] See Empathy and The Immoral Abstraction of Race and also
On The Nature of Abstractions.
[10] Refer for example to Acausality, Phainómenon, and
The Appearance of Causality and also An Introduction To
The Ontology of Being.
[11] Correctly understood - and as evident by the usage of
Homer, Aeschylus, Aristotle, et al - ψυχή implies Life
qua being.
Acknowledgement:
This essay had its genesis in some questions recently asked
of me, by an academic, in regard to my former political
involvements and how I now judge National-Socialism and Adolf
Hitler given the development, over the past three or so years, of
my mystical philosophy of The Numinous Way.