Hitler, National-Socialism, and Politics - A Personal
Reappraisal
Introduction - A Moral Perspective
Almost exactly a year ago, I perhaps somewhat presumptuously,
temerariously, penned a rather long essay entitled The
Uncertitude of Knowing in reply to questions asked of me in
relation to National-Socialism, Hitler, and my philosophy of The
Numinous Way; and which essay itself was an attempt to elucidate
another essay, the year before that, concerning Reichsfolk and a
Muslim Khilafah. As I wrote at the beginning of my reply in The
Uncertitude of Knowing:
" There are interesting, important and rather complex
philosophical and ethical issues here, that require detailed,
serious, and above all, rational, consideration. To explain, in a
satisfactory manner, these issues and offer satisfactory answers
would perhaps require a philosophical treatise of length equal to
a book, and I have to admit that I currently possess no desire to
write such a book, partly because I am aware that I may not have
all or even many of the answers required, and that such answers as
I do have, or some of them, might be erroneous and that therefore
may need to be amended. Therefore, all I can do here is try in a
rather unsatisfactory way to summarize such answers, such views,
of mine."
In The Uncertitude, the title itself reflecting my concern
and approach, I continued to emphasize that my replies were
tentative and I - as a result of πάθει μάθος, of
acknowledging my ὕβρις of decades - open to correction and
to further learning.
Over the past year I have continued to study, research, and reflect
upon these 'complex philosophical and ethical issues' and have had
cause, as I anticipated, to amend my conclusions, especially those
in respect of National-Socialism, Hitler, and Reichsfolk, some of
which new conclusions I have briefly mentioned in my essay,
published this month, Some Philosophical and Moral Problems of
National-Socialism, and which new conclusions led me to
withdraw The Uncertitude of Knowing.
This further study and research, perhaps wyrdfully, included getting
to know people who shared their personal and familial experiences of
National-Socialist Germany with me, with these experiences being of
those who were the subject of the Nürnberger
Gesetze and who thus traumatically endured the
consequences of those laws and the prejudice and hatred they
codified. These direct experiences of the personal and moral effects
of National-Socialism were those of individuals that I, through a
personal knowing of them, considered to be honourable and which
personal experiences thus served to place into perspective, into a
moral - a numinous - perspective, the accounts given to me, decades
earlier, of some German National-Socialists I had met who fought for
and gave their loyalty to Adolf Hitler and which accounts had been
formative of what became my decades-long dedication to the cause of
National-Socialism, a dedication broken only by my personal
experiences of Islam and by the πάθει μάθος that was the
genesis of my philosophy of The Numinous Way.
As I mentioned in The Uncertitude of Knowing:
"All I know - all I say and write - derives from my own
diverse personal experiences and my reflexion upon such
experiences; from my experience of diverse ways of life, diverse
religions, and by my interaction with individuals..."
Suffice therefore to say that my new encounter and interaction with
particular people, my reflexion on those experiences, and my further
study and research, has led me to a new personal learning, and to a
better understanding of both the ethics of The Numinous Way and of
the personal, the moral, implications of those ethics.
However, it is to be expected that some people will not like - nor
others understand - where this new learning and my thinking have led
me and may be leading me. But as TS Eliot beautifully expressed it
in his poem Little Gidding:
And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment.
Ethical Consequences
Empathy - as outlined in various essays including Introduction
to The Philosophy of The Numen and The Natural Balance of
Honour - is the basis for the ethics of The Numinous Way, with
compassion and a personal honour being how we can, personally as
individuals, be ethical in accord with the knowing, the
understanding, the insight, that empathy reveals. This empathic
revealing is of our affective and effecting connexion to other life,
including human beings.
The immediacy of empathy in the living moment means a living-in, a
dwelling-in, the moment, inclining us toward to wu-wei and,
"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." Some Philosophical and Moral Problems of
National-Socialism
There therefore cannot be, as mentioned in A Brief Numinous View
of Religion, Politics, and The State, any desire for
involvement with politics, since
"the goals, objectives and aims of politics are, by
their very nature, based on human-manufactured divisions and
categories deriving from a causal separation of beings: that is,
which involve denoting individuals on the basis of some principle
of inclusion/exclusion, and which principle of inclusion/exclusion
(of separation of human beings) is immoral because un-numinous."
What is thus important, moral, numinous, are individuals who -
feeling, knowing, suffering and its causes - live and who act with
personal compassion and personal honour, with the boundary, the
horizon, of such acts being, by the nature of empathy, of the nexion
they are, and only and ever of the personal, immediate, local kind.
In practical terms, there are and cannot be any supra-personal
causes, agendas, aims, goals, for such things take us toward
abstractions and beyond the bounds of empathy and of how The Numen
is or becomes presenced in and through the personal experiencing of,
an interaction with, other living beings: human, of Nature, of the
Cosmos; and a personal experiencing which is direct, unfettered,
undistorted, by any abstraction, by any prejudice, by any division -
conscious or unconscious - into 'us' and 'the separate others'.
A consequence of this is that we can only - without causing more
suffering or contributing to suffering - alleviate suffering, try to
ameliorate what is wrong, by means of personal, direct,
compassionate, honourable, acts when we personally encounter
suffering, dishonour. No cause, no movement, whether deemed
political, social, or religious - nothing supra-personal involving
us surrendering our individual judgement of empathy, our individual
authority, and our personal honour - can alleviate suffering or
ameliorate what is wrong, dishonourable, for such supra-personal
things are among the causes of suffering or contribute to or will
contribute to suffering, given our past and current human nature.
Hence the only moral change, the only revolution, that is possible -
numinous, good - is that of ourselves; within and personal; and this
is a reformation of ourselves and then our living of a moral, of an
empathic, compassionate, honourable, life.
This precludes the possibility of such a moral individual supporting
some cause, some group, some movement, some person, in the belief
that such a cause, group, movement, or 'leader', can 'make a
difference' or can or might in some way move us toward some future
where there is less suffering.
Thus it is morally wrong - from the perspective of The Numinous Way
- to suggest, as for example I previously did in The Uncertitude
of Knowing, that a group such as Reichsfolk or a way such as
Ahlus Sunnah wal-Jammah might be alternatives "capable of guiding
honourable individuals to do what is honourable", and thus have "the
ability to alleviate at least some of the suffering which blights
this world." And wrong not only because such groups, such
ways, are based on immoral abstractions - on principles of
inclusion/exclusion - but also because their very nature, their very
being, as groups and such ways, are incompatible with The Numen, and
so cannot and do not in any way presence the numinous or express the
numinous since such numinosity only lives, dwells, is manifest - in
the personal sense - by individuals leading or inclining toward
leading an empathic, compassionate, honourable, life.
In brief, it is personal virtues such as εὐταξία
- and their cultivation by individuals - which are important,
required, moral, not some group, some organization, some 'leader',
or some political or even 'religious' aims and goals.
Adolf Hitler and National-Socialism
For a long time, I regarded Adolf Hitler as a good man, an
honourable man, and National-Socialism - especially my 'revised
version' of National-Socialism manifest in Reichsfolk - as either an
intimation of the numinous or as an expression of what is noble and
honourable.
Now, in respect of Hitler, I ask two questions: (1) 'what is
good' and my answer, manifest in The Numinous Way, is that what is
good is what is compassionate; what alleviates suffering; what does
not cause or contribute to suffering; what manifests love, empathy;
and (2) 'what is honourable' and my answer is what is dignified,
what manifests self-control, fairness; a balanced judgement.
How then does Hitler fare according to these criteria? Do his
actions - manifest for example in the Nürnberger
Gesetze and their consequences, in his use of krieg
in pursuit of some supra-personal aim, and in the use of the
abstractions of race and nation - reveal a man of compassion, of
balanced judgement, of fairness? Someone who feels and understands
the error that is ὕβρις and is therefore circumspect, in
touch with and respectful of the numinous? Who knows the limits of
appropriate human behaviour? No.
For example, there is nothing honourable in the Nürnberger Gesetze and their
consequences; in the personal suffering, the deaths, they caused, in
the prejudice and the hatred they engendered and codified. Nothing
good in the use of krieg in pursuit of some supra-personal
aim; in the suffering and the deaths caused. Nothing good or
honourable in the demand for obedience and in the manipulation of
people's emotions by rhetoric and propaganda; nothing good or
honourable in the punishment of those who were inclined, as is
morally right and justified, not to surrender their individual
judgement and who thus refused to be obedient in such supra-personal
matters, especially in relation to certain 'political' abstractions,
such as 'race', nation, and the führerprinzip.
As someone once wrote:
"Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher
verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen."
In respect of National-Socialism - new or old - I now ask similar
questions to the ones asked in respect of Hitler. That is, can The
Numen, the good, what is honourable, empathic, compassionate - what
is moral - be manifest in, be presenced by, such a weltanschauung as
National-Socialism? No.
No, for two simple reasons. (1) Because such a weltanschauung has
its very being in immoral abstractions, be they termed 'race',
nation, volk, ethnicity, folk, or whatever; and is defined by the
principle of inclusion/exclusion, by the separation and prejudgement
of human beings by abstract criteria. (2) Because such a
weltanschauung by its very nature is supra-personal, organized,
authoritative, dogmatic; and numinosity only lives, dwells, is
manifest - in the personal sense - by individuals leading or
inclining toward leading an empathic, compassionate, honourable,
life where there is no need of any authority, any judgement, any
criteria, other than their own, deriving from their empathy and
their unique πάθει μάθος.
There is thus, based on applying the moral criteria of The Numinous
Way, a complete rejection by me of National-Socialism - of whatever
kind - and an understanding of Hitler as a flawed individual who
caused great suffering and whose actions and policies where
dishonourable and immoral.
Conclusion
The Numinous Way is, and can only ever be, an individual way; a
non-political, non-religious, choice of individuals desirous of
developing and using empathy and hopeful of leading honourable lives
that do not cause or contribute to the suffering of living beings.
Lives where one of the greatest virtues - a manifestation of our
humanity - is considered to be a loyal and personal love between two
human beings, regardless of the perceived or assumed ethnicity,
nationality, social status, or 'sexual orientation', of the
individuals concerned. As Sappho wrote, over two and half thousand
years ago:
μνάσασθαί τινά φαιμι [καὶ ἕτερον] ἀμμέων...
στᾶθι [κἄντα] φίλος
καὶ τὰν ἐπ' ὄσσοισ' ὀμπέτασον χάριν [1]
As for me, my journey of learning, of self-discovery, of making
mistakes, of trying to acknowledge and correct my errors, of
interior change via πάθει μάθος, does not yet seem to be
ended.
David Myatt
January 30th 2012 ce
[1] Sappho, Fragments 147/138 [Lobel and Page].
My translation is:
Believe me, in the future someone
Will remember us ...
Because you love me
Stand with me face to face
And unveil the softness in your eyes ...