All Things Are Nothing to Me
Page 7
Locke already criticized this in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding: “It is impossible that every particular thing should have a distinct peculiar name… It is beyond the power of human capacity to frame and retain distinct ideas of all particular things we meet with: every bird, and beast men saw; every tree, and plant, that affected the senses, could not find a place in the most capacious understanding.”21 Jorge Luis Borges brilliantly fictionalized this quandary in his short story, Funes the Memorious. The protagonist, Funes, remembers every particular thing, and thus does not grasp universals. This makes it impossible for Funes to truly think. Since, as Borges writes at the end of the story, “To think is to forget differences, to generalize, to abstract. In the crowded world of Funes, there were only details—almost immediate.”22
Stirner does not advocate this super-nominalism, as Leibniz once called the philosophy of Hobbes.23 He recognizes the problem, and seeks another strategy: to stop trying to think one’s way out of universals altogether. One cannot simply think or speak their way out of generalization, and thus, out of ideology. The solution can only be practical, as a particular orientation towards everything external to oneself. Such a practice will eventually be called consumption by Stirner. I will come back to this later.
Stirner’s text does not decide on what can and cannot be an individual. However, my aim is to extrapolate a consistent reading of Stirner’s argument, and the only way to do this is to take Stirner’s individuals as global phenomena, not limited to “human egos.” If this is wrong, then the rest of the text falls into the anthropocentrism that it so clearly derides. Furthermore, this interpretation opens up a pathway between the dead-ends of a debilitating overthinking and a mindless nonthought. To follow through on this reading, one would have to construct an ontology that extends the existence of singular individuals to all things; this is exactly what Spinoza does in his Ethics.
It is my contention that Stirner’s individualism should be read in the same way we read Spinoza’s individualism. It is an ontological statement about what there is, not a moral statement about individual persons. Stirner’s only fault lies in stopping his critique at the level of epistemology. In any case, it is possible to reconstruct an ontology that makes sense of Stirner’s views. Spinoza’s philosophical system describes just this.
Spinoza
What do we experience in Spinoza’s universe? Only singular things. How is that possible? In nature, there is “only one substance” and this substance is infinite in its attributes, modes, and essence.24 Every particular thing in the world must somehow be an immanent expression of this essence. There is nothing outside this substance and “there is no vacuum in nature.”25 But if there is no outside, then how can we still have a coherent idea of expression? For to express something, like an essence, there usually has to be an external or transcendent body, field, or plane to which or in which the expressing activity is directed. Any activity occurring in a closed system is contained absolutely within that system. Thus, expression in one substance would be a contradiction of terms.
To express an essence, however, is not to exhibit something in a directional or vectorial manner, but rather to manifest a certain logic in the internal organization of that object. A better word would be composition, not expression. For the idea of composition need not assume an outside, nor barely even an inside. All composition assumes is a pure relation between elements or variables which, when organized in a certain manner, retain a unique identity. To retain a unique identity is the defining property of a singularity. What is a singularity? In Book II of the Ethics, Spinoza makes the following definition: “By singular thing, I understand things that are finite and have a determinate existence. And if a number of individuals so concur in one action that together they are all the cause of one effect, I consider them all, to that extent, as one singular thing.”26 There are two main points here which should be dealt with separately.
First, singular things are finite, determinate individuals, which are, in Spinoza’s framework, finite manifestations or effects of an infinitely determined causal series. A body, a thought, an object, or anything meeting these two conditions qualifies as a singular thing. We experience the smell of a flower, the touch of another human being, the taste of an apple, the sound of a voice. In each case, we experience singular entities under different attributes. But these examples are too simple, for we assume that the singularity of an object is identical to its appearance as an individual body under different sensory impressions. Here, Spinoza’s definition can be of great help: the singularity of a thing is not just the transposition of its singular extended body into an individual identity, rather a singular thing can be any number of individual bodies which, in one action, collectively cause a single effect. At first this seems blurred. Are we not conflating causal motion with individual identity? In fact, that is exactly what we are doing, and it is nevertheless an incredibly liberating conceptual move.
By binding the meaning of “singular” to the meaning of “action” and “effect”, Spinoza allows plurality to be equally as significant as individuality in the determination of a singular thing. Decoupling the meaning of singular from the meaning of individual shatters the conception of identity as a property of an individual. An individual does not have an identity except in its relation to a series of causes and effects which are determined by other individuals, which themselves have no identity except in their relation to a series of causes and effects, and so on ad infinitum. The identity of an individual is not then based on an internal property, but on an external relation of action and effect. How can many things be one individual, and how can many individuals be one singular thing? Through their composition in forming a single effect, whether or not their individual causes are completely different.
Owners
Now that we have an account which can make sense of Stirner’s radical individualism without lapsing into a naive psychologism or an anthropocentric egoism, we can push forward. This interlude on Spinoza will have proven to be worthwhile in grasping the steps to come.
If individuality is a properly ontological category, then what distinguishing mark interrupts the homogeneity of individual beings so that we can recognize their differences? In other words, what is the individual’s status vis-à-vis other individuals? What separates individuals from blending into each other? From the point of view of ontology, nothing differentiates individuals except their concurrence into one causally effective action or another. But from the point of view of the individual, however, the situation is different.
For Stirner, individuals are distinct in their capacity to be owners [Eigner]. To be an owner is to be more than a bare individual; it is to recognize one’s individuality, to be self-consciously, explicitly singular. In Hegelian terms, such an individual is not merely in-itself, but for-itself. An owner is one who marks out the singularity of their existence by owning their properties, and not being enslaved to them. The category “property” casts a net as wide as the term “object”, in fact wider, for it also means qualities, characteristics, and styles. An owner is one who determines their own relation to an object such that they, in the end, can annul it. If one’s property is incapable of being annulled, then it is not property per se, but fixity, alienated property, alienty.
Owners, in other words, make themselves individuals. An owner is not formed through a higher calling or a given cause. To be an owner is to individuate oneself through the appropriation of one’s own conditions and the dissolution of everything alien to them. One who submits to another’s property forfeits their ownership in that regard, and concedes their power. With Spinoza, we could say that the owner’s ability to make something its property, its individuality, is its ability to cause and determine a certain effect. If an owner cannot appropriate through its action, then its individuality is in question.
Since there are always generalities, spooks, and fixed ideas floating around in our heads (for we all deal in language and thoughts), there is
only one way to ensure complete ownership and complete individuality. We must own ourselves. If we are able to determine our entire being such that we are willing and have the power to dissolve it as a whole, then we have made ourselves into property; we have made ourselves singular individuals. Whatever relations we have with property, owned or subjugated, we at least own ourselves, such that our being is secure. If we do not own ourselves, then whatever desire, style, or end—that is, whatever property—we may control, there will always be an excess, out-of-control, beyond it. Losing property and losing oneself does not only occur when one is careless about oneself, but also when one is too caring for oneself. Selfishness is just as much a false idol as unselfishness, for both attitudes determine our activity separate from our own individual development. They are forms without content:
A purpose ceases to be our purpose and our property, which we, as owners, can dispose of at pleasure; where it becomes a fixed purpose or a––fixed idea; where it begins to inspire, enthuse, fanaticize us; in short, where it passes into our dogmatism and becomes our—master.27
As finite, limited individuals, we cannot account for all, and hence we must account for ourselves to make up for that lack. But how we account for ourselves is just as important as why.
Property
The individual as such is indiscernible. Only in one’s role as an owner does individuality manifest itself for-itself. Being an owner means having a certain relationship to property such that one has the final say in how that property holds.
But if owners are only defined by their relation to property, and if all relations to property by the owner are fundamentally the same, then we still have not really individuated one owner from the next. We have elicited the owner from oneself, and can distinguish whether one is an owner or not, but we have not determined how distinct owners differ. If the ability to be an owner is structurally the same for all individuals, then the difference between owners can only emerge on the side of their property. In other words, it is not just the ability to produce a single effect that individuates an owner, but the history of such effects that one has caused as well. Therefore, what the owners own is as significant as how one owns it.
One of Stirner’s most frequent targets—besides God, the church, truth, the state, and liberalism—is humanity, or man. The idea of the “human being” is not significant in itself; it only affects an individual if one makes it into one of their properties. In that sense, it becomes one of the innumerable qualities which sets the owner apart. To only notice one’s humanity is just as one-sided as only noticing one’s gender. For Stirner, “That we are human is the least thing about us, and only has significance in so far as it is one of our qualities [Eigenschaften], that is, our property [Eigentum]. I am indeed among other things a human being, as I am a living being, therefore an animal, or a European, a Berliner, and the like; but he who chose to regard me only as a human being, or as a Berliner, would pay me little regard indeed. And why? Because he would only have noticed one of my qualities, not me.”28 To be more or less than human is one’s own prerogative. An owner, then, is dependent on its properties for its singular differentiation, not only for its singular identification. The collection of unique properties, or the series of unique effects, marks the history of an individual as an owner apart from others.
“What then is my property?” Stirner asks. “Nothing but what is in my power! To which property am I entitled? To everything which I––empower myself. I give myself the right to property in taking property for myself, or giving myself the property owner’s power, full power, empowerment.”29 Property does not itself name the object which I own, but rather the relation of power between the object and myself mediated by others. Property is mine insofar as the power to appropriate it—or better put, expropriate it—is mine. For property only becomes one’s own through taking. Whether the object expropriated is a material thing or spiritual idea, anything can become my property. I have the power to make it so, and power, as a relation, is ontologically indiscriminate. “Let me claim as property everything that I feel myself strong enough to attain,” Stirner announces, “and let me extend my actual property as far as I entitle, that is, empower, myself to take.”30
To own property is thus not a right to Stirner, but an act of self-empowerment. Property is always self-empowering because the power to expropriate is in me, not something granted by others. Neither law nor family nor religion grants rights to property. What backs up the claim to ownership is the power to defend what’s mine, alone or with others.
“Everything over which I have power that cannot be torn from me remains my property.”31 But my power can be yours as well when we join together to expropriate the property of another. By expropriating external things and making them mine, I expand my capacities for action, and thus expand my self. I gain no legal right to exclude others from my use of things. All I acquire is the objective confirmation of my capacity to act in the world, to have an effect on my surroundings, to consume, dissolve, and negate the solidity of my given conditions, and put them to new uses. I acquire, in short, control over my own alienation.
Stirner’s materialist view of property as a relation of power is much closer to the realist theories of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau then it is to the rights-based theories of Locke, Kant or Hegel. Yet, whereas all the above political philosophers seek to tame the violence of property through a coercive state apparatus with authority, Stirner recognizes that such an authority only displaces the power of expropriation to a more abstract, alienated level. Thus, he urges individuals to take for themselves whatever they can, to empower themselves through the expropriation of property instead of limiting themselves through the renunciation of power.
Stirner’s concept of power, however, remains ambiguous. I have power, I take power, I am power—in acknowledging my power over myself, I own myself. In owning myself, I become my own property, capable of being disposed, and thus powerless. “My power is my property. My power gives me property. My power am I myself, and through it am I my property.”32 I am all and nothing—creator and created, owner and owned, possessor and possessed, split between my power to determine myself and my capacity to be determined. There is no simple unity that transcends this division of the I; it is reproduced through the continual process of expropriating and being expropriated. The task of Stirner’s unique one is to own and develop the means of expropriation, and thus, the means of individuation. This does not take place by means of rights but through my power: “Right—is a wheel in the head, put there by a spook; power—that am I myself, I am the powerful one and owner of power.”33 To sacrifice power for right is to voluntarily submit to rule by alienation. The point, however, is to make right into one’s property, and consume it.
Nietzsche
Nietzsche has a theory of power as strange and central as Stirner’s. The cryptic idea of the will to power names the elemental force chaotically weaving together Nietzsche’s universe. Above all, this is the power to interpret, to act, create, and become something individual, unique. The proximity of thought between Stirner and Nietzsche has been a topic of debate since the 1890s. Eduard von Hartmann—who Nietzsche read and criticized in his On the Use and Abuse of History for Life—publicly accused Nietzsche of plagiarizing Stirner (as Marx accused Stirner of plagiarizing Hegel).34 The answer to that question is still up in the air.35
Nietzsche’s early essay on History is significant here for a number of reasons. First, the title itself mimics Stirner’s understanding of what defines property, namely, use and abuse. Nietzsche’s analysis is a story of the consumption of history as property, its use and abuse by different owners. Second, Nietzsche’s criticisms of Hartmann’s book, Philosophy of the Unconscious, deal exactly with those sections where Hartmann mentions and criticizes Stirner. In contrast to Hartmann, Nietzsche advises that each person should seek out the individual that they are, and not relegate oneself to a herd-mentality. More than that, the individual should create their own g
oals and meaning. Nietzsche writes,
But do ask what you, the individual, are there for, and if no one else can tell you then just try sometime to justify the meaning of your existence a posteriori, as it were, by setting yourself a purpose, a goal, a ‘for this’, a lofty and noble ‘for this.’ And perish in the attempt—I know of no better life’s purpose than to perish, animae magnae prodigus, in attempting the great and impossible.36
In one of Stirner’s similar moments of ethical clarity, he describes how one should use up life “like the candle, which one uses in burning up.”37 Later in the same essay, Nietzsche praises the Greeks for owning themselves, for “taking possession” of themselves, controlling their needs, their properties. Nietzsche:
The Greeks learned gradually to organize chaos by reflecting on themselves in accordance with the Delphic teaching, that is, by reflecting on their genuine needs, and letting their sham needs die out. Thus they took possession of themselves again… This is a parable for each one of us: he must organize the chaos within himself by reflecting on his genuine needs.38
Nietzsche’s thinking on individuality, power, and self-possession did not end there. In his final notebooks, spuriously gathered together as one single work under the title The Will to Power, the question of the individual occupies him even more.39
For Stirner, every individual as an owner is also the result of the series of properties it has consumed. For Nietzsche, “every individual consists of the whole course of evolution.”40 If we allow a wide interpretation of consumption and property, then Stirner’s statement is already evolutionary. To Nietzsche,