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MAX STIRNER AND THE CHILDREN OF THE FUTURE

Peter Nasselstein

If atheism would be generally common religion, including all of its offspring, would be annihilated and eradicated: no more war because of it; no more soldiers because of it; no more gruesome soldiers! Nature, before contaminated by the poison of the sacred, would regain its rights and its purity. Pacified humans, now deaf against any influencing, would follow only the spontaneous voice of their authentic egos, the only one which one cannot ignore unpunished and which leads one by exercîze of pleasant virtues to bliss and happiness.

La Mettrie (2:66)

1. The Humanization of the Child

Reich's project "children of the future" was very simple: to educate children from the very outset in such a way that they become (or rather remain) capable of being free until, after some generations, mankind has freed itself completely of serfdom, i.e., the inability to be free.

Already a century before, Stirner had deplored that, while an animal "becomes real" by living it up, the child is not allowed to be himself but has to become a "human" and must "make real" the corresponding concepts. In him an "internal beyond" is put up, an absorbed world of fixed ideas, which first he is not allowed to dissolve and, finally, he no longer is able to dissolve because to whom once moral was imprinted becomes released never again. He becomes rigid whereby his life is stolen from him - which is nothing but that: a constant dissolving in the stream of time (4:373).

Of course the child requires all possible intellectual stimuli, i.e., the contact with "ideas" one should, however, leave it up to him what he makes of them. For the very act of thinking and speaking he needs the "truths" of man set down in words. These "truths," although they exist only in the mind, are just as present as the things of the external world. "The imagined exists as well as the non-imagined: the stone on the road exists and my conception of it exists, too. Both exist only in different spaces: those in the airy space, this in my head, in me, for I am space like the road" (4:383). In that case it has to apply that likewise, as once man subjected his environment and made it subservient, also the internal world, the world of thoughts and concepts, must submit completely to the power of man, to the individual human being. Just to fall asleep he must be able to put everything out of his mind, i.e., to sweep aside "ill-mannered and self-willed" all ideas and concepts as if they would be nothing (4:375).

And just as one does need concepts for thinking, one also must be able, in order to be able to think, to let them go. Thinking requires that one becomes thoughtless and speechless in any moment. It is the "restless withdrawal of all solidifying thoughts" (4:342). Reasonable thinking in touch with reality is possible only if the "idée fixe" constantly is on one's disposal. Not the thought, but the owner of thinking, is preceding this thinking. It does not have a detached and independent existence, which tyrannîzes those possessed by thoughts. But from the outset rational thinking is prevented by a dire combination of ideas and feelings. Feelings of reverence, deference, subservience, and quivering at illusionary ideas like "God" or "the moral" are entered into the child.

Possessed by drummed in thoughts, he is blind to the immediacy of the world of objects and unable to master them. Therefore to the, as Stirner expresses it, "healthy nature-son" he looks like a clumsy and foolish odd who helplessly stumbles through the world, his head shrouded in mists (4: 381). Instead of listen to himself the child gets his thoughts "from above." Therefore "freedom of thought," which one grants him later when he has become grown-up, is just an empty word as, for instance, "freedom of digesting" (4:385). This despicable lie is called "democracy."

If the child is to really come of age, the childlike ill-bredness and self-willedness would have to be granted the same right of development as the childlike thirst for knowledge. But instead of promoting, beside the knowledge impulse, also the "will impulse," the self-will of the child is broken. The child shall "get along" (contraction) with this, our insane world, this ghostly "world of ideas," and shall literally never again "stand up" (expansion) (4:354). He shall duck his head. His courage (Mut), i.e., the ability for insurrection, is to be broken and bowed to "humility" (De-Mut).

2. The Owner of His Own and the "Appointed"

The humanized children, young persons, and finally alleged "grown-ups" (who actually, however, are not out-grown but "in-grown") are only able to rebel in a torn, contradictory, and impotent way against the existing "possessed" conditions which are reproduced in this way again and again, yet. Therefore "revolutionaries" are hardly more than decoys, informers, and double agents! Stirner's opposing model is the "insurrector" who, as owner of his own, does not need to define himself by the fight against the prevailing. The insurrection flows from internal sovereignty which is based on "non-possession." As sovereign of his internal world he withdraws the lifeblood from the prevailing insanity by leaving it and rising above it like, for instance, ghosts disappear if one shakes oneself awake and comes to reason again.

Only mad ones ("revolutionaries"), possessed by strange "in-spirations," worry about "the cause of mankind" and other illusionary chimera. The "nature-sons," who enjoy themselves, abandon themselves like animals to the stream of life, however. Like the "swinish" animals they are concerned only about their own pleasure, never about "the cause." They are like unspoiled children: "Children, however, do not have sacred interest and know nothing about a 'good cause.' All the more they know what are their wishes and how they can attain them which they consider as well as possible" (4:392).

Who is not alienated from himself carries out in each case his own deed, which only by this authenticity is a real act. It is always the "appointed" masses who act stupidly, irresponsibly, and without sense of reality. Objectively, respectively "impartially," can only be the individual egoist not the "party follower" (4:260). The owner of his own does not confound himself with his "appointment," is no thought but incarnate. An illusory "self-confidence," which arises from an "appointment" or "reputation," is not important to him but solely his "self-enjoyment". He is "'called to' nothing, has no 'appointment,' and no 'purpose,' as little as a plant or an animal has an 'occupation'" (4:366).

In the "real nakedness," "divested of all what is alien" (4:153f), the authentic, the "incarnate me" shows up. This "living me" puffs away dead ghosts, whole "peoples." This "unbridled me," i.e., what we are originally and will always remain in our "secret inside" (4:219), cannot desist from being criminal since there are "only criminals against a sacred" (4:224). Crime is his life.

Being an "unholy," "barbarian," "natural human" (4:263) the owner simply does "what he will keep on doing." He carries his law in himself and lives accordingly. He is on the other side of illusionary ideas like "obligation" or "justice" and is, nevertheless, no "abyss of haphazard and lawless impulses, longings, desires, passions," no "chaos without light and guiding star," but an animal, which, like any other animal, too, in its "nakedness and naturalness" follows its drives, i.e., not the voice of conscience but the "voice of nature" (4:178f).

Above such "incarnate humans" nothing exists: not "humanity," not "justice," nor any other of these ghostly ideas which, by their holiness, would lead the incarnate ones into "spiritualization," would take away their innocence and would extract the life from them. In their living, "unholy" body surge and pulsate "the totality of their thinking and acting in continuos movement and rejuvenation." While with those, who are faithful to their convictions and remain imperturbable, these convictions solidify, as it were, as rigid body (5:92).

The proximity to Reich becomes also evident, when Stirner speaks, in connection with the legislation in the state, of the fact that by past expressions of will the will is quasi solidified, which turns a former "strong-willed" into someone without an own will, a "weak-willed," who is restrained in his "streaming" and his "dissolution" (4:215). As Stirner describes the release from the suffocating conceptual frame of civilization reminds of orgone therapy, completely: "A tug does to me the service of careful thinking, a stretching of the limbs shakes off the agony of thoughts, a jumping up hurls the nightmare of the religious world off the chest, a shouting hooray throws off the load of many years. But the tremendous meaning of thoughtless rejoicing could not be recognized during the long night of thinking and faith" (4:164).

The Enlightenment should have been such a "stretching of the limbs" but, instead, man became only more involved into the world of meaningless concepts. The revolutionaries were not a bit better than the parsons: they, too, crammed heads and hearts with nonsense about conscience, obligations, laws. They, too, were only earthly representatives of celestial ideals - not a bit better than "those who seduce and corrupt youth, those who eagerly sow the weeds of self-contempt and God-admiration, those who silt up the young hearts and stultify young heads" (4:179).

Of course, the child is no longer required by "liberal" society to "devoutness, God blessedness, and respectableness" according to the slogan "Who humble himself will be risen." But particularly the "liberals" insist, after the Age of Reason, on a good education and the improvement of the educational system. "For, how could be achieved their liberalism, their 'liberty within the borders of the law,' without discipline? Although they do not educate to the fear of God they demand, nevertheless, strict "fear of man," and by discipline arouse the 'enthusiasm for the true appointment of man'" (4:89).

3. Idealists

German Idealism was about replacing the old Jewish and Paulinic belief in independent individuals, who are able to sin to a changeable, moody God, i.e., to an "other world outside of us," by an unchangeable "other world inside of us." The "Atheist" Fichte spun some yarns that, as soon as man "annihilates himself purely, completely, and into the roots," God remains as condensate of the soul, as it were. "This self-destruction consists of the recognising insight into the finite individuality as a mere chimera" (1:110).

That is the principle of all so-called "Enlightenment" which is hardly more than a further internalization of what, up to then, was not completely internalized, yet. God in the sky is abolished but, all the more, man is, according to Feuerbach's philosophy, loaded with those "predicates," which before were attributed to God. True, religion is, according to this philosophy, a dangerous illusion but, therefore, all the more morality has to be the basis of social life. Accordingly Stirner sees a worsening instead of improvement: once one trained the masses to religion but now in enlightened times they have to be concerned with "all human." In this way the "training" became ever more general and comprehensive (4:365).

Fortunately all idealistic efforts to get man, by insight into his own vainness, out of his irrational entanglements and to make out of him finally a true moral, reasonable, pious humane human, must fail because of "the impregnable me-ness, the own nature, the egoism" (4:373). In view of this stubborn worldliness of human nature, the "unrestrained me" in our animal "secret inside," already mentioned, perhaps those idealists proceed most effectively who project an image of being "materialists" and militant atheists. They are, as it were, "sheep in wolf fur."

In order to save our "sheep culture," e.g., the two Feuerbach-disciples Marx and Freud brought the farthest from culture and "dirtiest" ranges of our material and sexual existence to bear just in order that the "beyond in us" is not touched by any means. We shall learn to master the anarchic economics and the anarchic "drive economy" (the "Id") - and leave the idealistic "super-ego" untouched. Accordingly Marx accuses Stirner that he, in an obscurant manner, "really (believes) in the rule of the abstract thought, of the ideology in today's world, he believes in his fight against the 'predicates,' against the terms, to attack no more an illusion, but the real system of rule." Thus neglects Stirner, according to Marx, the real, materialistic basis of life (namely the necessity to produce) and in this way patches up the social system of rule, resulting from it (3:276).

That is the same litany which all "materialistic" Leftists started up to today nearly with the same words. It looks completely similar with the Freudists who reproach Reich for misjudging the complicated "polymorph-perverse drive structure" of man. However, one should not be softened up by this "materialistic" wolf fur: Marx, Freud, and their followers are only concerned that the "predicates of God" are not questioned. These alleged representatives of the "Enlightenment" want that the "real ruling powers of the world" are not violated and that morality may celebrate new triumphs.

Thus, in an ingenious way, they continue a "class warfare from above" like before them the parsons and philosophers a la Fichte fought it. Anyhow, for Stirner, social suppression is based on the rule of the holy ideas. Via education in the family the "mental hierarchies" continue and settle insoluble inside man. The child is to become conscious of the "holy" and to spy upon the "drives of nature." An "internal police" is set up (4:97). Accordingly the, since their child days "trimmed," masses act for the interests of their suppressers and expose those to an universal mobbing who are impudent enough to own themselves. "Only who denies his ego, who practices 'self denial,' is agreeable to the people" (4:220).

The leftist "people's liberators" continued to solidify the hierarchy by replacing the "God of the individual" by the "God of all" (4:158). This "collectivization" ran in three stages - the liberal, the social, and finally the "human":

Before the beginning of this three speed "emancipation movement" the moral instances were still persons (parents, the "national leader," etc.) and corresponding delusions (e.g., "God in heaven"), which one owed personal loyalty but, in contrast to the conservative, the "progressive" liberal (about this term see Political Irrationalism from an Orgonomic Point of View) does not take orders any more - he obeys impersonal laws only.⁽¹⁾ This "progress" flows from the structural rebellion of the liberal against personal authority, - just to submit to the "impersonal ruler" all the more unreserved (4:118f). The, at last, rather all too human God turns into "objective" ethics, and flexible personal dependence becomes the unyielding "rule of the law."

After its restriction by the liberals the self-will looks for refuge in property. But this bastion of the self-will soon is razed by the socialist who, unlike the liberal, is not content to waive the legal differences but also wants to tackle the material differences. Not only that nobody is allowed to give orders "self-satisfied" but, also, nobody shall own something with which he could exemplify his peculiarity. Everything is to dissolve in general property. In this way society itself becomes a kind of "highest being," on which we depend like infants and to which we owe everything (4:135). The return to the family - respectively a caricature of it: "social coldness" is to be driven out!

If the personal possession is taken away by the socialists ("expropriated"), only peculiarity remains as last line of defence of the self-will. Therefore "humanism" (which corresponds to the old Communism and to the new "Political Correctness") finally must eliminate each self-willed opinion, really all personal characteristics, the own history, so that nothing remains but a human or, like young Marx expressed it, "a perfect example of the genus." The "emancipation" leads into complete incapacitation: not even the own point of view remains. With my unreasonable opinion, my unreasonable "faith," also my God would remain existing. Therefore I must accept "reason," renounce my politically incorrect "prejudices," and accept the "general human faith," the "faith of reason" (4:141).

Religion becomes the cult of society. "Therefore one has only then good prospects to erase religion fundamentally if one antiquates society and all which flows from this principle" (4:347). That makes the "atheism" of the communists and psychoanalysts ("culture [= the society] has priority") an absurdity, - an underhanded absurdity.

4. The Association

Education brings forth the "healthy," i.e., normal character who armours himself against life. A human being, who is able to devote himself to life, would rise from a new, life-positive education. Since the character of a society depends on the character of its members (4:231), the product of such an life-positive education, namely, the "unique one," would replace the present society by the "association." The two terms explain each other.

One strikes "uniqueness" if egoism is reduced to the substantial. Each human being is "unique," of course, exactly as each grain of sand is "unique." Man becomes the "unique one," as Stirner meant the term, if he is not only "unique" according to his acts and his being but also considers himself not as a mere "specimen" but as "unique" (4:406). The unique one is the conscious egoist, "the egoist in agreement with himself," i.e., he "feels himself," came to his senses, is at home in himself. Self-contact!

While the exchangeable and therefore, from the viewpoint of his fellow men, "healthy character" creates a "well-regulated society," the "association" of the self-willed solitaires is not such a rigid formation but eternal communication, an "incessant intercourse." This intercourse between humans is prevented by the oh so "social" society which only can exist at expense of the unique one, whom it degrades to a mere specimen, an exchangeable "office bearer." In it they are not allowed to be "self-willed" but must be another, i.e., play their role as soulless robots.

These conditions are of inexpressible perversity. One just consider that the civilized society member, instead of loving in order to find his animal pleasure in the love, "loves" out of noble unselfishness. If his opposite does likewise with him - "we would have the ideal pair of a marriage of fools: two humans who have taken it into their heads to enjoy themselves in the other one unselfishly, to love the other one each out of pure self-sacrifice" (5:221). So frustration must grow and thus hate - hatred of what is not "human" in the person opposite, not exchangeable but particular and unique.

In this variety of "love" not the concrete person is loved but ghosts, like "Jesus" or "the human being," who live in that person, while the real, un-repeatable individual is regarded just as "dirt" (4:27) which is pursued with, in Stirner's words, "dull mercilessness." The person, who "loves" in this abnormal way, "considers it praiseworthy and essential to practice mercilessness most harshly and abundantly; because the love for the general ghosts command him to hate the non-ghostly, i.e., the egoist or individual; that is the meaning of the famous manifestation of love one calls 'justice'" (4:321). Stirner: "You love the human being, therefore you torture the individual human, the egoist; your love of man is torture of man" (4:325).

Those pretenders who abound with "love" are, in reality, hard-hearted and intolerant. In their callousness they resemble, to use an example by Stirner, that robber "who, according to the measures of his bed, cut off or dislocated the legs of his captives." The "bed," according to which the representatives of "humanity" cut to seize humans, is the concept of "Good": the certainty that "it serves the villain right" is the sum total of their sympathy (4:325). The present society and all "alternative" social utopias are such Procrustean beds in which the "criminals" are tortured to death and the living is crucified.

In the association the peculiar unique ones are safe from the uncontrollable outbreaks of "humanity." This so completely different nature of the association is expressed when Stirner says, in connection with the above quotation: "I love humans, too, not only individuals, but everyone. But I love them with the consciousness of egoism; I love them because love makes Me happy, I love because loving is in My nature, because I like it. I do not know 'the dictates of love.' I have sympathy with each feeling being, and their agony torments, their pleasure refreshes me too" (4:324). Full of consternation he asks his critics, who accuse him of "unloving egoism," what should be so "egoistic" in being isolated, anyway. What, for all the tea in China, should be so egoistic to do without the pleasure of social intercourse and love? (5:180).

The egoists, sure of themselves, meet because a pleasure shared is a pleasure multiplied. While the association is thus based on pleasure, which everyone aspires (expansion), so that the association functions smoothly by itself (self-regulation), the moral society is based on sacrifice (contraction) which everyone flees instinctively. For this reason no society can ever function free of conflict and organically. It must be held together precariously and artificially by principles, not to be questioned, and has to constantly fight the pleasurable subversive intercourse between its members tooth and nail. But by this it severs its own bio-energetic roots incessantly. This unavoidable dilemma, in which throes it is, becomes, on the one hand, evident in its almost desperate calls to its members for "social commitment," - on the other hand, however, it has to take care that these individuals do not have intercourse with one another unconcerned, without "higher supervision and mediation," possibly get up to mischief and hatch "criminal" plots (4:249).

Conversely, however, the unique one and the association is dependent on society because not the association is the "natural federation" but the family, the clan, the speech community. They form the natural "original society" (4:349) - just think of ape hordes. Stirner is not so naive that he proceeds from "me-s," who fall, as it were, into the world and then immediately are able to act independently and self-assured and gather in associations on their own initiative. Rather the quite involuntary society is the natural state. The group comes first, only then the individual. The group forms the cultural topsoil which makes the development of individuals and associations possible in the first place. That extends from the emotional and physical basic supply of the child up to the acquisition of language and manners: the basic conditions of each own self-feeling.

In the course of education along the innate impulses, which must be fed and satisfied, comes the acquired knowledge which quasi transforms into an "impulse." Stirner speaks of "unconscious knowledge" and the "instinct of the mind." He mentions tactfulness as an example (5:93). He admits expressly: "I owe a dept of gratitude to the education centuries acquired for me; I do not want to throw away and not give up anything of it (...). The experience that I have control of my nature and I am not to be the slave of my longings shall not be lost to me; the experience that I can vanquish the world by means of education I paid too dearly for to forget it" (4:374).

By friendships, exchange of goods, and other forms of pleasurable intercourse, the one, who matured in nature and spirit, gradually come off the original society of the family and joins associations. If one looks at everyday life, one sees hundreds of such partly fast passing, partly continuing groups interested in egoistic pleasure: Children, who meet for playing, circles of friends, sexual relationships, etc. (5:204).

From these associations two different kinds can come from: the original society, i.e., the family, or, due to the character deformation of the members of the association, secondary societies: the notorious "obsession with one's club," guilds, political Parties, the State and other such "holy" creations. These are died associations in which the incessant intercourse was brought to a standstill (4:342) - and these are grotesque caricatures of families. Reich has described how humans, out of pleasure-anxiety, flee from the "associations" into a substitute-family. Be it a sect or a whole State (the "people's home" of the Democratic Socialists or the "racial community" of the National Socialists), in which the homeland embodies the mother and the "leader" embodies the strict, fair, and good-natured father. Thereupon is based the anti-capitalism of the red and black fascists today.

5. Stirner's Relevance to the Present

Exactly as in our "secret inside" the "unrestrained me" continues to live, and gives life to even the most armoured human being, also in society the associations continue to function and maintain the artificial existence of this corpse. It is a spark of life which must be constantly fought by society because of the association's "criminal" nature which is trained at the holy ideas. This fight was so perfected as a result of the "Enlightenment" that, meanwhile, it spreads to the basis of all human life, so far still untouched to some extent, i.e., the family, even the bonding between mother and child, thus to the "original society" which is no association - and none must be! At his times Stirner could still, without saying, scoop from "nothing," i.e., the "creative thoughtlessness," the physicalness, "nature,"⁽²⁾ while the generation growing up at present literally falls into the "nothing" and accordingly can only produce an internal vacuum - nothing own. They do not feel themselves -, have no self-feeling, are no unique ones but - zeros.

Increasingly the disintegrating families become loose "associations" and parents shift the oppressive responsibility to "society," e.g., by transferring to the school ever larger parts of the task of education. Even to "convey a sense of right and wrong" shall be the task of the teachers! In their one-sided, close-minded, bigoted egoism, in their diseased self-craze, these parents regard the handling of their children as a bare act of taming and restraining, only. The children's uncomfortable self-will is to be broken, as with circus animals, so that they become easy to handle and no longer stand in the way of "self-realization" of the parents. The primary impulses of the child, who is "getting on your nerves," interferes with the satisfaction of the secondary impulses of the parents!

And how does one restrain wild animals? One "carves up" their natural egoism by playing off one drive, fear for instance, against the other, hunger for instance. Exactly the same happens with children who are no longer educated but are fixed down by way of vicarious satisfactions. To one group of impulses one appeals while the others are suffocated. The result is a "deceived egoist" who does not know any authentic joy, i.e., does not satisfy himself as a whole (Stirner speaks, as mentioned, of "self-pleasure") but only a split off portion of his personality, a "longing." A passion controls him, for whose satisfaction he would sacrifice everything else (4:81f). Like a pervert he does not live himself completely, i.e., as a whole, but always only separated and therefore grotesque partial aspects of his being. By his instinctless, fetishist, foolish, brutal behaviour (= secondary drives) he gives egoism a bad reputation. Basically he is, similar to the "revolutionaries" of past days, just an agent provocateur.

This, as Reich called it, "impulsive character" is a weak-willed slave of his impulses. He neglects himself, has no ambitions for himself (5:123). An association with him is sheer agony. An "intercourse" impossible. Stirner could still assume that it has only advantages if children detach themselves from their parents and step into free exchange with their peers. Today the influence of the children of the same age is so negative that responsible parents should refuse to send their children to public schools. The kindergartens already are populated by "instinctless" little monsters who are completely alienated of nature and culture, e.g., they hardly know their native language, let alone the most fundamental social techniques. With the smallest impulse delay hell breaks out of them.

The non-tamed, the owner of his own, hears himself in his wholeness, i.e., both his "impulses" and his "mind." Accordingly he can act instinctively and rationally - only who hears to oneself completely is "hearing," i.e., "reasonable" (4:68). Who perceives himself, i.e., has contact to his own self, acts freely (i.e., "egoistically") and at the same time reasonably (consciously, i.e., "socially") (5:124). Contact! The contactless impulsive character is, thus, far less owner of his own as commpared to the inhibited character described in the 1. section. Both are products of the "humanization" of man, whereby the impulse-inhibited was a result of the half-hearted efforts of the conservative "to shape humans;" the impulsive was a result of the consistent "socialization," which the enlightened liberals implemented: "The training became more general and comprehensive."

What to do? A future worth living lies not in the further realization of unrealistic ideas, whether they are conservative or "progressive," - "for realities does not matter much to the realisator, what is all important to him is that they are realizations of the idea" (4:408f) -, but in the liberation of the pleasurable intercourse between humans, i.e., in establishing contact! Only the association will be able to save social life, - which was and is carved up and atomized once by the religious and today even more devastatingly by the "enlightened" and oh so social society. Only the association can create the framework for sound original societies. These families and "communities" will again and again deliver their offspring in an eternal pulsation afresh into functioning, alive associations, - in which the lovers find each other. Similar conditions one finds everywhere in the animal realm.

Literature

Brumlik, M.: Deutscher Geist und Judenhaß, München 2002
La Mettrie, J.O. de: Der Mensch als Maschine, Nürnberg 1985
Marx, K.: Die deutsche Ideologie, In: FRÜHE SCHRIFTEN, Zweiter Band, Darmstadt 1971
Stirner, M.: Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, Stuttgart 1981
Stirner, M.: Parerga, Kritiken, Repliken, Nürnberg 1986

see also Bernd A. Laska's
www.lsr-projekt.de

The above serves as introduction to the essays about orgonomic sociology and orgonomic political economy.

Footnotes

(1) Stirner says that the pagan "old," "who saw Gods everywhere," did not pray, unlike the "new" (the mystical Christians), to spirits, i.e., to mere ghosts, - for "Gods do not lower the world to an appearance and do not spiritualîze it" (4:37). But to the Christians and their "enlightened," mechanistic descendants "in nature only the 'eternal laws,' the spirit or the reason of nature, are the true life of nature. Only the thought, both in humans and in nature, lives; everything else is dead! The history of the spirit must end up in these abstractions, the life of the general or lifeless. God, who is spirit, alone is alive. Nothing but the ghost lives" (4:94).

(2) His "nothing," on which he grounds his cause, one can only understand by way of "negative theology": "One says of God: 'Names do not call you.' That applies to Me: no term expresses Me, nothing, that one indicates as my nature, exhausts Me; it is only names" (4:412). A "positive," i.e., specifying statement is impossible. That has nothing to do with sterile "emptiness" but everything with creative "abundance."

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May 22, 2007

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