All Things Are Nothing to Me by Jacob Blumenfeld

Author:Jacob Blumenfeld [Blumenfeld, Jacob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780996639
Publisher: John Hunt (NBN)
Published: 2018-12-14T05:00:00+00:00

Thinking and speaking are fundamental properties of the human being. Fine, Stirner retorts, but I do not want to be just human. To be merely human is to adapt oneself to a generic category, an empty container in which the dead weight of stale tradition and social convention predetermines the limits of one’s thoughts and the meaning of one’s words. Stirner rather wants to eat language and chew on history, to masticate and spit out half-baked concepts, to consume and be consumed by others in his own peculiar way. To step off the rails of thinking involves withdrawing from common patterns of thought, dissolving their autonomous power, and letting the unthought come to the fore. Whether this involves releasing the unconscious, confronting the uncanny, or speaking the taboo, Stirner is open to the infinite possibilities that arise when one stops trying to force oneself into processed containers of meaning.

Consuming language, or putting it to use as one’s property, means freely creating, negating, and developing words and thoughts at will. To balance thinking with thoughtlessness, at Stirner recommends, means circumventing the confines of petrified concepts, freeing oneself from the traditions of past categories, classifications, and identities. Thoughtlessness is not some mystical disengagement from life. On the contrary, it is an acute attentiveness to oneself and to the unconscious presuppositions of one’s thinking and speaking. For only through disciplined focus can one avoid becoming ensnared in one’s own head. To abstain from the temptation of certain general ideas takes work, perhaps training. In another era, Stirner might have even been called a Stoic.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.