Community limits
Community limits. A critique of social radicalism is a work written in 1924 by the German philosopher Helmuth Plessner . In it, Plessner addresses the question of different forms of human coexistence.
To this end, he draws on the contrast between community and social life introduced by Ferdinand Tönnies . Plessner criticizes the advocates of a communal order, whom he accuses of social radicalism , and in contrast makes modern society and its opportunities strong. In doing so, Plessner gives society the preference over communal orders in the sense of Tönnies , mainly on the basis of anthropological arguments: first society offers people the necessary space and distance to others and themselves, from where they can redesign and try out themselves again and again. The community violates this basic human need by swearing him into a picture, a single idea.
Above all, Plessner wrote against the youth movements of his time and their tendency to strive for radical upheavals in social conditions via a “community of blood”, but also against the Marxist movement, whose utopia manifested itself in a “community of cause”. As a theoretical work, writing stands largely alone with the opinion represented in it in the Germany of those years. It was only rediscovered in the early 1980s and aroused wide international interest.
content
Problem and method of criticism
- problem
Under radicalism Plessner understands the belief that truly great and good is produced only by the decline on the roots of existence. Radicalism thus turns against the existing by opposing it with a natural ideal state. The existing is reality, existence, life, the factual, the facts, the being. Radicalism holds against them the spiritual ideal, the ought, the value. With this irreconcilable contradiction between spiritual ideal and actual existence, radicalism is essentially a dualism .
Depending on what radicalism sees as the root of existence, it can take different forms. If he sees the world as a mechanical structure (like the natural sciences), then he will demand sensible, goal-oriented and methodical procedures everywhere; he will become rationalism . If, on the other hand, he sees only the dull, instinctual and disordered at work in everything, then he will elevate these forces to an ideal and make them strong against reason, he will become irrationalism .
Both approaches, however, equally represent a dualistic view in that they see a gap between the spiritual and the real. This thinking has its origin in Christianity and the contrast there between flesh and pure spirit, fallen man and God.
The German problem remains the compatibility of idea and reality and instead of taking action carelessly and taking life playfully, the German is “difficult and everything becomes difficult above him, says Goethe (...) The German is proud of it to be the conscience of the world in his best men, but doesn't that mean playing spoilsport for the others too? ”His brooding disposition makes his mind the“ arena of the battle ”of an unachievable reconciliation between ideal and reality. Germans value the problem more than the solution. But if he tries to achieve this, then only with excessive exaggeration of discipline, method and drill: Here too the means are more important than the goal.
Social radicalism now sees in the community a natural order of relationships between people that is based on values, while society, on the other hand, is something artificial, in which interaction is violent and anonymous. The problem of social radicalism can therefore be reduced to the formula: "Can violence be eliminated in an ideal coexistence of people?"
- Method of criticism
Plessner develops the core of his criticism of supporters of communal forms of life on the basis of anthropological arguments, which are intended to show that the alternative between community and society is not a question of historical possibility, but rather represents a structural problem that cannot be overcome. First of all, the position of the opponent should be strengthened, but if it subsequently turns out that the communal way of life ultimately also has violent traits, the social radicalism is exposed as a lie. There is then no longer any reason not to recognize what is societal, and so it can then be asked how socially necessary manners (also on a political-diplomatic level) can be spiritualized and refined.
Between master morality and community morality
The abolition of inequality and the boundaries between people, which is aimed at in the community, means for Plessner a threat to people as such , who depend on boundaries, distance and a certain loneliness. For Plessner, the idol of the community is one of the weak and bad guys. The leaders of the community regularly fail because of their guilty conscience, because as leaders they occupy a certain position of power, which leads to inequality in the community. The only way out of this dilemma is to go to the extreme of amoralism, as propagated by Friedrich Nietzsche . Nietzsche's philosophy, however, bypasses the nature of man, who simply cannot get rid of his conscience, but at most suppress it. The suppression of conscience, however, only increases remorse and degenerates it.
For Plessner, on the other hand, true strength shows itself in the affirmation of society: “Whoever controls society because he affirms it is strong; It is weak who flees it for the sake of the community because he denies it. ”Plessner does not refer to a concrete social order of life (such as socialism / capitalism), but only to the abstract ideal of society.
Opposition to society can, according to Plessner, arise from two attitudes: one is essentially aristocratic ( gentlemen's morality ), its representative is Nietzsche, who puts the individual above everything, the other is socialist ( community morality ), its representative is Karl Marx , who puts the crowd above the individual. This threatens society with two diametrically opposed views. Only the youth movement succeeded in amalgamating these by combining love for the poor with Nietzsche's heroic and anti-democratic attitude. However, this only shows the natural radicalism of every youth who demands change and takes up every relevant thesis. So she forgets everything that is playful and is extremely serious.
Even if the consequences of industrial production and technology have proven to be serious problems in some cases, Plessner calls on us to nevertheless affirm technical progress for the sake of the possibilities it offers the individual as an "increase in the possible extent of our existence" (See also his work The Utopia of the Machine ). In the machine age, it is not enough to simply join in; the affirmation must be made consciously. However, this is only reserved for a small group of people: "The majority remain unconscious and should remain so, this is the only way they serve."
Technology and society (or civilization) are inseparable. If you expand the term technology, you can also call the manners a tool and a means. Wherever you step out of the community, they become necessary as something that stands between people - in the form of a mask , they make relationships impersonal . Those who approve of society will also feel the "longing for the mask". The social ethos (the affirmation of society) does not go against the existence of communities, but it is directed against the fact that the community should contain everyone and prescribe their attitude and behavior, if it is raised to a (political) principle.
Blood and cause: opportunities for community
A new alliance has formed between workers and citizens: the worker, as a materially disadvantaged person, sees society critically and joins together in communal cooperatives, while the citizen gets into an ethical conflict from the point in time when Western civilization takes on the technical mission of the whole World starts and thus imposes its lifestyle on it. This is how master and community morality of citizens and workers is combined. There are two types of community, the "blood" and the "factual community", in which both forms of morality are always shown.
The "blood community" is not necessarily a biological, but always an emotional community. If it does not arise from kinship, then it needs a ceremony to symbolically and ideally move the individual members to give up themselves. Their connection is based on affects and emotions, an intense attitude towards life, in short love . Since love cannot direct itself directly to something abstract as a whole, but only mediated via an object , it needs a charismatic guide to whom the “love rays” of the individuals can direct themselves. However, this love between everyone is always only a temporary state that occurs, for example, in the event of disasters or enthusiasm for war at the beginning of the First World War in 1914. To demand of him that he should become permanent, contradicts the essential inability of man for constant communal love. This shows the upper limit of the community .
The "community" is determined by abstract ideas, values and norms. It is rational and intellectual and draws its intellectual tools from the Age of Enlightenment . Their means is not war, but conviction . Their common bond is not love, but reason . It is impersonal, makes the theoretical claim to general validity and its practice is work for the realization of the idea. The belief that there is an equally good way of life for all people is derived from the general validity of modern science and so community of facts and science essentially belong together. However, the abstract ideals cannot be realized in daily life because they differ fundamentally from the reality of life. Life is short, improvisational and the freedom of the individual is limited by the time and culture into which he was born. In relation to everyday life, this shows the lower limit of the community .
This defines two negative boundaries of the community : "the indissolubility of the public and the incomparability of life and spirit." The former means that love never applies to all people permanently, the latter that abstract ideals can never be fully integrated into everyday life .
The Communism occurs in two forms of community on when nationalist fall for him the boundaries of the community with the bar of the "nationality" together as internationalist he propagates the infinity of a general sense of mankind.
The fight for the real face. The risk of being ridiculous
The community offers security for the individual, but at the price that they are completely open and unreserved towards all others. Security and unreservedness (openness) are ideals associated with the idea of community, but they can never be fully realized: Because people are spiritual beings whose original source or source can never fully emerge, neither for themselves nor for others. Because the soul is never solid and ready, but something that becomes eternal, there can never be complete harmony between two such potentialities on which community can be built.
This fact is historically conditioned, because only with advancing culture does the modern individual, the personality, develop. It is therefore not the physical demarcation between people, the supposedly inferior and egoistic body, which strives towards the formation of a community, but rather the soul-spiritual and historically grown characteristics of the individual. These, however, are not inferior; they are what make people as such. His spiritual fullness, his inwardness never comes to an end, but always urges you to overcome yourself. This constitutes the depth, the secret of the soul and therefore no soul can endure it when it is finally and firmly judged. In spite of everything, in order to recognize itself in its liquid flow, it needs the judgment of others. This creates an interplay between fixation and dissolution, which fundamentally determines people: ambiguity is the essential law of the soul.
Freud found a modern approach to this ambiguity - despite the lack of the first attempt - with psychoanalysis : in order to be able to do his day's work at all, a person must suppress certain problems. However, these emerge from the repression and are transformed into cultural achievements through the process of sublimation . But at the same time, people can reflect on their actions and motives. While the unconscious gives it strength, reflection and reason expand its range of action. In practical terms, too, the human being is determined by the ambiguity of the soul: "With regard to knowledge, the human being drifts in the antagonism of vanity and modesty, with regard to practice in the antagonism of naivety and reflection."
Human coexistence requires these two ambiguities; they make up the mysterious, undiscovered, veiled, which give the interaction with one another charm and atmosphere. The interplay of repulsion and attraction becomes most evident in the phenomenon of chastity , on which all sexuality and eroticism depend. It is this indissoluble nearness that makes up the psychic world of man.
- Ridiculousness
The above-mentioned double play of the soul results in the risk of ridicule. The human being is a double being of spiritual and physical existence and always wants to express his infinite soul in the finite body and this can never succeed completely. There is always a remnant of what has not been expressed and at the same time things are expressed that should actually be kept secret. You try to emphasize things and misjudge yourself, you speak honestly, but at the wrong time or in the wrong public. This disproportion then threatens to tip over into the comic if it takes place against a background of seriousness. What is honestly meant becomes kitsch if it cannot penetrate into the representation.
If the community does not save everyone from this ridiculousness beforehand, then the person has to assert himself. It can do so through pure ethics or pure religion. The latter are chosen by Christians who fight for their ideals but thereby expose themselves to ridicule. But while they know that they are in good hands with faith and God relieves them of the risk of being ridiculous, so to speak, only today does man stand alone and dare to take the risk of personality, which nobody can relieve him of.
Ways to Invulnerability: Ceremonial and Prestige
Social interaction with other people cannot be based on an overarching idea that can guide action; it consists of a lot of individual cases. Therefore, it is best to do justice to the others with a respectful behavior that playfully and gracefully masters all forms and conventions. This game takes place according to certain rules, the violation of which is punished by a loss of dignity and by embarrassing embarrassment. To avoid this penalty, the individual is allowed to show himself as little as possible. At the same time, however, intercourse must be carried out at a certain pace, which can lead to unintentional exposure if the schemata of etiquette are not mastered.
These schemata and forms of handling are the armor that protect the individual in agonal space against ridicule . They hide its individuality; it is only visible as a function holder of a social role that it plays. With regard to the expression, instead of armor, Plessner also speaks of a mask through which the person is generalized and from the private person to the official. By stepping back the individual surrounds himself with a nimbus . The nimbus is the sphere of an unreal, an illusion that surrounds the person. This makes the person aloof, which earns them attention and respect from others.
The institutionalized manners and roles form the ceremonial , they protect the individual, but leave no room for development. If the individual nevertheless wants to contribute as such, then it has to create an expansive power potential by means of prestige, i.e. through charismatic appearance, inflexibility, willpower, etc. These also create a nimbus and thus give the individual an individual invulnerability where the ceremony alone is only one formal bot. Now the individual can realize himself in the form of a work into which he lets his subjectivity flow, he can be active as a creator and thus enjoy the highest happiness of personality. This is a culture-creating activity that arises from the pursuit of power. In the work, the person objectifies and works beyond their finitude. In order for this to succeed, however, an inner mental tension is required, a build-up of the need for expression, which is then expressed in refined form through sublimation, moderated by the corset of consideration and manners. All of this contributes to the positive evaluation of the term civilization , because only in civilized society (and not in the cozy community) such creative-compulsive mechanisms work.
The logic of diplomacy. The hygiene of the tact
Diplomacy serves business, the balance of interests. Tact is for sociability. Diplomacy thus plays between "unrealized" persons, functionaries, civil servants and business people, while tact plays between natural persons. Diplomacy aims at agreement, tact at balance. In a functionally differentiated society (in the spheres of law, politics, economy, etc.), preliminary decisions are made in all these areas that can no longer be negotiated. Diplomacy and tact respect this.
Skillful diplomacy leads to solutions in which all negotiating partners win. Even diplomatic negotiations can almost achieve a result that would have been achieved by understanding and mutual indulgence. In diplomacy, egoism is sublimated as a civil, i.e. non-violent form of interaction. Diplomacy “is the art [that] [...] leaves the dignity of the other untouched and conjures up the inferiority of the opponent from his free resolution. [...] Diplomacy [...] means the game of threats and intimidation, cunning and persuasion. ”It does not know conviction, but trickery, since public interests are always irreconcilable: everyone wants their greatest possible advantage.
Tact is used to relax among people you don't know. Elias Canetti later describes the cause of this behavior in terms of mass and power with the archaic fear of the individual before being touched by other people. The top priority here is not to pretend to be at home in unfamiliar places and thus to bother others. Tact is considerate, one does not step too close to the other, is sensitive to avoid injuring the other. The tactful interaction does not measure the other by oneself. His tenderness shows respect for the other soul by never allowing it to come too close, but also never too far. In this sphere there is only protection, it is not about truth. In perfect application, the other does not even notice that he is being treated tactfully: tact then shows itself as naturalness.
Tactless is the expressionism in art, because of the uninhibited expression of social radicalism is the ethic of tactlessness, because he wants to tear down all barriers. Tactlessness means ruthlessness, unambiguity, deprivation of the soul, fanaticism of moral law, limitlessness, machine people. This is all about achieving a goal, a purpose, while tact itself is groundless . True kindness doesn't need a reason to act.
The utopia of non-violence and the duty to power
The non-violent union of all people in the spirit of brotherhood is a dream that can never be realized. The reason for this is that there is always a primary form of embedding for people, such as family, village, culture, language, which establish a communal sphere. However, this can never be extended to all people (including those living outside this room), as these in turn have their own embedded context. This impossibility marks the limit of the community. Society lies outside, as a public space with the manners described above.
The state has to guarantee compliance with the borders of both areas. On the one hand, the expansion of the community must not become a political program; on the other hand, it must protect the communities from the invasion of society. The state is thus "a systematized public in the service of the community, the epitome of security measures of the community in the service of the public."
The decisions in the state are made by the sovereign, he is the body that decides on the state of emergency (Plessner refers here to Carl Schmitt ). At the political level there can be no agreement (such as in the scientific discourse of physics), so decisions will always put one party at a disadvantage. From this arises the need for a final instance, which takes decisions in conflicts and, in order to come to a result in the general interest , takes the blame - the violence is delegated to people (who do not have to be democratically legitimized). It is important to acknowledge and accept this reality. One can only hope that the decision-makers will be “refined” by the office. Nevertheless: every decision can never be fair to everyone and always violates someone. Only the followers of the community ideal fail to recognize this.
The statesman also has the duty not to act according to his personal conscience, but to live up to his office. His excess of freedom must therefore be tied to a role in society that he preserves to play under all circumstances. This voluntary commitment is the motor of all history , because only when the rulers stick to their role and push ahead with what is necessary are major decisions made. That is why it can never be completely non-violent, even on a political level.
literature
expenditure
- Helmuth Plessner: Collected writings. Volume V, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-518-29228-5 .
- Helmuth Plessner: Limits of the community. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-518-29140-8 .
Secondary literature
- Wolfgang Eßbach , Joachim Fischer , Helmut Lethen (eds.): Plessner's 'Boundaries of the Community'. A debate . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-518-29141-6 .
- Kai Haucke: The liberal ethos of dignity: a systematically oriented problem story on Helmuth Plessner's concept of human dignity within the limits of the community . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2003, ISBN 3-8260-2510-5 .
See also
Footnotes
- ↑ Documented in Wolfgang Eßbach, Joachim Fischer , Helmut Lethen (ed.): Plessner's 'Limits of Community'. A debate . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2002.
- ↑ Collected Writings. V, p. 20.
- ↑ Collected Writings. V, p. 26.
- ↑ Collected Writings. V, p. 31.
- ↑ Collected Writings. V, p. 39.
- ↑ Collected Writings. V, p. 38f.
- ↑ Collected Writings. V, p. 41.
- ↑ With reference to the First World War, Plessner had Kaiser Wilhelm II in mind at that time , which later could also apply to Adolf Hitler .
- ↑ Collected Writings. V, p. 55.
- ↑ Collected Writings. V, p. 67.
- ↑ Collected Writings. V, p. 99.
- ↑ Collected Writings. V, p. 115.