"Non serviam!" - "I will not serve", is known from literature as
Lucifer's declaration of his rebellion against God. We wish to
follow up on this tradition of insurrection and self-expression.
In modern times, the philosophy of the individual's assertion of
himself against gods, ideals and human oppressors has been most
eloquently expressed by Max Stirner in his book "Der Einzige und
Sein Eigentum" (English title: "The Ego and Its Own").
Stirner, whose real name was Johann Kaspar Schmidt, lived in a
time (1806-56) dominated by German Idealism, with Hegel as its
prominent figure. It is against this background of fixation of
ideas that Stirner makes his rebellion. Stirner takes down these
ideas from their fixed points in the starry sky of Spirit, and
declares all ideas to be the ideas of an Ego (original German
term: Einziger - meaning single individual), and the realm of
spirits and ideas to be the mind of the thinker himself. His
heaven-storming is total. Even the idealist tool - dialectic, and
the supreme ghost of Idealism, (Absolute) Spirit - are stripped of
their status of intrinsic existence, and are taken back into the
Ego itself. This is most clearly seen in Stirner's main triad:
Materialist - Idealist - Egoist. And the triad stops at its last
link. Any further progress cannot negate Egoism, for - progress
has been taken back into the individual, as one's - property.
For Stirner, the solution to the "alienation", or
"self-alienation" of Idealism, is in self-expression, or -
ownership. What cannot be one's own cause, the cause that is not
one's own, is not worth pursuing. As Stirner says "Away then, with
every cause that is not altogether my cause!"
This is the philosophical starting point for this forum. We wish
for discussions of philosophy and ideas as well as topics from
everyday life relevant to true egoists. We ask that postings are
not on-line ranting, but serious attempts to convey something of
interest and relevance.
This discussion forum was started as a companion to the Non
Serviam newsletter (see http://nonserviam.com/magazine/ and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_serviam ), but is
now a stand-alone forum only incidentally related to the magazine
by name, one of the owners, and the topic matter.
People subscribing to this list range from self-taught amateurs to
professors of philosophy, and so the interest ranges from academic
interest in ideas to the more practical and applied. Nothing more
will come out from this forum than is put into it. The only
synergistic effect we can hope for, is that of inspiration through
an environment of people discussing the same ideas.
This forum is not primarily aimed at confrontation, though this
surely is not barred, but at exchange of information. That means
that if anyone finds something s/he thinks will be of interest to
the members, s/he should feel free to post it.
Some examples of relevant topics are postings about how Stirner,
Nietzsche, Rand, Hegel, Steiner, Feuerbach, Zen Buddhism and
Discordianism relate to each other and to ideas about egoism,
freedom and self. Other examples are postings relating selfhood
and self-interest to political ideas like anarchism,
libertarianism or others - or how selfhood and self-interest
relates to psychology and other sciences, and to secularism as
well as to spirituality.
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