Quote Of The Week

“By democratism I mean the principle that the preservation of a maximum number of human beings is the goal of all positively valuable activity. Above all, it excludes a between the different parts of mankind, which would mean that the fortunes of these parts concern the primary solidaritywhole and that different individuals, nations, and races are solidarity with the whole to different degrees. For such “solidarity” would presuppose that the unity of life is a primary quality which precedes the parts and inheres in them, though with varying intensity.

Thus the principle of summation is in contradiction with the principle of solidarity. Both in idea and feeling, it entails a fundamentally different relation between the individual and the community. Under the sway of the principle of solidarity, everyone knows and feels that the community as a whole is inherent in him–he feels that his blood is the blood which circulates in the community, that his values are part of the values which permeate the community. Here all values are based on solidarity of feeling and willing. The individual is the community’s organ and at the same time its representative; its honor is his honor. This material inherence in the community is now replaced by the notion that the community is only the product of the interaction between the individuals. The communal values are supposedly created by adding up the values invested in the individuals. The individual values circulate merely through conscious communication and instruction, or by conscious recognition and ‘agreement.’ To put it more simply: the ‘community’ and its structure is replaced by ‘society,’ in which men are arbitrarily and artificially united by promise and contract.

In fact, ‘society’ is not the inclusive concept, designating all the ‘communities’ which are united by blood, tradition, and history. On the contrary, it is only the remnant, the rubbish left by the inner decomposition of communities. Whenever the unity of communal life can no longer prevail, whenever it becomes unable to assimilate the individuals and develop them into its living organs, we get a ‘society’–a unity based on mere contractual agreement. When the ‘contract’ and its validity ceases to exist, the result is the completely unorganized ‘mass,’ unified by nothing more than momentary sensory stimuli and mutual contagion. Modern morality is essentially a ‘societal morality,’ and most of its theories are built on this basic notion. Thus the principle that each man’s responsibility, guilt, and merit is limited to himself and his own actions–the negation of all primary ‘co-responsibility.’

Wherever a ‘community’ existed, we find that the fundamental forms of communal life were endowed with a value far superior to all individual interests, to all subjective opinions and intentions. Every violation of these ‘forms’ led to punishment or proscription, irrespective of the individual’s subjective intention and without any regard to his happiness or suffering. Thus marriage, whatever its empirical forms may be, is considered as an objectively holy ‘bond’ which needs no justification before the spouses’ happiness or misery, before their mutual intentions and feelings. It is a sanctified form through which the generations pass, not an instrument of individual pleasure and happiness. In ecclesiastical language, it is a ‘sacrament.’ Whenever there is a real community, the forms of life have an intrinsic value on which individual interests, joys, and sufferings have no bearing. This valuation disappears with the rise of ‘society’! Modern philosophy since Descartes declares all ‘forms’ in nature to be mere syntheses in consciousness, thus denying their objective reality. In the same way, it makes the value of ‘communal forms’ dependent on the sum total of individual happiness. Therefore these forms are always accessible to ‘reform,’ and instead of respecting them, one feels free to change them arbitrarily. Another consequence of this basic attitude is the predominance of the principle of majority in politics and the state. In the communities, the will of the whole is manifested and revealed in the will of those who are the ‘noblest’ birth and tradition. Now, however, the will of the majority supposedly constitutes the will of the state.