Anarchy often stands for anti-authoritarian ideas and rejection of hierarchy. But consider for yourself: the rejection of authority and hierarchy is Christian slave morality, is the rejection of power. The empowerment of cynical anarchism stands for the opposite. Cynicism is not anti-authoritarian, cynicism is authoritarian anarchy.
Cynicism is Empowerment
„There is a great difference between being a follower of anarchism and being an anarchist. The follower of a doctrinal building can be a philistine; a change of character is necessary, or at least a turning inside out of the whole person, so that finally the inner conviction becomes something lived that appears.“
Gustav Landauer: Reise-Eindrücke, Der Sozialist, 1897
Cynism stands for unlimited self-realization, called parrhesia, i.e. confidence in the natural potency, the power development of the individual.
The only goal of virtue, which the late Nietzsche aptly calls “joy in resistance,” is eudaimonia1Eudaimonia translated literally means to be surrounded/destined by Good Spirits. Exactly this happiness is meant when the ancient Greeks speak of eudaimonia., realizing happiness in the here and now, not in a hoped-for afterlife. Cynics do not know any morals about this to which they feel bound. We derive our ethics directly from God and therefore do not have to worry much about it. Unlike the existentialists, whose whole concern is morality, our whole concern is self-realization.
But it also follows from affirming power that there are powerful and less powerful people. And that we also affirm these differences, instead of trying in a socialist way to level such differences. The affirmation of power is therefore logically the affirmation of authority and hierarchy. The word hierarchy comes from the ancient Greek ἱεραρχία hierarchia, composed of ἱερός hieros (“sacred”) and ἀρχή archē (“leadership, rule” or “beginning”). And even our cynical affirmation of hierarchy derives from the power of the strongest, from God. Cynicism is Authoritarian Anarchy, because we derive our freedom from the greatest authority, God.
Keep reading: freedom is belonging, not independence
This hierarchy, understood as the current dynamic balance of powers, is constantly threatened by the claim to consolidate power through rule.
Warriors: Kings and Slaves
War is the father and the king of everything. It makes some gods and some men, some slaves and some free.
Heraclitus, 53
If you follow the link to fragment 53 of Heraclitus, which I always recommend, because I link for reasons, not out of boredom, you will notice that I have made a small but crucial change in the translation of the original Greek into English. There (and also in the common German translations) it says: “some he has made gods, and some men; some slaves and some free.” Here Heracles is understood from a position of peace, war is in the past, he has brought about or produced something and thus achieved a being, a stable dominion. But this corresponds to a blatant misunderstanding of Heraclitus, for whom “everything is in flow,” everything is in the process of becoming.
Hierarchy, for Heraclitus, must be understood dynamically. Power relations, hardened into rule, what we call “peace,” Heraclitus rejects with great force. Homer, for example, whom he recognizes as a pacifist, would have to be beaten up and run out of town. Most philosophers neglect this affirmation of eternal becoming in this quotation and prefer to argue about the meaning of “war” in Heraclitus. For us, it is enough to note that whatever Heraclitus understood by war, he does not mean today’s nihilistic state wars.
Diogenes and Alexander: The Meeting of Two Kings
To be a king or a slave is thus to be understood dialectically, dynamically, for Heraclitus and also for us cynics. The famous anecdote in which the powerful warlord Alexander the Great meets Diogenes expresses this. Here, in truth, two kings meet and two slaves. Diogenes is king because he is happy without desire. Alexander cannot give him anything that would make him dependent on him. So the “slave” Diogenes, who lives in the barrel, is sovereign, just like Alexander. And Alexander is a slave because he himself or precisely as the great Emperor is subject to constraints.
Read also: Cynics fear no sin no hubris
He declares that if he does not have to be Alexander, he wants to be Diogenes. Alexander thus freely confesses here that he is not a sovereign, but a slave. And this is exactly what Diogenes confirms by saying that if he does not have to be Diogenes, he still wants to be Diogenes. The real, free king, therefore, is not Alexander, but Diogenes. The dynamic power of Diogenes and Alexander is what we mean when we say, Cynicism is Authoritarian Anarchy.
Against democracy
The cynic and romantic Novalis romanticizes the ideal king after the revolution, the fall of kingship in France. And important here is the word “ideal”! He writes somewhere, that a reader who does not understand that he is not talking about the historically real kingship, but about the ideal king, should put the book down. He would understand nothing anyway.
Keep reading:
What is Novalis concerned with here? He writes:
All people are to become fit for the throne. The means of education for this distant goal is a king. […] The most healthy constitution under a maximum of stimuli represents the king, – the same under a minimum of stimuli – the real cynic. The more equal both are, the more easily and unchanged they could confuse their roles, the more their constitution approaches the ideal of the perfect constitution. So the more independent the king lives from his throne, the more he is king.
Translated from: Novalis. Gesammelte Werke (p.44 and p.52). Jazzybee Verlag.
The ideal king or tsar or chief does not stand for domination but for power. His function, as with Jesus, who also called himself king in a cynical sense, is to inspire succession, not rigid worship. The leaders of Western democracies are not allowed to show their power, if they have it at all. They stand for rule. A chancellor or president is more prisoner than sovereign.
So the way of the cynic, as an anarchist, is to become an ideal king, not a good citizen.
Read more:
- 1Eudaimonia translated literally means to be surrounded/destined by Good Spirits. Exactly this happiness is meant when the ancient Greeks speak of eudaimonia.