Philosophers in Rags :: We dive deeper, and come up muddier.

Exodus from Being. Kurnig's Neo-Nihilism as Buddhist secularized spirit of early Christianity

(Translated from the German: https://www.tabularasamagazin.de/exodus-aus-dem-sein-kurnigs-neo-nihilismus-als-buddhistisch-saekularisierter-geist-des-fruehen-christentums/)


“When man will disappear and (exactly) how, anthropology has so far remained silent on this.” (Kurnig)

An atheist recommends the procreatively skeptical, unholy spirit of early Christianity and explains his motivation as follows: "I regard human life as something altogether unpleasant, as a misfortune. No unborn child would demand it. I have not been able to bring myself to take a passive role, to simply watch the terrible misery." This is a long-forgotten author who formulated and propagated his neo-nihilism under the name "Kurnig" - a pseudonym he may have chosen because he had to earn his living as a doctor. Christianity is indeed ambiguous, as it does not always speak clearly enough about the reprehensibility of childbearing…” However, the following applies: “After Christ, humanity would soon cease to exist.” But then there was a departure from the spirit of original Christianity: “The Jewish optimistic spirit and the desire to bring children into the world dominated…” Kurnig can therefore hold up to his Christian contemporaries a key finding by David Friedrich Strauß (1808–1874), who published his sensational work “The Life of Jesus, critically edited” in 1835-36 and who wrote in “The Old and the New Faith”: “So we must confess: we are no longer Christians.” Because Christianity, which was pessimistic and skeptical of reproduction in the face of the imminent end of the world, had long since been colored optimistically by the subliminal influence of Jewish beliefs, there are actually no longer any real Christians who, according to Luke (20:34f), would have to sign: “The The children of this world marry and are given in marriage, but those who are counted worthy to enter that world and the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage." Paul also knows: "The time is short" and writes to the Corinthians: "It is good for a man not to touch a woman." (1 Letter 7:1) There is not much left of the procreatively skeptical spirit of original Christianity in Kurnig's accurate diagnosis. While Jesus called for people to follow him and leave the family behind or even to disregard it, the family has long been considered a core Christian value. It is quite impossible to locate where Judaism ends and Christianity begins within the history of monotheistic religion. But it is certain that Christianity has long since been de-pessimized and "re-Judaized."

In addition to original Christianity, older Buddhism is a pillar of Kurnig's neo-nihilism, which is intended to achieve the following: "Neo-nihilism is destined to become the area of ​​reconciliation between the nihilistic elements in the teachings of Buddhism and Christianity on the one hand - and the optimistic spirit of culture... on the other." With his brand of pessimism, Kurnig could have passed himself off as an optimist in a certain sense. Against all talk that life is just the way it is, he quite rightly states: "The pessimist does not admit that the tragedy of human life on earth is something inevitable..."
In all this, the term "neo-nihilism" is somewhat unfortunate, insofar as Kurnig himself says of the nihilists (and anarchists) that they can be called downright conservative compared to his teachings, since they are content with palliative social changes. In fact, Kurnig could be said to have said: critics have only ever wanted to change society – but the important thing is to abolish it. Kurnig sees the abolition of society as a complete depopulation initiated by enlightenment and accompanied by education. In this regard, he sees his writing as both a foundation for moral theory and as propaganda directed against “procreation”. If he had called his position “anti-procreationism” rather than “neo-nihilism”, using his preferred term “procreation”, we would have a term available to us today that describes what is meant more clearly than the established term “antinatalism”, which played a role in population policy before it became a moral theory.
The word “depopulation” used by Kurnig inevitably has connotations of war or disease. Kurnig, however, is an antimilitarist who sees war as a crime that almost always goes unpunished and for which people are prepared through a wrong education: "The soil on which the war between nations takes root and grows is the education of the child." Reprehensibly, he says, "it is preferable to brand children as warriors, criminals, and to prepare them from the outset for the wars that they will have to fight when they grow up." On the one hand, the educational system should be "softened" in the spirit of antimilitarism, and on the other hand, it should be reformed to prepare for childlessness.

Education
The main aim of Kurnig's neo-nihilism is our exodus from existence, the extinction of humanity. In order for this to happen, pedagogical action must begin early: "An order of things calculated to extinction soon naturally requires different laws, different education." Kurnig's pedagogical principles are suitable for clearing up a widespread misunderstanding, namely the idea that anyone who speaks out against the creation of new people must have something against children. On the contrary, we read in Kurnig: "Treat children very considerately, respect immaturity. Educate children in the spirit of brotherhood, of peaceful international rapprochement, of harmony: cultivate in them a taste for the study of abstract sciences and especially of the fine arts - the only means of making them forget, perhaps... this miserable world into which the error or misdeed of their parents has placed them." We can perhaps summarize Kurnig's pedagogical principle as follows: It is right to give all existing children an anti-militaristic and anti-procreationist education. It is wrong to bring children into existence in order to then delight in how they thrive under the educational measures. He paraphrases: "I am bringing you into existence (says one educator) in order to have the pleasure of seeing what you are capable of and what you are not. In doing so, however, I am burdening you with a great deal of suffering, and ultimately a horrible catastrophe of death..."

The catastrophe of death
Philosophically, the history of humanity is sometimes presented as a cosmic adventure, and the existence of the individual in literature as an adventurous journey. For Kurnig, however, "the death of a person is such a horribly ugly adventure... that nothing can make it beautiful or less ugly." And he says: "...the horrors of this one hour would be enough to make you lose your whole life." Unfortunately, Kurnig does not give us any further explanation as to why the "ugly catastrophe of death" that ends every existence cannot be compensated for by a fulfilled life. To counter this, one could point out that dying people are so overwhelmed or preoccupied by the imperatives of their failing organism that they hardly have any psychological or physical strength left to wallow in reminiscences.
What Kurnig explicitly rejects is an argumentative move that draws the conclusion from the "desire to endure the terrible final catastrophe as late as possible" that life must be beautiful after all. No, rather, the final chord is anticipated as so dissonant that we do not want to hear anything about it for ourselves and therefore always want to reject it and postpone it. Even people struggling to continue living when they are close to death are not evidence of a prevailing affirmation of life: "At this moment you are almost numb with pain and fear of death, your senses are almost fading - you are ready to admit that you were always wrong if you just live, stay alive..." The desire to continue living at any price begins when reason gives way to fear of death, when what makes a person what they are is overwhelmed by the biological radicals of the body. Such desires to continue living are bionomically extorted - not autonomous, but inhumane.

Suicidal cynicism
To those who hurl at an anti-procreationist of Kurnig's type: If you don't like it here in existence, then go over there, to the afterlife!, Kurnig knows how to respond: "Once in your life you want to see the dark catastrophe of death postponed as long as possible, but never being born... would have been a thousand times better for you." To demand of a person who finds themselves at the mercy of their organism's demands for continued existence that they should seek suicide if they find continued existence unpleasant is a level of cynicism that is hard to surpass. Moreover, according to Kurnig, there is important work to be done before the inevitable death occurs: the spread of propaganda directed against procreation.

Never having been
Now Kurnig exaggerates when he says that each of us would have preferred never having been 1000 times. Has he ever conducted a survey of 1000 people? And he certainly knows how difficult it is to jump over the shadow of one's own existence, that is: to think of oneself as never having been without thinking at the same time that one has missed something. Kurnig calls this the "main thing": "...considering never having been born, and then one's own never having been born! The absence of one's own, highly important person on the world stage, the chair on which one sits, the bed in which one sleeps, empty..." In this respect, the "average person" resembles the Greco-Roman, optimistic philosopher. – What Kurnig fails to mention is that, particularly through the works of the Greek tragedians and their continuing influence, we have been handed down classic wishes of never having existed in the form of “Oh, if only I had never been born!” and that Jakob Burckhardt even generally attested that the ancient Greeks had a pessimistic attitude to existence.

Who put us in mortal and life-threatening danger: the parental taboo
With the parental taboo, Kurnig addresses a powerful psychological obstacle that runs counter to his depopulation morality: "that love and respect for our parents command us not to criticize our life, which we received as a gift from them... let alone try to shake it off as an ugly gift..." How does Kurnig argue in view of the powerful parental taboo? He holds fast to the anti-procreationist truth that he has once recognized and records the conflicts to be expected from the breach of the parental taboo between children - who see the gift of life as a burden - and their parents "as a major part of the suffering that has fallen to us." He recommends that parents arm themselves against the natalist uproar emanating from him (Kurnig): "'He who puts himself in danger perishes in it,' as the saying goes. And someone who fathers a child and thereby puts its life – or rather death – in danger should be happy and in good spirits?”

Vedic contradiction - Asia as a harbinger of complete depopulation?
As mentioned, Kurnig finds a model for his moral theory not only in original Christianity, but also in Asian religiosity. In this context, he even believes that Buddhists and Hindus are the harbingers of a future depopulation of the earth. In his reply to a review in the "Pionier" of September 22, 1897, he writes: "... the great majority of the earth's inhabitants pay homage to the pessimism of the gentle depopulation of our globe." Here Kurnig makes the cardinal error of not distinguishing between celibate Hindu priests or Buddhist monks on the one hand and their lay followers on the other, who rarely intend to forego offspring. Moreover, Kurnig registers elsewhere what we can call the Vedic contradiction. Far from praising the ebbing of humanity, Buddhists and followers of Hindu religions follow the maxim that Kurnig identified as problematic: "Beget a child so that it may be released from this existence - in other words, one should do something - in order to make it undone." Indeed, a Buddhist who does not believe in a unified soul substance would have difficulty arguing against Kurnig's irony. A Hindu who believes in souls might respond: Although the parents who procreate are responsible for a person's death, without a human body his soul cannot find salvation.

Counterarguments
Kurnig presents a considerable series of objections to our exodus from existence:
1. One could consider that no one has looked behind the curtain that conceals the essence of the development of the world as a whole. According to this, depopulation should be postponed until further notice because we still need to understand the world as a whole better. But science has already lifted the curtain and found nothing worth perpetuating.
2. One should not interfere with God's work - but this presupposes a faith that Kurnig does not have. Unlike Hans Jonas, who as a philosophical theologian should formulate that we should not abandon God.
3. The following hypothesis anticipates one aspect of what was later called “deep ecology”: “Nature needed people as an integral part of its being…” Kurnig calls the perpetuation of suffering for the sake of an imaginary natural system, of which humans are supposed to function as an integral part, immoral and sinful.
4. In one of Kurnig’s numerous replies to reviews we read: “Ref. thinks that I have not cited anything to prove the statement that in life suffering outweighs pleasure. He overlooks the fact that I have had (and am having) the experience personally – isn’t that enough for him?” Kurnig overlooks the fact that he cannot draw conclusions about others’ feelings from his own sense of existence and that no one can be forced – to put it bluntly – to recognize their own objective misfortune. Today, cognitive psychology confirms that cognitive distortions are often the parents of our beliefs. An example of such a cognitive distortion is a systematic misevaluation, which Eduard von Hartmann once called "memory glasses": This is a psychological mechanism that causes the summarizing memory to put negative events of the past in a better light. The existence of Hartmann's memory glasses, confirmed by cognitive psychology, is suitable for exposing the rampant optimism as an - involuntary - self-deception caused by our psychological constitution. - This is of utmost importance for the evaluation of Kurnig's anti-procreationism. After all, he says: "The real driving force that keeps human life going everywhere is optimism."

Kurnig's position
An author, Kurnig said of himself, who further develops the basic Christian and Buddhist teachings will be "kept quiet as far as possible." This prophecy has come true. Not least because "Kurnig" is apparently a pseudonym. While his writings were discussed in numerous reviews at the time, today he has been erased from cultural tradition, except perhaps for a mention in Jean-Claude Wolf's book "Eduard von Hartmann. A Philosopher of the Gründerzeit." He deserves better: For we can see in him the forefather of a secular antinatalism which, unlike Schopenhauer's tendential antinatalism, manages without metaphysics of the will. Kurnig's reference to Schopenhauer's theory of the will can only be found in the wording, since in his case the "blind will" corresponds only to the reproductive drive, the desire to continue living and the mechanical, unconscious reason for the creation of the world as a whole. In this way, Kurnig anticipates a type of antinatalism that could be called modern, but which reached its peak in the second half of the 20th century: in the French-speaking world, this is represented by texts by Philippe Annaba (who, before the rise of moral-theoretical antinatalism, speaks of antiprocréationnisme) and Théophile de Giraud; in English, by works by Herrmann Vetter, David Benatar, Jim Crawford, Thomas Ligotti, and Sarah Perry; in the Spanish and Portuguese speaking areas, by authors such as Julio Cabrera and Rafael Tages Melo; in German, by texts by Günter Bleibohm and Nicole Huber.
In Kurnig, we must pay tribute to a thinker who, some time before those mentioned above, left Schopenhauer's metaphysics of the will behind him - a thinker that held the anthropofugal Eduard von Humboldt under its spell. Hartmann explicitly rejected antinatalism!, because the original reason, the continuing unconscious, would produce a human type again through evolution. Kurnig was different, who managed to break through to a groundbreaking secular antinatalism: "The only possible progress of the whole lies in the way of stopping child production - as I said, the gentle depopulation of our globe. Everything that benefits a gentle, rapid and definitive depopulation must be supported. That will be the morality of the future."

Kurnig's collection of texts "Neo-Nihilism. Anti-Militarism - Sexual Life (End of Humanity)" was published in 1903 in a second, enlarged edition (including replies to numerous reviews) by Max Sängewald (Leipzig).

I don't know how or why this world came into existence,but it is quite clear to me that it was a tragic event.Everyday probably thousands of men and women decide to play "God" and bring about a new human being into existence.


One thing that came to me as a surprise while reading about Blavatsky was that she realised quite clearly life consists of suffering for the most part.While she did not place much stock in the modern dogma of Physical Empiricism,she was far from a typical theist(even the Buddhist kind).
She detested praying to any deity and almost never did.
She married twice.Once when she was only seventeen and the second time when a suitor threatened to kill himself if she didn't.
Most probably slept with neither of them.
She loved to roll her own cigarettes.


As regards this country,I think one must coin a concept called Indo-Pessimism.What I mean by that is simple-the population will keep ballooning,a fortiori,the work force.

Take care.

That Arthur Schopenhauer's work had such an influence is even suggested in the science-fiction of Colin Wilson's The Mind Parasites, a book that I had found for 25 cents at a public library that sold used books.