GEGEN STANDPUNKT Psychology of the Private Individual Critique of Bourgeois Consciousness © GegenStandpunkt 2003–2009 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................3 The mistake of bourgeois psychology, and the object of a materialist psychology......................................................3 Part I. The moral individual — How does an abstract free will work?.................................................................................5 On theoretical and practical abstractions ......................................................................................................................5 The subservient use of free will....................................................................................................................................5 Chapter 1. The phony materialism of permissible success ...............................................................................................7 1.1. Psychology denies free will, thereby denying that subservience is the principle of the bourgeois psyche............7 1.2. Hegel's concept of free will as the idealism of being allowed ...............................................................................8 1.3. The individual's class position as the individualism of his worldview ..................................................................9 Chapter 2. The idealism of self-control that pays off .....................................................................................................10 2.1 Rule as the sum of good and bad opportunities ....................................................................................................10 2.2 Calculation and disappointment, comparison and criticism .................................................................................10 Chapter 3. Hypocrisy and complaining about the world ................................................................................................11 3.1. Striving for success in the name of the Good ......................................................................................................11 3.2 The one-sided benefit of hypocrisy: must, should, can, may................................................................................11 3.3. Separation of the theory and the practice of decency ..........................................................................................11 3.4. Decency as lived ideal: Politeness .......................................................................................................................12 3.5. Moral materialism. Envy and Schadenfreude......................................................................................................12 Chapter 4. The righteous person.....................................................................................................................................14 4.1. Self-confidence: The virtue of failure and pride in success.................................................................................14 4.2. Conscience: Shame and impertinence .................................................................................................................15 4.3. Practical feeling as the organ of prejudice...........................................................................................................15 The morality of pluralism in science ..........................................................................................................................16 4.4. The virtue of prudent submission: “Reason.” Heart versus mind, and vice versa ...............................................16 4.5. Virtuosos of good conscience: Nietzsche and the Christian individual ...............................................................17 4.6. Weltanschauung as an honorable substitute for knowledge. Superstition, daydreams and role models..............17 4.7. Morality philosophy-wise: Where would we be, then? .......................................................................................18 4.8. Moral mania in literature .....................................................................................................................................19 Part II. How the bourgeois individual proves himself in his homeland, capitalist society .................................................21 The “secret” of “second nature”: Accommodation.....................................................................................................21 Chapter 5. Bourgeois spheres of life as viewed by the righteous person........................................................................22 5.1. The democrat’s servile spirit: Self-confident championing of prevailing conditions ..........................................22 5.2. The citizen as Mr. Clean......................................................................................................................................22 5.3. Criticizing one sphere with the ideals of another.................................................................................................23 Chapter 6: Politics — Democratic servile consciousness...............................................................................................24 6.1...............................................................................................................................................................................24 6.2. Self-assured submissiveness: the political “we”..................................................................................................24 6.3. Constructive criticism..........................................................................................................................................25 6.4. Nation as sentiment and character .......................................................................................................................25 6.5. Radical dissent: The fight for the right to criticize ..............................................................................................26 Crime I: Terror as a just use of force, autonomously..................................................................................................27 6.6. Education for freedom and responsibility............................................................................................................27 Chapter 7: Job — Competition and performance ...........................................................................................................28 7.1. From the pressure to compete to the willingness to achieve................................................................................28 7.2. Materialism in competition: the hard worker’s claim to a fair wage ...................................................................29 7.3. How people cope with the results of competition................................................................................................29 7.4. The ideal of usefulness and the stages of life.......................................................................................................30 7.5. Crime II: The prohibited way to legitimate success.............................................................................................31 Psychology of the Private Individual 2 Critique of Bourgeois Consciousness Chapter 8: Private life — on happiness and its failure in pleasure and love...................................................................32 8.1. The ideal of compensation, and yearning for happiness......................................................................................32 8.2. Consumption and leisure time: The right to pleasure, in practice........................................................................33 8.3. The big compensation: Love as the right to be unconditionally understood........................................................34 8.4. New paths for proving true love ..........................................................................................................................36 8.5. Competition in love: “So test therefore, who join forever” (Schiller, Song of the Bell) .....................................37 PART III: From failure to self-destruction — The realm of psychology ...........................................................................39 Going-along-with-things as method ...........................................................................................................................39 9. Character.....................................................................................................................................................................40 9.1. Life is a struggle ..................................................................................................................................................40 9.2. How one forms a character ..................................................................................................................................40 9.3. A character at work..............................................................................................................................................41 9.4. Alternatives of dissimulation: Good and bad character .......................................................................................41 9.5. Ignorance as knowledge of human nature............................................................................................................43