"The Biocentric Worldview" is a collection of articles written by Ludwig Klages (1872-1956). The book is published by Arktos, a far right press. Since Klages seems to have been a bohemian and decadent, this is...interesting. But sure, he was far right!
I know next to nothing about Klages, but judging by Robert Norton's "Secret Germany", the editors of this volume are holding back the more colorful aspects of his life and works. Klages was a great admirer of Alfred Schuler, a half-crazed visionary who claimed to have the clairvoyant ability to get in touch with ancient Rome. Schuler had a weird psychological crush on swastikas and, apparently, boys. Indeed, his speculations about human salvation through hermaphroditism were really a cover for same-sex attraction in the form of pederasty. Yet, the editor of this volume refers to Schuler as a "profoundly learned Classicist"! Profoundly learned in Eros, perhaps?
Both Klages and Schuler were also anti-Semites of a virtually paranoid kind, with every opponent being branded a "Jew", or - to use Schuler's more exotic phrasing - a "Molochite". That being said, both men were also willing to concede that ethnic Jews who agreed with *them* (or interested them in some way) were somehow not really Jewish at all. This explains the curious fact that several Jews belonged to the "Cosmic Circle" with which both men were affiliated. It may also explain Klages' later collaboration with a Jewish-Hungarian scientist, Melchior Palagyi.
The texts in "The Biocentric Worldview" are difficult to summarize. Many deal with psychology, science and philosophy. Klages is a vitalist and self-proclaimed Romantic. His vision of society is hierarchic. War is seen as natural and good. People are born with innate character traits, and their physical bodies directly reflect them, a "rational" argument for why graphology and even phrenology works. The life force creates the bodies we deserve.
The main piece is "Man and Earth" from 1913, which could be seen as an early example of deep ecology. But then, deep ecology is presumably just the latest specimen of an older nature romanticism. Klages bemoans the destruction of the living environment (including the extinction of entire species) unleashed by the modern world. Nature is depicted as peaceful and harmonious, proven by the fact that many animals when first encountered by man were docile and trusting. Thus, Klages - somewhat surprisingly - does not see original nature as an arena for a unforgiving struggle for existence. Humans were originally part of nature or "life". Around the time of Classical Athens, something strange happened. A force Klages calls "spirit" appeared, entered humans and destroyed their character. "Spirit" is associated with so-called rational thinking, but also with willing. It seems to resemble Spengler's idea of the Faustian civilization.
But where does "spirit" come from? Its origins are supernatural and yet somehow mysterious. In another text, Klages associates it with Socrates, depicted as an evil foreigner and "Pelasgian". A wild guess is that "Socrates" and "Pelasgian" are really metaphors for "Jews". If so, "spirit" is really Yahweh.
Klages' intellectual hero Schuler was inspired by Johann Jakob Bachofen, who saw human existence as a struggle between a rational-patriarchal spirit and emotional-matriarchal ditto. The ideal was a Dionysian fusion between them, something Schuler wanted to accomplish through hermaphroditism (but really pederasty). Of course, Nietzsche also comes to mind with his ideas about the Apollinarian and Dionysian. Klages openly acknowledges Nietzsche as an influence. So did Schuler, who wanted to cure Nietzsche from his mental illness by dancing extatically in front of him (he never got the chance to actually test his theory). But I'm digressing. The point is that the idea of a conflict between Spirit and Life isn't original with Klages.
Klages connects spirit to progress, modernity, and capitalism. Not just Nature, but also folk culture, is destroyed. On a more disturbing note Klages (only a year before the outbreak of World War I) calls for war and destruction. It seems a return to the peaceful Eden can only go through a fiery cleansing...
Ironically, the Nazis didn't like Klages and his disciples, his ideas being attacked both by Alfred Rosenberg and the Völkischer Beobachter. Klages himself had moved to neutral Switzerland by this time.
I admit that I got a really strange feeling reading "Man and Earth". After all, a text bemoaning progress, capitalism and the destruction of nature while longing for a violent apocalypse could just as well have been written today as in 1913. We're either dealing with some really old complaints...or we are a century closer to the end!
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