Han Ryner
Encyclopedia
Jacques Élie Henri Ambroise Ner (7 December 1861 – February 6, 1938), also known by the pseudonym
Han Ryner, was a French individualist anarchist philosopher and activist and a novelist. He wrote for publications such as L'Art social, L'Humanité nouvelle, L'Ennemi du Peuple , L'Idée Libre de Lorulot; and L'En dehors and L'Unique of fellow anarchist individualist Émile Armand
. His thought is mainly influenced by stoicism
and epicureanism
.
), Department of Orán, French Algeria
in a modest religious family. After the death of his mother, he abandoned Catholicism, associated himself with Freemasons and started having an interest in social ideas.
He published 2 novels in 1894–1895 and also later started working as a journalist. After that he took a teacher position but struggled in having to fit in in such a disciplined environment. He becomes a prolific literary writer.
In 1896, he adopted the pseudonym "Han Ryner" and started writing for such magazines as L'Art social, L'Humanité nouvelle of Augustin Hamon, L'Ennemi du Peuple of Emile Janvion and L'Idée Libre. From here he started collaborating in the important individualist anarchist magazine L'EnDehors and L'Unique of Émile Armand
.
In 1900 he wrote the essay Le crime d'obéir (the crime of obeying) and in 1903 he wrote the essay Petit manuel individualiste, in which he presented his anarchist individualist doctrine influenced by classic Greek stoicism
in the works of Epictetus
. By the 1920s his thought starts having an important influence in Spain within individualist anarchist circles especially through the translations of his work by Juan Elizalde. Han Ryner started writing in Spanish individualist journals such as Ética, which already had an important influence of the thought of Ryner. The Brazilian individualist anarchist Maria Lacerda de Moura
took the task of making his philosophy and writing become known in the Portuguese
-speaking world.
With the First World War
approaching. Han Ryner embraces pacifist and anti-war positions and promotes conscience objection
. In his anti-war activism he collaborates with Émile Armand
.
He campaigned for the liberation of Eugène Dieudonné in 1913; for that of Émile Armand
during the war; for the mutiny in the Black Sea, and for the Italian-American anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti and for the Ukrainian anarchist Nestor Makhno
. Radical anticlerical, adheres to the World Committee against War and Fascism. He also opposed World War I on pacifist anti militaristic grounds. He was a rare case of an anarchist participating in the Félibrige
. He died in Paris on February 6, 1938.
and epicureanism
. From this first position he shows a tendency to fatalism towards the pains of life and those produced by society. He wrote in "Mini-manual of individualism", "The Stoic Epictetus
courageously bore poverty and slavery. He was perfectly happy in the situations most painful to ordinary men." He then emphasized subjective will as a power which individuals can resort to.
He defined individualism as "the moral doctrine which, relying on no dogma, no tradition, no external determination, appeals only to the individual conscience". As models of individualists he names Socrates
, Epicurus
, Jesus
and Epictetus and so these persons exemplify what he defines as "harmonic individualism". For example, he admires from Epicurus his temperance and that "he showed that very little was needed to satisfy hunger and thirst, to defend oneself against heat and the cold. And he liberated himself from all other needs, that is, almost all the desires and all the fears that enslave men.". From Jesus how "He lived free and a wanderer, foreign to any social ties. He was the enemy of priests, external cults and, in general, all organizations." From these individualists as he defines them he distinguishes "conquering and aggressive egoists who proclaim themselves to be individualists" such as Stendhal
and Nietzsche.
Han Ryner, as well as fellow French individualist anarchist Émile Armand
, regarded individualist anarchism above all as a way of life. He regarded that the individualist act must be in accord with his ideas and he calls that "virtue
". For him, disinterested virtue creates happiness which for him meant feeling oneself free of all outside servitudes and in perfect accord with oneself.
In relationships with others and things outside the individual he saw "Every person is a goal, an end" and from this he saw that he can "ask people for services that they will freely accord me, either through benevolence or in exchange for other services". He defined society as "a gathering of individuals for a common labor." From society's evils he advocated developing individual resistance towards building up indifference. He understood happiness as something that can only be reached through oneself and sees that "Society has stolen from all, in order to turn over to a few, that great instrument of natural labor, the earth." He rejected crowds as he sees them as "the most brutal of natural forces."
He saw work as an evil worsened by society and that "1—It arbitrarily dispenses a certain number of men from all work and places their part of the burden on other men. 2—It employs many men at useless labors and social functions. 3—It multiplies among all, and particularly among the rich, imaginary needs and it imposes on the poor the odious labor necessary for the satisfaction of these needs."
In line with Stirner, he rejected sacrifices in the name of exterior "Idols" such as "In certain countries, the King or the Emperor, in others some fraud called the Will of the People. Everywhere Order, the Political party, Religion, the Fatherland, the Race, the Color." By color he meant race and he found deplorable that "The White color especially ... has managed to unite in one cult the French, Germans, Russians, and Italians and to obtain from these noble priests the bloody sacrifice of a great number of Chinese.... It is they who have made all of Africa a hell. It is they who destroyed the Indians of America and lynches Negroes." Also he rejected morality because "1—Morality is a consequence of metaphysics, a metaphysics in action; 2—Metaphysics are a necessity and a postulate of morality; 3—Morality and metaphysics are independent of each other."
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
Han Ryner, was a French individualist anarchist philosopher and activist and a novelist. He wrote for publications such as L'Art social, L'Humanité nouvelle, L'Ennemi du Peuple , L'Idée Libre de Lorulot; and L'En dehors and L'Unique of fellow anarchist individualist Émile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
. His thought is mainly influenced by stoicism
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...
and epicureanism
Epicureanism
Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of Epicurus, founded around 307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. Following Aristippus—about whom...
.
Life
He was born in Nemours (now Ghazaouet, Tlemcen ProvinceTlemcen Province
Tlemcen is a province in northwestern Algeria. The Tlemcen National Park is located there.-Administrative divisions:The province is divided into 20 districts , which are further divided into 53 communes or municipalities....
), Department of Orán, French Algeria
French Algeria
French Algeria lasted from 1830 to 1962, under a variety of governmental systems. From 1848 until independence, the whole Mediterranean region of Algeria was administered as an integral part of France, much like Corsica and Réunion are to this day. The vast arid interior of Algeria, like the rest...
in a modest religious family. After the death of his mother, he abandoned Catholicism, associated himself with Freemasons and started having an interest in social ideas.
He published 2 novels in 1894–1895 and also later started working as a journalist. After that he took a teacher position but struggled in having to fit in in such a disciplined environment. He becomes a prolific literary writer.
In 1896, he adopted the pseudonym "Han Ryner" and started writing for such magazines as L'Art social, L'Humanité nouvelle of Augustin Hamon, L'Ennemi du Peuple of Emile Janvion and L'Idée Libre. From here he started collaborating in the important individualist anarchist magazine L'EnDehors and L'Unique of Émile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
.
In 1900 he wrote the essay Le crime d'obéir (the crime of obeying) and in 1903 he wrote the essay Petit manuel individualiste, in which he presented his anarchist individualist doctrine influenced by classic Greek stoicism
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...
in the works of Epictetus
Epictetus
Epictetus was a Greek sage and Stoic philosopher. He was born a slave at Hierapolis, Phrygia , and lived in Rome until banishment when he went to Nicopolis in northwestern Greece where he lived the rest of his life. His teachings were noted down and published by his pupil Arrian in his Discourses...
. By the 1920s his thought starts having an important influence in Spain within individualist anarchist circles especially through the translations of his work by Juan Elizalde. Han Ryner started writing in Spanish individualist journals such as Ética, which already had an important influence of the thought of Ryner. The Brazilian individualist anarchist Maria Lacerda de Moura
Maria Lacerda de Moura
Maria Lacerda de Moura was a Brazilian teacher, journalist, writer, anarcha-feminist, and individualist anarchist.- Life :...
took the task of making his philosophy and writing become known in the Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
-speaking world.
With the First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
approaching. Han Ryner embraces pacifist and anti-war positions and promotes conscience objection
Conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....
. In his anti-war activism he collaborates with Émile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
.
He campaigned for the liberation of Eugène Dieudonné in 1913; for that of Émile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
during the war; for the mutiny in the Black Sea, and for the Italian-American anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti and for the Ukrainian anarchist Nestor Makhno
Nestor Makhno
Nestor Ivanovych Makhno or simply Daddy Makhno was a Ukrainian anarcho-communist guerrilla leader turned army commander who led an independent anarchist army in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War....
. Radical anticlerical, adheres to the World Committee against War and Fascism. He also opposed World War I on pacifist anti militaristic grounds. He was a rare case of an anarchist participating in the Félibrige
Félibrige
The Félibrige is a literary and cultural association founded by Frédéric Mistral and other Provençal writers to defend and promote Occitan language and literature...
. He died in Paris on February 6, 1938.
The individualist anarchism of Han Ryner
The mature thought of Han Ryner is influenced by stoicismStoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...
and epicureanism
Epicureanism
Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of Epicurus, founded around 307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. Following Aristippus—about whom...
. From this first position he shows a tendency to fatalism towards the pains of life and those produced by society. He wrote in "Mini-manual of individualism", "The Stoic Epictetus
Epictetus
Epictetus was a Greek sage and Stoic philosopher. He was born a slave at Hierapolis, Phrygia , and lived in Rome until banishment when he went to Nicopolis in northwestern Greece where he lived the rest of his life. His teachings were noted down and published by his pupil Arrian in his Discourses...
courageously bore poverty and slavery. He was perfectly happy in the situations most painful to ordinary men." He then emphasized subjective will as a power which individuals can resort to.
He defined individualism as "the moral doctrine which, relying on no dogma, no tradition, no external determination, appeals only to the individual conscience". As models of individualists he names Socrates
Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
, Epicurus
Epicurus
Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher and the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism.Only a few fragments and letters remain of Epicurus's 300 written works...
, Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
and Epictetus and so these persons exemplify what he defines as "harmonic individualism". For example, he admires from Epicurus his temperance and that "he showed that very little was needed to satisfy hunger and thirst, to defend oneself against heat and the cold. And he liberated himself from all other needs, that is, almost all the desires and all the fears that enslave men.". From Jesus how "He lived free and a wanderer, foreign to any social ties. He was the enemy of priests, external cults and, in general, all organizations." From these individualists as he defines them he distinguishes "conquering and aggressive egoists who proclaim themselves to be individualists" such as Stendhal
Stendhal
Marie-Henri Beyle , better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme...
and Nietzsche.
Han Ryner, as well as fellow French individualist anarchist Émile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
, regarded individualist anarchism above all as a way of life. He regarded that the individualist act must be in accord with his ideas and he calls that "virtue
Virtue
Virtue is moral excellence. A virtue is a positive trait or quality subjectively deemed to be morally excellent and thus is valued as a foundation of principle and good moral being....
". For him, disinterested virtue creates happiness which for him meant feeling oneself free of all outside servitudes and in perfect accord with oneself.
In relationships with others and things outside the individual he saw "Every person is a goal, an end" and from this he saw that he can "ask people for services that they will freely accord me, either through benevolence or in exchange for other services". He defined society as "a gathering of individuals for a common labor." From society's evils he advocated developing individual resistance towards building up indifference. He understood happiness as something that can only be reached through oneself and sees that "Society has stolen from all, in order to turn over to a few, that great instrument of natural labor, the earth." He rejected crowds as he sees them as "the most brutal of natural forces."
He saw work as an evil worsened by society and that "1—It arbitrarily dispenses a certain number of men from all work and places their part of the burden on other men. 2—It employs many men at useless labors and social functions. 3—It multiplies among all, and particularly among the rich, imaginary needs and it imposes on the poor the odious labor necessary for the satisfaction of these needs."
In line with Stirner, he rejected sacrifices in the name of exterior "Idols" such as "In certain countries, the King or the Emperor, in others some fraud called the Will of the People. Everywhere Order, the Political party, Religion, the Fatherland, the Race, the Color." By color he meant race and he found deplorable that "The White color especially ... has managed to unite in one cult the French, Germans, Russians, and Italians and to obtain from these noble priests the bloody sacrifice of a great number of Chinese.... It is they who have made all of Africa a hell. It is they who destroyed the Indians of America and lynches Negroes." Also he rejected morality because "1—Morality is a consequence of metaphysics, a metaphysics in action; 2—Metaphysics are a necessity and a postulate of morality; 3—Morality and metaphysics are independent of each other."
Written works
- Chair vaincue, roman psychologique (1889)
- Les Chants du divorce, poésies (1892)
- L'Humeur inquiète (1894)
- La Folie de misère (1895)
- Le Crime d'obéir (1900)
- Le Soupçon (1900)
- L'Homme fourmi, roman illustré par Alexis Mérodack-Jeanneau (1901)
- Les Voyages de Psychodore, philosophe cynique (1903) (translated by Brian StablefordBrian StablefordBrian Michael Stableford is a British science fiction writer who has published more than 70 novels. His earlier books were published as by Brian M. Stableford, but more recent ones have dropped the middle initial and appeared under the name Brian Stableford...
and included in The Superhumans, q.v.) - Petit Manuel individualiste (1903)
- La Fille manquée (1903)
- Petit Manuel individualiste (1903)
- Prostitués, études critiques sur les gens de lettres d'aujourd'hui (1904)
- Les Chrétiens et les philosophes (1906)
- Le Subjectivisme. Des bons et mauvais usages de la logique. La Métaphysique et les Sagesses positives. Le Déterminisme et la Liberté. Les Morales: Servilisme et Dominisme. Les Sagesses: Fraternisme et Subjectivisme. Les Étapes de la sagesse (1909)
- Vive le roi, hypothèse en 3 actes. Les Esclaves, vision en un acte (1910)
- Le Cinquième Évangile (1911)
- Le Fils du silence (1911)
- Les Paraboles cyniques (1913)
- Les Apparitions d'Ahasvérus v. 1913)
- Les Pacifiques (1914)
- Le Père Diogène (v. 1915–1935)
- Le Sphinx rouge (1918)
- Le Poison, drame en 1 acte (1919)
- La Tour des peuples (1919)
- Le Père Diogène (1920). Réédition: Premières Pierres, 2007.
- Dialogue du mariage philosophique ; suivi des Dicéphales (1922)
- Les Véritables entretiens de Socrate (1922)
- L'Individualisme dans l'antiquité (histoire et critique) (1924)
- Le Communisme et la Liberté (1924)
- Le Crime d'obéir, roman d'histoire contemporaine (1925)
- Jusqu'à l'âme: drame moderne en 2 actes (1925)
- L'Ingénieux Hidalgo Miguel Cervantès (1926)
- La Vie éternelle, roman du mystère (1926)
- L'Aventurier d'amour (1927)
- L'Amour plural, roman d'aujourd'hui et de demain (1927)
- Jeanne d'Arc fut-elle victime de l'Église ? (1927)
- La Sagesse qui rit (1928)
- Les Surhommes, roman prophétique (1929) (translated by Brian Stableford as The Superhumans, ISBN 978-1-935558-77-4)
- Songes perdus (1929)
- Chère Pucelle de France (1930)
- Prenez-moi tous ! (1930)
- Crépuscules. Bouddha. Platon. Épicure. Thraséas. Raymond Lulle. Rabelais. Leibniz. Hegel. Vigny. Élisée Reclus, etc. (1930)
- Le Manœuvre: pièce en 3 actes (1931)
- Dans le mortier. Zénon. Phocion, Saint Ignace ; Les Albigeois ; Michel Servet ; Pierre Ramus ; Vanini ; Brousson ; Francisco Ferrer (1932)
- La Soutane et le veston, roman (1932)
- Bouche d'or, patron des pacifistes (1934)
- La Cruauté de l'Église (1937)
- L'Église devant ses juges (1937)
- Le Massacre des amazones: études critiques sur deux cents bas-bleus contemporains: Mmes Adam, Sarah Bernhardt, Marie-Anne de Bovet, Bradamante, Jeanne Chauvin, Alphonse Daudet (s. d.)
- La Beauté: légende dramatique en quatre tableaux (1938)
- Florilège de paraboles et de songes (1942)
- Face au public. Première série, 1901–1919 (1948)
- J'ai mon Éliacin, souvenirs d'enfance (1956)
- Aux orties, souvenirs d'adolescence (1957)
- Le Sillage parfumé (1958)
- Les Grandes Fleurs du désert (1963)