Anarchic Scepticism: Language, Mysticism and Revolution in Gustav Landauer

Gustav Landauer (1870– 1919), a German-Jewish anarchist and a radical thinker, was brutally murdered by the Freikorps in Munich. He was an almost forgotten figure for a long time, even though his ideas exerted a crucial influence on the development of twentieth century Jewish thought and philosophy, particularly regarding the rehabilitation of utopian, messianic, anarchical and mystical elements. Landauer was one of very few Jewish authors permitting the word ‘scepticism’ to be included in the title of one of his works—namely Skepsis und Mystik2—in my view this very term is the fil rouge running through all his political and philosophical thought. However, this feature has not received the proper attention by scholars, which focus mainly on Landauer’s singular account of anarchism and mysticism, alongside his conception of revolution and community. In this essay, I will attempt to shed light on the connection between Fritz Mauthner’s (1849– 1923) linguistic critique and Landauer’s anarchy, showing the political implications of sceptical thought. To this end, I will focus on the sceptical features of Landauer’s anarchist socialism by analysing the connection between scepticism and mysticism, the role played by scepticism in his thought of community and in his account of revolution, history and time, and the definition of his anti-political attitude as sceptical Lebensform.

, aGerman-Jewish anarchist and aradical thinker,was brutallymurdered by the Freikorps in Munich. He was an almost forgotten figure for along time, even though his ideas exerted acrucial influenceonthe development of twentieth century Jewishthoughtand philosophy, particularlyregarding the rehabilitation of utopian, messianic, anarchical and mystical elements. Landauer was one of very few Jewish authorsp ermitting the word 'scepticism' to be included in the title of one of his works-namely Skepsisu nd Mystik²-in my view this very termi s the fil rouge running through all his political and philosophicalt hought.H owever, this feature has not receivedt he proper attention by scholars, which focus mainly on Landauer'ss ingular account of anarchism and mysticism, alongside his conception of revolution and community.
In this essay, Iwill attempt to shed light on the connection between Fritz Mauthner's( 1849 -1923)l inguistic critique and Landauer'sa narchy, showing the political implications of sceptical thought. To this end, Iw ill focus on the sceptical features of Landauer'sa narchist socialism by analysingt he connection between scepticism and mysticism, the role playedb ys cepticism in his thought of community and in his account of revolution, history and time, and the definition of his anti-political attitude as sceptical Lebensform.

1A narchy as (Anti)political Epoché
There is an affinitybetween anarchism and scepticism, even if this binomial has not yetreceivedproper attention. One can define anarchism as an (anti)political attitude whose main features are aradical critique towards authorities and achallengetothe system of representations, while scepticism could be broadlydefined as amethod as well as an attitude, which criticizes dogmatic assumptions and leads to asuspension of judgment. If anarchism could be interpreted as arejection of political representation, it is possiblet oe xtend these particular critiques to anyg eneral forms of label-ling representation or to anyd ogmatic systems of rule.³ Anarchya nd scepticism share this ongoingcriticism the aim of which is not aconcrete systematisation transforming them into their contraries with anarchybecominganinstitutionalframework and scepticism turning into dogmatism. Indeed, the transformation of these terms into their contrariesis, in both cases, aslipperyslope. Is it possible to define athinker,inthe midstofanongoing criticism not accepting anyassumption, as beingadogmatic sceptic?C onversely, are we to define an anarchist,e mbedded in his criticism towards the state and the system, as representativeo fa nother form of authority and power?These open questions mayhelp us to shedlight on the special and controversial affinities between scepticism and anarchy.
As is well known, the etymologyo f' anarchy' is 'absenceo fg overnment' or 'of leader' (archos), but at the same time it is al ack of 'arche',w hich is one of the key words of Greek ancient philosophy. 'Arche' has ad ouble meaning:o nt he one hand, it means 'origin', 'beginning' and 'principle of action',o nt he other, 'power', 'command', 'authorities'.I ft he word 'arche' connects at emporal dimension to the authority,o ne can sayt hat an anarchic thought par excellence has to take into account time and power,a sL andauer did. Anarchyi sn ot just an overthrowingo f the 'arche',but starts with aprocess of doubting and calling into question the status quo. As anarchydeniesall forms of systematisation, it is akind of suspension of authority,which, in my view,s eems to be af orm of (anti)political epoché.

2G ustav Landauer at the Crossroad of Several Paths
As ap olitical activist and writer,j ournalist and translator,L andauer was one of the most important thinkers combiningJ ewish messianism with anarchy, politics with mysticism, and ar omantic philosophyo fh istory with ab elief in the urgency of change. His works comprises manya rticles, translations, fragments,r eviews,a nd anumber of discourses; important milestones are DieRevolution and Aufruf zumSozialismus,b ut his onlyc ompletep hilosophicals tudy, on which he worked for two years following his release from prison earlyi n1 900,i sSkepsisu nd Mystik.
The complicated intrigue of Landauer'sanarchyconcerns the conjunction of two levels: the mystical experience and the political action. The weave of these elements positions his thoughtatacrossroads of several paths, something quite unique in the history of philosophy. At least threereasons demonstrate how he is to be considered ac omplex thinker:f irstly, his works are unsystematic; secondly, he mixes up different and-apparently-opposite elements; and thirdlyhegives asingular definition to some key concepts. Scholars have usedm anya djectives in attemptingt od efine his political socialist anarchism: mystical, anarchical, regressive, Gemeindesozialismus  See Jesse S. Cohn, Anarchism and the Crisis of Representation: Hermeneutics,Aesthetics,Politics (Selinsgrove: SusquehannaU niversity Press,2 006). to name but af ew.H is particulari dea of socialism is based on an anarchic opposition towarda ny form of authority including political,s ocial, ethical, and religious articulation of power.I ti sa tt he same time ap roject of liberation from all the forms of enslavement,i nterior and external, and as howing of the path required to take one from isolation to community-from theory to praxis.
At this point,Ifeelitpertinent to consider Landauer'sbiography. Born, 7 th April, 1870,toasecular Jewishfamily in Karlsruhe,southern Germany, he studied German and English literature,philosophyand art history in Heidelberg, Strasbourgand Berlin. However,h ec ompleted none of these studies as his political militancy had him banned from all German universities. Stirner,N ietzsche, Ibsen, Spinoza and Schopenhauera re just af ew of the manyp hilosophersh ew as impressed by in that time. His first political commitments sawhim rise to the top of German anarchist circles duringthe 1890s.⁴ This political activity and anarchist commitment,led to his acquaintancewith prominent activists such as Peter Kropotkin, Max Nettlau, and Errico Malatesta.⁵ His biographer Ruth Link-Salinger tells us this period was devoted 'to asystematic definition of what anarchism was to be and was not to be,'⁶ and this was arriveda ta lso duet oh is collaboration with Fritz Mauthner.
In the first decade of 1900,Landauer withdrew almost entirelyfrom public activity to engageinprivatestudy. He wastofavour amore inner,philosophical and mystical idea of anarchism to the political manifestations of the time.  He travelled as aanarchist delegatetoasecond international congress in London wherethe anarchists were-oncem ore-excluded and organised for themselvesa nother conference.L andauer prepared areport for the occasion FromZurich to London, which became his most translatedpieceatthat time.  Link-Salinger, Gustav Landauer:P hilosopher of Utopia,48.  Between 1893and 1900 he spent atotal of 18 months in prison on various chargesoflibel and defamation. In 1906,Buber became editor in chief of abook seriescalled Die Gesellschaft and asked his friend Landauer to write abook on the intriguingtopic of revolution. Landauer'se ssayw as publishedi n1 907a nd this year marked his return to political activism; in fact,h ep ublished "30 Socialist theses"⁸ that anticipate his Call to Socialism,o f1 911, which represents the peak of his political contribution. In May1 908, Landauer initiated the Sozialistischer Bund whose goal was to form small, independent communities or settlements as am aterial foundation for an ew form of society and an embodiment of his notion of socialism. With the outbreak of war,L andauer and HedwigL achmann werei solated, being among the few pacifistic voices in Germanya tt hat time.The majority of anarchists and leftist thinkers welcomed the war as an opportunity of political renovation.⁹ Landauer was convinced the war was nothing but the extreme outcome of nationalism and imperialism. In 1917h ea nd his wife decided to move to Krumbach, southern Germany. In 1918 Hedwigd iedo f pneumonia and his enormous loss has been interpreted by manyb iographers and friends as ap oint of no return in Landauer'sl ife and justification for his 'sacrifice' or 'martyrdom' to the Munich Soviet Republic; in fact,i nN ovember 1918 he joined the Bavarian Revolution as one of its intellectual leaders. He was brutallymurdered by the Freikorps (Free corps)o nt he 2 nd of Mayi n1 919.
Landauer'smilieu was fin-de-siècle and pre-World WarI.His generation, born in the nineteenth century living up to the outbreak of the war weref aced with ag reat loss of structure and order and experienced great alienation that led manytoarejection of traditions. Twov italc oordinatesh elp understand Landauer'sc ontribution: the Sprachkrise and the Neue Mystik. German Jews playedapivotal role in these particular Germanp henomena emerging at the beginning of the twentieth century.¹⁰  His essayentitled "Volk and Land: 30 Socialist theses"-published in Die Zukunft in January 1907focussed on the problem of the state and voluntary cooperation and was simultaneouslyaprogramme for new,c oncrete organisation.  See Ulrich Sieg, Jüdische Intellektuellei mE rsten Weltkrieg (Berlin: Akademie Verlag,2 008): 145 -150.EvenBuber followedthe general trend of German nationalism.In1916,inthe editorial "Die Losung" of the first issue of Der Jude,Buber took an ambiguous stand: on the one hand, he emphasised that Judaism had no connection with war,onthe other he praised the individual commitment to the war as an effort to discovery community.F urthermore, in his essay "The spirit of the Orient and Judaism," Buber celebrated Germanyfor its spiritual affinity to the Eastern peoplesand strong cultural interaction with Judaism, by defendingthe superiority of German spirit compared with other nations. Landauer was angry and disappointed by such arguments,r ejecting the Kriegsbuber and his mere aestheticism and formalism. Community cannot be discoveredi nt he midst of war and murder. Under Landauer'sp ressure,B uber later became hostile to the war.L andauer called his friend 'War Buber' in the letter of May1 2, 1916.S ee GreteS chaeder, ed., Martin Buber.B riefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten,vol. 1(Heidelberg: LambertSchneider,1972) The so-called Sprachkrise was acomplex critique of languagediscussed by poets and intellectuals in philosophicaland literary debate during the years leading up to World WarI(von Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler,K raus, all the Jung-Wien members, etc.).¹¹ Itsa uthors werebeginning to doubt the role of languagefrom manyperspectives; the gapb etween languagea nd reality renders the former into ad efective tool presentinga ni nsurmountable obstacle of grasping reality and revealing the truth. Even to this dayt he phenomenono fSprachkrise has not been sufficientlyf ocussed on in philosophical research, as it has been interpreted as al iteral and cultural movement and not subject matter appropriate to the discourse of philosophy. However,inm yview,itmarks aturning point in the history of contemporary philosophy, as this sceptical-linguistic attitude, focussed special attention among German Jewish thinkers on language, anticipating the so-called 'linguistic turn'.Inthis constellation Mauthner and Landauer were crucial, with the former (in the wake of this sceptical approach) building abridgebetween philosophyand literature, and the latter donating ap olitical connotation.
The second coordinate, the Neue Mystik,was areinterpretation by poets and writers of mysticism in Germanyatt he turn of the twentieth century.¹² This new kind of mysticism does not deal with the traditionali dea of am ystical union between God and soul, but rather with af eeling of awarenesso fc onnection between individual and community,present and past.This kind of secularised mysticism combines aesthetic-linguistic aspects-it is no coincidencemost involved werewriters and poetssharing ap olitical and social idea of the regeneration of humankind.¹³ Landauer plays an active role in manyp olitical attempts to rethink community on as ocial and mystical basis;¹⁴ furthermore, his brilliant translation of Meister Eckhart's works significantlyc ontributed to this new conception of mysticism.   Stuttgart: Metzler,1989); Anna Wolkowicz, Mystiker der Revolution. Der utopische Diskurs um die Jahrhundertwende (Warsaw: WUW,2 007).  The connection between anew idea of community and aparticular idea of languagewas also experienced at that time by the organisation Neue Gemeinschaft,formed by agroup of artists and writers whos hared the idea of the brothers Heinrich and Julius Hart known for their literary criticism. Their attempt was to offer ar evitalisation of society in accordancew ith ar eformo fl iteraturea nd Anarchic Scepticism: Language, Mysticisma nd Revolution in GustavL andauer

3L inguistic Scepticisma nd Anarchist Thought: Mauthner and Landauer
Fritz Mauthnera nd GustavL andauer wereb ound by ad eep, lifelong intellectual friendship, evidencedb yahuge epistolary.¹⁵ The former'sl inguistic scepticism was used by Landauer as the tool for unmasking and smashing the oppressive idols hidden in languageand its supposed truths.¹⁶ Mauthner'streatment of languageasadeceptive tool for human knowledge is at the root of Landauer'sthoughtofanarchy. He used al inguistic-sceptical strategy to dismantle the power of the state and lead to a community based on anew idea of justice. While Mauthner focussed attention on the metaphorical and illusory value of languagea nd human knowledge mediated by words, Landauer implemented linguistic scepticism to develop another political model.¹⁷ Fritz Mauthner was ap hilosopher and sceptic of language; he is an almostf orgotten figure, who, nevertheless, produced ah ugeb odyo fw ork: three volumes of Contributionst owardaCritique of Language,aDictionary of Philosophy, Historyo f the spiritual guide was the metaphysical and religious idea of Julius Hart explained in his works as Der neue Gott and Die neue Welterkenntnis. However,this kind of mystical environment was incapable -according to Landauer whol eft the organisation one year later-to change society.F urthermore, during World WarI ,h ew as active in some anti-militaristic circles-e. g. Forte Kreis, Bund Neues Vaterland and Zentralstelle Völkerrechte-whose goals weret oc reate an alternative community. Atheism in the Western Society and numerous essays and novels.¹⁸ The three volumes Contributionst owardaC ritique of Language are an example of thoroughgoing linguistic scepticism in the history of philosophy, coordinating linguistic doubt with epistemology.M authner's Contributions were written in an attempt to demonstrate how languagei sr edundant as am eansf or the perception of reality and, insofar as knowledge is mediated by words, impossible. His originality lies in his anticipation of the linguistic turn in arguingt hat the philosophyo fl anguages heds critical light on all philosophical questions.¹⁹ Thanks to Mauthner'si ntercession, Landauer translateds ome of Meister Eckhart'sm ystical writingsi nto modern German, and these wereu sed as materials aids for the writing of Contributions towardaCritique of Language. The twof riends' cooperation in linguistic critique was deeplyr elevant; in prison Landauer edited Mauthner's Contributions and after publication of the first volume reviewed it for Zukunft. The ongoingdiscussion and confrontation between them led to adiscussion on the limits of languagea nd an exploration of the political effects of mysticism.
Accordingt oM authner,l anguaged eletes the uniqueness of our experience by transforming it into as eries of tautologies and,a lthough it can refer to reality only metaphorically, it is the onlym edium of human knowledge.Words exercise as ocial and political power;e veni fl anguagei sacollection of illusions,i ti sadangerous weapon. Allm etaphysical abstractions are falsities, am ere trick of the language, which forces us to believet hat each noun corresponds to ap re-existing substance. If the wordi sn ot representative of reality,t he most importantt ask of philosophy is the critique of language, i. e. the liberation from the superstitions and the tyranny of words (Wortfetischismus, Wortaberglauben, Worttyrannei).
Mauthner's logos-scepticism has manydifferent features:ar adicalisation of empiricism, the coincidenceb etween thinking and speaking,t he relevance of use and linguistic habits,t he utopia of communication, the liberatingt ask of philosophy, his controversialr elationship with Judaism and silent mysticism. In my view,t he practical aim of Mauthner'sp hilosophy, i. e., the liberation from the superstitions of words is in accordance with the therapeutic value of ancient scepticism and, more- over,h is mystical silence,a rising from his critique,i samoderna chievement of ancient ataraxia.²⁰ Landauer interpreted the curativev alue of Mauthner'sl inguistic scepticism in a political way. In both perspectivest here is an attempt at liberation from the tyranny of languageand the chainsofauthority;however,while Mauthnerdevelops aradical criticism, which leadshim to adismantlingoflanguageand solitary and elitist path of silence and mysticism, Landauer goes as tep further and connects this introspective tendency emanating from scepticism with al iberation from isolation to experience at rue community.M authner'sa ttack on languagea sm ere words uperstitions, and in particular his questioning of belief in the empiricallyi solated self, provided Landauer with auseful basisfor defending his ownm ysticism. He combined Mauthner'slinguistic scepticism with an anarchic critiqueofsociety,byadmitting the affinity between Sprachkritik and his account of anarchism and socialism.²¹

4A ctive Scepticisma nd Social Mysticism
Landauer'sphilosophical work, Skepsis und Mystik is based on Mauthner'scritique of language.²² Itss tructure is puzzling,c omprisingo facollection of several essays, some of which appeareds eparatelyb efore the book. The first chapter, Das Individuum als Welt was initiallyaspeech entitled DurchAbsonderung zurGemeinschaft,Landauer gave in 1901 for the Neue Gemeinschaft;t he second chapter is made up of an article published 23 rd November 1901 in Zukunft and ar eview of Julius Hart'sb ook Die neue Welterkenntnis written by Landauer in 1902; the third chapter-Die Sprache als Instrument-had not been publishedp reviously.
In this book he recognises linguistic scepticism as the foundationfor new political action, for it being ar adical critiqueo fh uman illusions.L andauer compares mysticism and scepticism in terms of their common power of negation and destruction of egoism.²³ Accordingtohim, scepticism exposes the world in all its nullity and is thus shows how the deepests cepticism engenders the highest mysticism. The act of doubting our knowledge,l anguage, representations of the world and political in- stitutions is not amere theoretical exercise. Calling into question reality by doubting the power of languagecould lead to anew understanding and develop anew idea of community.²⁴ Thenceforth, he uses linguistic scepticism as apolitical strategyfor an antiauthoritarianc ritique and ac omplex mystical thinkingo fc ommunity,i nw hich the individual is indissolublyb ound to the entire past and present of humanity.
Scepticism is not onlyu nmasks the cult of the state, the very task of doubting leads to ap olitical renewal of mankind. Accordingt oL andauer,m ystical introspection-deeplyconnected with scepticism-is aform of deep, individual connection to the world and the key to the passagef rom isolation to community.The real innovation of his political thought is the connection between atheoretical mysticism and a 'terrestrial'²⁵ one. His singular account of mysticism does not deal with aseparation from the world, but rather with af orm of individual deep connection to the inner world and to the past.
In the introduction of Skepsisund Mystik,heunderlined Eckhart'ssignificance as the key to understanding his mystic anarchy.²⁶ Landauer emphasised that his metaphysical approach combiningC hristian dogma and pantheism should become the model for ap olitical interpretation of mysticism; Eckhart proposed an idea of connection between the single entity and the whole world by going beyond the limits of language.²⁷ In fact,h is thought-accordingt oL andauer-was not onlyacontemplatio mundi,b ut wasa lso rooted in an essential transformation of the relationship with the world: 'his mysticism is scepticism, but alsov ice versa.'²⁸ It is no coinci- The first philosopherwho emphasised this aspect was undoubtedlyFriedrich Nietzsche, whohad been wellstudied by Mauthner as wellasLandauer.AsPaulGoodman, Speaking and Language:Defense of Poetry (New York: VintageB ooks, 1971), 26,wrote: 'One of the most powerful institutionsi s the conventional languageitself. It is very close to the ideology and it shapes how people think, feel, and judge whatisfunctional.' The attack on signification is akind of attack on an order that shaped human beings. He statedt hat am ystic should also be as ceptic and emphasised the relevance of Landauer'sw ork, especially how he articulated the relationship between languagea nd authority.This noteo fB rupbacher is recorded by Franz W. Seiwert, Schriften. Der Schritt, der einmal getan wurde, wirdn icht zurückgenommen,e ds. Uli Bohnen and Dirk Backes (Berlin: Kramer,1 978), 36: "Wern icht zu wissen glaubt, wohin der Mensch zu gehen habe,w er skeptisch ist,o be sü berhaupt einen für alle gültigenS inn des Lebens gäbe oder werv on diesem Sinn aussagt,dass er nur im Gewissene ines jeden Einzelnen liegeund nicht intellektuell formulierbarsei, weralso Mystiker ist,der muss Anarchist sein. Aufdiese dence that Landauer held the major exponents of scepticism in the history of philosophytobemystics:from Dyonisius the Aeropagite to Boehme and Eckhart.Landauer offers as ecularisation of mysticism by substituting 'God' with 'humanity', 'cosmos' with 'Volk' and by providing an ew relation to the world. Community cannot be found initiallyi nt he external worldb ut must be discovered in the interiority of the individual soul. Landauer sees in mysticism the wayt oo vercome av iolent account of anarchism and to think of an ew form of community by crossing the atomisation of the individuals.²⁹ 5F romA bstractionst oC ommunity: Spiritualisation of Social Bounds Landauer'sc ontroversial conception of mysticism, which leads to action, deals with his notion of Geist. Spirit is an ambiguous concept because it is both connection and independence, Verbindung and Unabhängigkeit. The bindingp ower of spirit,s ynonymous of life, is an inner worldlyf eeling between man and man, man and earth, man and history that forgest he real community;i ti sn ot an ap riori principle, but rather its transcendence stems from men'sa ction.Thisu nity is not af orm of dialecnahe Beziehungvon Skepsis, Mystik und Anarchismus hat ja Landauer sehr klar hingewiesen.Esgibt gewiss viele Zwischenstufen zwischen Autoritäten und Anarchisten, Mischungender Prinzipien; aber der Grundunterschied liegt eben darin, dass der Anarchismus die Besonderheit des Individuums in den Vordergrund rückt,während der Autoritär das Gemeinsame alle Individuen betont,die Notwendigkeit der Unterordnungd es Besonderen unter das Gemeinsame. In der Sprache der mittelalterlichen Philosophie gesprochen: Der Autoritär ist Realist,d er Anarchist Nominalist; der eine kennt ein ausd en Produktionsverhältnissen zu bestimmendes allgemein gültiges Ziel, der anderee rklärt alle solche allgemeinen Ziele für Schall und Rauch, das einmalige,i rgendwohin wachsendeI ndividuum ist ihm der Sinne des Lebens."  Thanks to the important works of Reiner Schürmann whoreads Eckhart in an existential way, it is possible to define af orm of mystic anarchy in Eckhart'st hought,c oncerningt wo aspects in particular:t he rethinkingo ft ime and the practical liberation fromt he concept of finality.I nf act,i nt he Mystische Schriften translated by Landauer therei sar edefinition of time, considered as an everlasting moment in which aspiritual union of the single and the whole takesplace. This openness of time marks the divide because it leads to liberation from utilitarian dependencea nd seekingofG od as a foundation. The second aspect deals with atransfiguration of all the relationships between man and man, man and world, man and God, which operates not as afinal cause but as asuddenly irruption. These premises lead Eckhart to arethinking of the abandonment and isolation from the outside word -Abgeschiedenheit-as the beginningofanascetic exercise as an existential programme. In the Sermons the spiritual experiencei sn ot describeda sa ne cstasy,b ut rather as ar enewed and concrete form of ar elationship with thingsa nd existencet of orge reality and humankind.This practical Bildung is the revolutionary attempt of Eckhart mysticism to step back fromcausality,f inality and spatiality. tical recognition, but as ocial mysticism which is at the coreo fL andauer'sp olitical thought. The heart of his idea of anarchist socialism is the attempt to render authority superfluous and unnecessary through anew kind of relationship and cooperation between men. His idea of an organic community and an authentic bond between individuals was ac ompleter ejection of moderna tomisation and the state. In his For Socialism,L andauer defined spirit in the following way: 'spirit is communal spirit, spirit is union and freedom, spirit is an association of men, soon we will see it even more clearly, spirit is comingo verm en.'³⁰ If spirit arises from an association of man, isolationi sa ne piphenomenono fi ts absence. The main task of anarchyi s to fill this separation'sg ap among the individuals. Acritique towardany individualityseen as abstraction is at the coreofL andauer'sthought.This could be paradoxical from an anarchic point of view,but his social mysticism is basedo na na cknowledgment of every single person seen as an indissoluble bond: [I]t is time for the insight that thereisnoindividual, but onlyunities and communities.I tisnot true that collective names designate onlyasum of individuals: on the contrary,i ndividuals are onlym anifestations and points of reference, electric sparks of somethingg rand and whole.³¹ Landauer'se mphasis on isolation is due to his personal experience and his interest in mysticism developed in prison.³² Furthermore, according to him, the modern state is basedo ni solation and is an artificial surrogate for the spirit of the community. 'State' is nothing more than awordone uses in the attempt to project what is essentiallyaninternal experience of dependence to aseparate material construct; thence, state is ap hantom and an idol. It is 'as ocial relationship; ac ertain wayo fp eople relatingt oo ne another.I tc an be destroyed by creatingn ew social relationships; i. e., by people relating to one another differently.'³³ Av iolent overturning of the state is an illusion: 'thosew ho believet hatt he state is alsoathing or af etisht hat can be overturnedo rs mashed are sophists and believers in the Word.'³⁴ Landauer'stheory of power is sophisticated in that he combines liberation from authority with the word'scapacity of hypostasiseabstractions taken from Mauthner's linguistic scepticism. The word'ss uperstition-Wortaberglauben-is the ground for Landauer'sf etishist conception of state. In both perspectivest herei sa na ttempt of Anarchic Scepticism: Language, Mysticism and Revolution in Gustav Landauer liberation from the tyrannyoflanguageand from the chains of authority.The famous sentenceo fN ietzsche-namely, 'Where the state ends, onlyt hereb egins the human being who is not superfluous'³⁵-is used by Landauer to perform the anarchic tension against state,which is an artificial bond, af alse illusion and an absence of spirit. State is an irrationalf etishw hich produces social inequality through hierarchy and domination, but on the other hand his power depends on the community of human subjects.
The switch from ac onception of state seen as an abstraction or af etish into an idea of state seen as ac ondition is one of the most original aspects of Landauer's political thought.This idea is deeplyrevolutionary,for it does not deal with aviolent destruction of the state, but rather with new behaviour and an ew relationship. The wayt os abotage the state is by means of the institution of authentic bondsa mong people instead of the crystallisation of relationships.
Landauer'sidea of power was deeplyinfluenced by Etienne de la Boétie and his Discourse on voluntarys ervitude,q uoted in the Revolution.³⁶ Accordingt ol aB oétie, the tyrant'sp ower is granted by the subjugated individuals who onlyn eed to refuse their support to overturn his power.F urthermore,itisworth noting that the de-transcendentalisation of the state in condition and relations anticipates Foucault'sanalysis of disseminated power and the following bio-political reflections of the twentieth century.³⁷ Landauer'ss ceptical philosophyi sn ot onlyatheoretical exercise, but is the foundation and the strategyf or ap articular idea of anarchya sGemeinschaftsleben. At the outset of Skepsis und Mystik Landauer contends that scepticism has no value at all if it does not preparethe wayfor anewlycreated mysticism. Therefore, its function is to clear the ground for anew mysticism bound with acall to action. This kind of contradictio in adjecto of activism and mysticism is just one of the theoretical tensions in Landauer'st hought.How could mysticism and scepticism-which generally lead to apraxia-be combined with ap olitical action?H ow could at hought of community stem from am ystical attitude which is deeplye litist and individual?
 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra,eds.Adrian Del Caro and Robert Pippin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2 006), 36.  In Die Revolution,L andauer-quotingL aB oétie-admits: 'Whered oes the tremendous power of the tyrant derive from?I td oes not comef rome xternal power […]n o, its power comes fromt he voluntary servitude of men […]I tb ecame ah abit to be complacent in servitude;a nd habit is stronger than nature[ … ]t yrannyi sn ot af ire that has to be or can be extinguished. It is not an external evil. It is an internal flaw.' This message from La Boétie is at the coreo fL andauer'sa narchy: 'human should not be united by domination, but as brother without domination: an-archy.' But he adds 'with spirit,' spirit that 'has to comeo veru s.' At the end of the Revolution,Landauer compares La Boétie'snotion of 'le contr'un' with his notion of 'le contr'etat':ifthe former is agroupofindividuals which recognise its servitude and rise aboveit, the secondone is 'acommunity of people outside the state.' Cf. Landauer, Revolution,151-173.  On this affinity,s ee Jesse S. Cohn, Anarchisma nd the Crisis of Representation,6 9.
Landauer'sa nswer is the spiritualisation of social relations as as ynthesis between mysticism and socialism. The creation of ar eal community passes through an individual mystical experience which results in dismissing the illusion and false bonds. The regeneration of humankind is in no wayanaïvea nd palingenetic exhortation, but presupposes akind of apersonal conversion. The wayone must sabotagethe state is viathe creation of authentic bonds among people; however,the creation of this bond stems from an individual awarenessand withdrawal that leads to a deeper and more authentic connection with the world and the past.Through these paths the spirit opens up and discloses the revolution as ac athartic renewal of humankind.
Apersonal katabasis and asymbolic suicide are needed as aface to face with a weirdn egativity and as elf-liberation: So as not to be an isolate, lonelyand God-forsaken, Irecognise the world and sacrificemyego to it,but onlys ot hat Im ight feel myself to be the world to which Ih aveo pened myself. Just as a suicide hurls himself intothe water, so Icrash precipitouslyintothe world, but Ifind not death, rather life there. The egok ills itself so that the world egom ight live.³⁸ The social boundsare 'the bridges of light'³⁹ that connect people. Revolution should lead to acommunity workingasareparation-thatwecan call tiqqun as restoration in the Lurianic sense⁴⁰ of the fragments: 'because the world has fragmented into pieces and is divided and different from itself,wem ust flee into mystical seclusion to become one with the world.'⁴¹

6A narchic Time and the Sceptical Accounto fR evolution
In my view,i ti sp ossiblet os ee in Landauer'sw ork at riplei dea of time connected deeplytohis anarchy: the first is the mystical transformationofspace in time arising from scepticism and as apremise for renewal of the community in Skepsis und Mystik;the second is his articulation of time in the Revolution,whereh istory is an open processofbecomingwhich resists anyattempt of dogmatisation; the third is his idea of revolution-inspired by the Jewish Jubilee-as an exercise of interruption of the present power relations in ForS ocialism. The relevance of the concept of time and the connection of the individual with his past are two important features of Landauer'st hought. His idea of the regeneration of community-mainlyinhis Skepsis und Mystik-passes through an overcoming of the spatial and sensorial dimension to conceive af orm of community basedo na temporald imension. In fact,a ccording to Landauer,t he spirit is not as patial concept.⁴² In terms of the connection between time and politics, one can arguethat Landauer interpreted the external world as am ere sign of the internal one. Spatial development is nothing but am oment in the flow of time: 'space must be transformed into time.'⁴³ In this task therei st he need to find new metaphors,o r new language, for an authentic community.H is account of time stems from ak ind of mysticalvision: 'Time is not merelyperceptual, but it is the form of our experience of self; therefore it is real for us, for the conception of the world that we must form from out of ourselves.'⁴⁴The effort of keepingtogether asocial and an individual level is basedo nanew conception of time in which there is ap erpetual bond between past,p resent and future generations.⁴⁵ In Skepsis und Mystik he argued that time and historical changew erea ctually rooted in internal experience, while in Die Revolution he developed what we should call as ceptical idea of history. Die Revolution,written in 1907a nd republished posthumouslyi n1 919,i saunique and sophisticatede ssayw hich embodies the spirit of the time and contains an attempt at as ceptical-anarchistic philosophyo fh istory. This book, however,i sn ot an easy read; mainlyf or Landauer'sa mbiguous usage of the word 'revolution',which has at least three meanings in the text:f irstly, revolution is apermanent movementconnected to his philosophyofhistory whereitisto be interpreted as the threshold between topia and utopia; secondly, along historical period that begun with the modern eraa nd is the sum of different and partial revolutions or transformations;⁴⁶ thirdly, revolution is ar ealisation of the spirit which leads to the regeneration of the humankindand to the real community beyond state.
 GustavL andauer, "Die vereinigte Republiken Deutschlands und IhreV erfassung,2 5. November 1918," in Gustav Landauer und die Revolutionszeit 1918/1919,e d. Ulrich Linse (Berlin: Kramer, 1974: 63: 'Der Geist,m eine Herren, ist keine Lokalitat, wo es am Platz ist,s ich vorzudrängen; eher ist er so etwas wie magisch erfüllteZ eit.'  Landauer, Skepsis und Mystik,8 7.  Ibidem,8 5.  According to him heredity is aforce and acontinuum which shapes ancestral life into anew form. This idea is also takenb yt he third volume of Mauthner's Sprachkritik,where there is ad efinitiono f heredity as ar edefinition of Platonic eternal form. Cf. Mauthner, Beiträge,vol. 3, 71.  In these pages of Die Revolution,Landauer developed aphilosophyofhistory from Middle Ages to his day. Landauer sees Middle Ages as completelydifferent from the modern principle of centralism and statepower; while the millennium from500 to 1500 was marked by ordered multiplicity,and the erafrom1500 until now by alack of spirit,individualisation, state,violenceand so on, he adds: 'This is the complexity in which we find ourselves, this is our transition, our disorientation, our searchour revolution' (135).The development of individualism duringthe Renaissance undermined the Geist which was completely defeated by the reformation and Luther'sd octrine of salvation. The great individualism and the atomization of the masses arrivedwith Luther,a ccording to Landauer: 'He rad-Landauer's Revolution begins by calling into doubt anyd ogmatic and scientific conception of history.D oubtingc ontainsapolitical value and is ap relude to a new beginning connected to the formation of an ew man and an ew society;t he rhythm of doubting is part of Landauer'sp hilosophicals tyle. He commenced his essaybyadmitting that history is not ascience that requires scientific laws, because 'our historical data consist of events and actions, of suffering and relationships.'⁴⁷ At the outset of the book, Landauer adopted sceptical strategy to show the impossibility of ascientific definition of revolution; in fact,every scientific attempt cannot satisfy its understanding as aphenomenon. This is deeplyconnected to his idea of history as not fixed and unchanging, but in fact asum of forces whose influenceispermanent in our lives. In fact,whereas science creates theory and abstraction, history creates 'forces of praxis' in aprocess of Vergegenwärtigung,ofbecomingorofturningsomething into presence. However,Landauer tried to give atheoretical account of revolution connected to his conception of history,without anyd ogmatic presumption.
The entirety of history,a ccordingt oh im, is as equence of topias-periods of order and fixed institutions-and utopias,w hich is moved by ad esire for change, and 'consists of two elements: the reaction against the environment from which it emerges, and the memory of all known earlier utopias.'⁴⁸ He rejects ap rogressive idea of history.I nf act,t he past is not something finished,b ut always ap rocess of becoming. History is not something alreadyd efined, everything is ar esulta sw ell as ap romise: 'there is onlyw ay for us, there is onlyf uture. The past itself is future. It is never finished,italways becomes.Itchanges and modifies as we move ahead.'⁴⁹ This historicalbecomingisboth apassagefrom different phases as well as apermanent changingofthe past at every stageofhistory.There is somehow afuturability of the past,and revolution is the period between of the old topia and the comingofthe new one.⁵⁰ Accordingt oLandauer,r evolution is not the telos-ultimatea im-of the history, but am eta-historical threshold, which needsas ystematic negation of the topia on the wayt ou topia. Topia is as tabile combination of state, economics, school, art, and so on, ac ombination of all the spheres of commonality.H owever,t his gradual icallyseparated life from faith and substituted organized violencefor spirit' (142). This eraismarked by an absence, al ack of spirit,but it does not disappear entirely, but it appears sometimes in some individuals. The revolution in which we live has to bringt ogether an ew common spirit.S incet hat time therehas been along revolution regarded as astruggle for the reestablishment of Geist as principle of human life. Anarchic Scepticism: Language, Mysticism and Revolution in Gustav Landauer stability does not last for long.The changes are caused by utopia.⁵¹ Thoughi tm ay appear dead, it is always ah idden forcei nh istory thatr esurrects whenever a topia reaches its limits.Therefore: Revolution is always alive,evenduringthe time of relatively stable utopias. It stays alive underground. It is always old and new.While it is underground, it creates ac omplex unity of memories,emotions and desires. This unity will then turn into arevolution that is not merely aboundary (or as pate of time), but ap rinciple transcending all eras (topias).⁵² As statedbyLandauer,anarchyis'the expression for the liberation of man from the idols of the state, the churcha nd capital,'⁵³ whereas scepticism as asystematic negation of every positive truth is the necessary strategyfor anarchy. This negation is the heart of his (anti)political theory,particularlysoinhis famous conception of revolution. Revolution needsanegation of the topia on the waytoutopia and this power of negation is the political translation of the act of doubting of all truths: 'Truth is, however,acompletelynegative word, it is the negation in itself, and thereforeitisindeed the subjectand aim of all science,whose long-lastingresults are always of anegative nature.'⁵⁴ Scepticism and revolution have this need of negation in common which becomes ap ositive result,acreation that results from criticism.
In his conception of history Landauer challenged the very heart of the German-Hegelian conception of history as as elf-realisation of the spirit,i nasceptical manner.H er efusesa ny form of theorisation of history as ad iscipline and aD arwinian account of progress seen as inexorable and dogmatic historical tendencies.A ccording to Landauer,adogmatic idea of history-such as Marxism-impedes revolution. As scepticism engenders political action, dogmatism in contradistinction is an obstacle to change. His accusations against Marxism are at various levels. First of all, its view of autopian project based on ascientific or rather aDarwinian idea of history, forwarding am echanistic and deterministic view of history as self-drivenp rogress,  It is fair to saythat Landauer'sinterpretation of utopia is one of the most debated elementsofhis thought.B uber celebrated his friend in Paths to Utopia and, moreb roadly, Landauer has been defined as athinker of contemporary utopia. In Revolution utopia plays acrucial roleinhis philosophy of history, however utopia should not be interpreted as ac lassic understanding of the term as a dream of aperfect society or as arational political project.According to Landauer,utopia is the driving force of history seen as an alternation between topia and utopia, stabilisation and change.Inthe Revolution,L andauer deals with modern utopias, for instanceT homas More'sw ork. Even if modern utopia was arebellion and critique,itconcerned asurrogateform of communality,namelythe state. Furthermore, when Landauer speaks of Campanella's City of the Sun,hestates: 'In Campanella'sutopian system, the stateh as takenc ontrol of everything: love, family, property,e ducation, religion. Campanella foresees the absolute democratic state, the statethat knows neither society nor societies; the state that we call social democratic;' see Landauer, Revolution,162.Also, in his Aufruf,Landauer clearlys tates that he does not offer anyd epiction of au topian ideal.  Landauer, Revolution,116.  Landauer, "Ethische Kultur," (March 7, 1896), reported by Lunn, Prophet of Community,2 00.  Landauer, Skepsis und Mystik,8 3. postulatingthat capitalism will inevitably collapseand the communism will be inevitable. This optimistic and dogmatic trust in inevitable collapse is at the root of Marxist determinism that impedes the action, whereas Landauer'swritingsplace astrong emphasis on the voluntary aspect and ac all to action.
Landauer reads the Marxist conception of history as anecessary development;⁵⁵ it is a 'spiritless conception of history'⁵⁶determined by providence. Landauer criticised the Marxist injunction of waiting for the 'supposed right moment,' which has postponed this goal further and further and pushed it into blurred darkness;t rust in progress and development was the name of regression and this 'development' adaptedt he external and internal conditions morea nd moret od egradation and made the great change ever more remote.⁵⁷ Since revolution pavest he wayf or something yett oc ome, rather than waiting for divinei ntervention, Landauer transposed the axis of hope to human Tat ('action') and human communities.T his passagen eedsasceptical attitude towards politics and institutions in order to create ad ifferent bond between individuals.H ea lways emphasised the idea of beginning and underlined the need for action and the urgency of society'sradical change, not to be postponedi nto ad istant future, but to take place now.
Revolution can happen at anytime and open the gate for the spirit.Thisidea was stressed by Landauer in afascinating speech he gave as memberofthe work councils in Munich duringt he revolution: 'So anyone can help the revolution, anyone can heartilyj oin it through anyd oor,which is mostlya lreadyo pened.'⁵⁸ The possibility of an overturning is possiblea nytime, hencet here is ac atastrophic-in the sense of the Greek word 'katastrophè' which means 'overturn'-conception of history in  Cf. Landauer, ForS ocialism,60-63. Landauer refused to consider the proletarian as the predestined and privileged revolutionary agent.I nh is vision, it is not am atter of class,o rp erhaps more preciselyamatter of historicallyf avoureds ocial groups,f or the radical transformation required the development of cooperation amonga ll workingm embers.F urthermore, the Marxistd efinition of the proletariat is giveno nlya sa ne conomic factor not takingi nto accounts piritual poverty, while the real change starts from aspiritual one. In the placeofadictatorship of the proletariat Landauer called for ad emocracy of the entirew orking community.M oreover,L andauer also sawaconnection between Marxism and technology,which he asserted to be responsible for the process of depersonalisation and dehumanisation of relationships.L andauer'sa version to technology has to be understood as aligned to his idea of spirit as authentic bond between man and man, man and nature, man and history.Capitalism,the modern state and technology areall part of the same constellation.  Ibidem,6 1. Landauer'sthought. There is atension between salvation and destruction at the very heart of his concept of revolution.⁵⁹ Against ap rogressive and evolutionist conception of history,L andauer formulated ad ifferent conception that we can define as an open and anti-dogmatic idea of history in which the messianic overturn can happen anyt ime.
The third and last aspect of Landauer'sa narchic conception of time deals with another account of revolution; in fact,a tt he end of his ForS ocialism,r evolution is conceivedasapermanent interruption of the order.Inthis essayLandauer quotes ap assagef rom  to emphasises the necessity of ar evolution as a permanent interruption-Durchbruch-in order to redeem the whole of history.Heinterpreted this interruption on the basisoft he Mosaic law, when the dayofe qualisation will come and 'every man is to regain what belongstohim.' This theological assumption givesm ore spiritual emphasis to Landauer'sa rguments: [T]he voiceofthe spirit is the trumpet that will sound againand again and again, as long as men aretogether.Injustice will always seek to perpetuateitself, and always as long as men aretruly alive,revolt against it will break out.Revolt as constitution; transformation and revolution as a rule established oncea nd for all; order through the spirit as intention; that was the great and sacredheart of the Mosaic social order.Weneed that onceagain: new regulations and spiritual upheaval, which will not make things and commandmentsp ermanentlyr igid, but which will proclaim its own permanence. The revolution must become an element of our social order,i t must become the basic rule of our constitution.⁶⁰ AccordingtoLandauer,revolution must be apart of asocial order,asthe basis of the constitution and the permanent work of the spirit.This interruption is am essianic interval, but it could be compared to asceptical epoché,asuspension of the rhythm of the time and an overturning of authorities. Since revolution is anegation but also an interruption of authority and of power,itcould be defined as the sceptical heart of community.
In contrast with aMarxist tradition positing revolution needs a 'right moment' to happen, Landauer place it as Grundregel-basic rule-of our constitution. In awonderful mosaic he puts together the subversive features of Judaism and the socialisticanarchistic tradition, as well as the restorative and utopian elements.⁶¹ Even though the relationship between Landauer and Judaism is controversial,⁶² It hink that Lan- At the outset of the Revolution, therei sap assage fromM aximus Tyrus: 'Here, now,you will see the road of passion, which youc all destruction,b ecause youm akey our judgment based on those whoh avea lreadyp assed away on it-which I, however,c all "salvation",b asing myself on the order of those yett oc ome;' see Landauer, Revolution,1 76.  Landauer, ForS ocialism,130.  On the connection between anarchism and Jewish tradition, cf. Martin Buber, Königtum Gottes (Heidelberg: Schneider,1 956); Amedeo Bertolo, ed., L'anarchico el ' ebreo.S toria di un incontro (Milan: Eleuthera, 2001).  This is also one of the most discussed topics in secondary literature. Fori nstance, according to Linse and Link-Salinger,t he Jewish element is onlyo ne factora longside the socialist and romantic dauer as aGerman Jew, who conceivedhis identity as acomplexity,⁶³ anticipated the feeling of the bifurcated soul of awhole generation of thinkers of the last century.⁶⁴ Thanks to his association with Martin Buber,L andauer became familiar with Jewish tradition and Jewish questions. Undoubtedlyi nt he lasty ears of his life, he was enthusiasticfor Jewishnationalr enaissance. After his death, Buber spoke of Landauer as the 'secret leader' of the Zionistm ovement and tried to translate his legacyf rom Germanyt oI srael.⁶⁵ traditions in Landauer'st hought; but Lunn points out that Jewish heritage playedapivotal rolei n Landauer'si dea of redemption and the bindingp owero fs pirit.Cf. Link-Salinger, Gustav Landauer: Philosopher of Utopia,7 4 -76;L unn, Prophet of community,2 47.H anna Delf, "'Prediger in der Wüstes ein.' GustavL andauer im Weltkrieg," in GustavL andauer, Werksausgabe. Gustav Landauer. Dichter,K etzer,A ußenseiter,v ol. 3, ed. Hanna Delf (Berlin: Akademie, 1997), XXIII-LI; Siegbert Wolf, "Einleitung," in GustavL andauer, Ausgewählte Schriften. Philosophie und Judentum,v ol. 5., ed. Siegbert Wolf (Lich/Hessen: Edition AV,2 012): 9 -85.  In one of his most important writingso nJ udaism-Sind das Ketzergedanken?-published in the volume VomJudentum in 1913 and edited by the Zionist organisation in Prague BarKochba, Landauer wrote: 'Iam, the Jew, aGerman. The expressions "German JeworRussian Jew" areasobtuse as would be the terms "Jewish German" or "Jewish Russian".The relation is not one of dependencyand cannot be described by means of an adjective modifyinganoun. Iaccept my fate as it is. My Germanism and my Jewishness do each other no harm but much good. As two brothers, afirst-born and aBenjamin, areloved by mother-not in the same waybut with equal intensity-and as these twobrothers live in harmonywith each other whenever their paths proceed in common and also whenever each goes his own wayalone, even so do Iexperience this strangeand intimateunity in duality as somethingprecious;' translated by Lunn, Prophet of community,270. The special callingf or humanityt hat characterised Judaism is that all Jews bear 'their neighbours in their own breasts;' see ibidem,217.The Jewish Volk is free from the trap of the statewhich is also athreat to the integrity of Jewish identity.Inhis short lecturee ntitled "Judaism and Socialism" givent ot he ZionistischeO rtsgruppe West Berlin on February 12, 1912,L andauer admitted the possibility of Jewish settlements but at the same time he supported the messianicfeelingofGalut amongthe nations as chanceofredemption for the humankind: 'The Galut, exile as an inner disposition of isolation and longing,will be that utmost calling that bonds them to Judaism and Socialism;' translated by Paul Mendes-Flohr, "Introduction," in Gustav Landauer:Anarchist and Jew,1-2. The redemptive mission and the commitment of Jewish people of increasingbrotherhood and justiceisakin to socialism. His provocative idea was that Galut linked Judaism to Socialism, since Jewish people wereparticularlyqualified for the task of helpingt obuild socialist communities.

7S cepticisma sA nti-Political Form of Life
Landauer'si dea of revolution deals with the power of negation, with his conception of history and with apoliticisation of time to provide ar egeneration of humankind. As noted above, he proposed aq ualitative conception of historical time:t he revolution is ameta-historicalelementthatcould happen in asudden eruption and historical metamorphosis of an abrupt moment, Durchbruch. At the sametime, revolution is ar enewal of humankindand aprocesstaking place in the individual'sinteriority. In his prefacetothe second edition of the Aufruf Landauer talks of the transformative feature of the revolution, stating that in the revolution 'the incredible miracle is brought into the realm of possibility.'⁶⁶ This aesthetic and ethicrenovation of the spirit involves joy,l ove, transcendence, religion.⁶⁷ The conversion of the greatestd ifficulty and necessity into the highest virtue,oft he crisis into socialism is the hardest task of revolution.
Thence, revolution is not just apolitical event,but rather it is a metànoia-aconversion, an exercise of becominga nd an interior transformation in order to create new relationships between men. Ithink that this conception of revolution as conversion is also the keyt ou nderstanding his initial participation in the Bavarian Soviet Republic; in fact,h ee nthusiasticallyp articipated in this revolution as as piritual guide, following Eisner'ssuggestion to join it for a 'transformation of the souls' ('Umbildungd er Seele').⁶⁸  Landauer, ForS ocialism,2 1.  In the prefaceo fhis ForS ocialism,Landauer speaks of true socialism and social change as areligion of action and love. His religious and prophetical vein is also the element that his friends-after his death-will take to save his memory and celebrate Landauer as am artyr of revolution; see, ibidem,26: 'Maythe revolution bringrebirth. May, sinceweneed nothingsomuch as new,uncorrupted men risingupout of the unknown darkness and depths,may these renewers,purifiers,saviours not be lackingt oo ur nation. Longl ive the revolution, and mayi tg rowa nd rise to new levels in hard, wonderful years. Mayt he nations be imbued with the new,c reative spirit out of their task, out of the new conditions,out of the primeval, eternal and unconditional depths,the new spirit that really does createn ew conditions.M ay the revolution produce religion, ar eligion of action, life, love, that makes men happy,r edeems them and overcomesi mpossible situations.' Furthermore, at the end of his Revolution,heunderlines this idea of joy and revolution as akind of divine or mystic ecstasy;see Landauer, Revolution,171-172: 'The joy of revolution is not onlyareaction against the former oppression. It lies in the euphoria that comes with arich, intense, eventful life. What is essential for this joy is that humans no longer feel lonelyt hat they experience unity,c onnectedness,a nd collective strength.'  GustavLandauer, Sein Lebensgang in Briefen,vol. 2, 296 note1:'Kurt Eisner hatteam14. November an Landauer geschrieben: "Kommen Sie, sobald es Ihre Gesundheit erlaubt.W as ich vonI hnen möchte, ist,d aß Sie durch rednerische Betätigunga nd er Umbildungd er Seelen mitarbeiten."' In the Munich Revolution, Landauer sawaprophetical realisation of the spirit.Hewas deeplyconvinced of aspirituality transforming of revolution. It is worth notingthat in his speechesand writings during the Räterepublik,Landauer spokeorwrote as aspiritual guide or as aprophet of the spirit that is yet to come. AccordingtoLandauer,a narchyisbased on adeepscepticism towards political dogma, institutions and authority.I tisinnoway an abstract model or doctrine, but an ethic and spiritual form of life whose aim is the Bildung of an ew man ('der werdende Mensch')and an ew community basedo na na uthentic social justice. In Landauer'sview the libertarian approach is radicallyr ethought in aholistic harmonyin which therei sakind of anarchic poiesis.
One of the most innovative aspects in his thoughti st he distinction between an idea of politics as artificial device of power-also to found in Marxism-and an antipolitical approach. In his Anarchic Thoughts about Anarchism Landauer writes: 'Anarchyi sn ot am atter of the future; it is am atter of the present.I ti sn ot am atter of making demands; it is amatter of how one lives.'⁶⁹ Anarchyisseen in psychological terms and is described as ar adical transformation of human being.This is also the reason whyhis revolutionary activity was akind of Lebensform,asitconcerns all dimensions of life.
Landauer's Anti-Politik arisesf rom his criticism of modern political thought. He barelydistinguished his idea of socialism from politics in general: 'socialism is acultural movement,astruggle for beauty,g reatness,a bundance of the peoples.'⁷⁰ Whereas the politician is interested onlyinapartial aspect of the human life, socialist thinks holistically: 'whether he is at hinker or ap oet,afighter or ap rophet: the true socialist will always have avitalelement of the universalinhim.'⁷¹ Whereas socialism concerns all aspects of human life, politics is surrogatea nd ad evice which deals with but partial aspects. Politics is atechnique related to state, representation and institution, while anti-politics could be interpreted as asceptical attitude against power;infact,asitisaGegenmacht ('counter power')that refuses to become power, it could be interpreted as as ceptical stand which avoids dogmatic conclusion and ruling institutions.
Anti-politics is astrategytodiscard doctrine or assumptions from the flux of life which is impossibletodefine in scientific terms.Inthe work and in the biographyof Landauer one can see alivelyexemplum of anarchyasasceptical refusal of political dogmatism. He usess ceptical argumentations in his philosophical political thought and in his anti-political praxis as well. Scepticism has manydifferent features in his thought: it is ar adical critique towards state, dogmatism and progress;t he wayt o follow in order to discover al ivelyi dea of community based on ap articulari dea of time and history;acritique towards idols and authorities, and al iving praxis which is an ongoing challenget od ogmatic power.
Anarchic Scepticism: Language, Mysticism and Revolution in Gustav Landauer tical form of life; on the other hand, however,his death shows the controversial consequencesofananti-political attitude that laterbecame atragic constant in the history of the last century.Landauer was amedieval mystic, an old-fashioned socialistanarchist,alinguistic sceptic, and atormentedspirit from the beginning of the twentieth century. In this regard, he was the first thinker who combined at hinking of community with the breakdown of certainty;a saresult, he demonstrated the extreme consequences of as ceptical definition of politics and an anarchic conception of time. Ibelievethis to be the very heart of his legacythrough which it could be possible-even to this day-to develop amorephilosophicalthinkingofcommunity as a bond between human beings, beyond dogmatic assumptions and technicalaccounts of politics.