Hello everyone.
If you are interested in the history of antinatalism, perhaps you have already seen our new video about Kurnig, the first modern antinatalist, who, among other things, published a number of books and pamphlets on antinatalism in German and French in the late 19th and very early 20th century. In that video Karim Akerma and I discuss Kurnig’s life, work, and legacy as well as the literary scenes he moved in, and I also present some of my more recent findings. As Dr. Akerma pointed out, it is important to note that Kurnig was not a “singularity”, he did not write in a literary or intellectual vacuum. Sure, Kurnig may have been the most active and arguably the most adamant of his kind, but there were more people who held similar beliefs: Marie Huot was mentioned already, but today I want to introduce you to another very obscure – and perhaps even more bizarre – writer and thinker. During my research on Kurnig there was one name in particular that popped up quite frequently, and often in the same breath as Kurnig: Norbert Grabowsky.
Grabowsky’s life and work
Norbert Grabowsky was born in January 1861 in Ostrów Wielkopolski. He studied medicine and eventually became a doctor but did not obtain a health insurance license, and despite his profession he found himself in financial trouble throughout much of his life. In addition to his day job, he published a number of short books in which he laid out his philosophy. Grabowsky died in 1922 in Leipzig.
Like Kurnig, Grabowsky published in the publishing house of Max Spohr in Leipzig – in fact, Grabowsky’s 1894 work Die verkehrte Geschlechtsempfindung oder die mannmännliche und weibweibliche Liebe (“Inverted Sexual Feeling or Man-Manly and Woman-Womanly Love”) got his publisher into quite a bit of legal trouble. Both Kurnig’s and Grabowsky’s works were actively read and discussed by people in the emerging science of sexology, as both of them held rather unconventional views on human sexuality. As you know, Kurnig was a staunch proponent of voluntary non-procreation (or “natal abstinence”), but Grabowsky went one step further and advocated for complete sexual abstinence – an even more radical and outspoken “apostle of virginity” than Philipp Mainländer himself. What these three gentlemen had it common is that all of them greatly admired and were strongly inspired by Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophical pessimism and shared his pessimistic diagnosis of life on Earth but departed from, or even outright rejected, Schopenhauer’s metaphysics.
Now, Grabowsky was strongly opposed to all forms of sexual intercourse for a variety of odd reasons – but, among other things, he was very explicit about his antinatalism, as he viewed sexual reproduction as “perpetuating the misery of existence by imposing it on others” (Fortpflanzung des Daseinselends auf Andere) and as a great moral wrong that is to be avoided. Grabowsky also considered all sexual orientations and preferences that do not result in procreation, especially homosexuality, to be “subconscious struggles against procreation” and even attempted to demonstrate that “normal” heterosexual intercourse is no less “perverse”, “disgusting”, and reprehensible than those already widely condemned deviant sexual practices – which he, of course, condemned, too, but for other reasons, since he believed that all kinds of sexual and sensual love severely damaged one’s individual integrity and prevented mankind from attaining true cognition and higher levels of spirituality (Vergeistigung), which can only be achieved through a total rejection of sex. These ideas bring Grabowsky quite close to Otto Weininger (1880–1903), who was familiar with Grabowsky’s work and also referred to it in his infamous book Sex and Character, as well as to Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) and his Kreutzer Sonata – another work frequently compared to Grabowsky’s in early sexological literature. Grabowsky declared sex to be “the greatest enemy of our destiny”, and for this reason he was not too fond of the concurring Neo-Malthusian movement in France, which he felt did not address the core of the issue at hand, and he feared that recent developments in contraception will lead to even more sexual intercourse – and greater moral corruption – overall.
Grabowsky insisted that the social question is primarily a sexual question. Not only will sexual abstinence bring about moral progress, but it will also spare countless unborn beings from coming into existence and avoid a “procreative Ponzi scheme” (as David Benatar would put it). He writes:
How the course of human history has unfolded so far has been a matter of necessity. But it is also a necessity that humanity increasingly reaches greater moral and spiritual development. And the social question will also be brought ever closer to its solution, wars will also cease more and more (the abolition of wars is the solution to the social question of the social question among the individual nations). The complete solution to the social question will only be achieved with the extinction of mankind. [Enthaltsamkeit …, p. 48.]
Unlike Kurnig and many other pessimists, however, Grabowsky strongly believed in a life after death, and that earthly hardships will eventually be rewarded with heavenly bliss in the afterlife because, according to Grabowsky, the total amount of happiness in the world will always remain constant:
Since every mature person must give up hope of earthly happiness (he can only acquire peace of mind in the prospect of the hereafter), it is not justifiable for him to leave behind descendants of his misery in this sad world. It is enough that I have suffered. Why do I need to pass on my suffering to others? I want to be good and take up my cross alone, without passing it on to other shoulders. And that is the general reason for my decision of permanent sexual abstinence. […]
The probability of continued existence already exists because the earthly pain imposed on us through no fault of our own demands with compelling necessity a compensation for ourselves, which, however, cannot be found in this life. However, this probability of continued existence can only lead us to maintain our own existence despite the misery of our existence. But the mature person may not, on the basis of continued existence, grant himself the right to bring offspring into this world at will. Just as little as he may inflict an evil on anyone else with the excuse that fate will direct it for the best. [Enthaltsamkeit …, p. 8, 15.]
In addition to his work outlining his opposition to procreation, sex and sensual love, Grabowsky also wrote about – and against – all kinds of things, including diatribes against mainstream philosophy, music (of all things), vegetarianism, tobacco and alcohol. Nonetheless, he considered himself to be a brilliant thinker on par with Spinoza, Kant and Schopenhauer, who perfected what these philosophers failed to do and who, after some five millennia, finally solved the greatest mysteries of the world – Grabowsky even claimed that his contributions “surpassed the discoveries of Copernicus and Columbus”. Unsurprisingly, he was deeply outraged at the public mostly ignored his work and did not honour his “groundbreaking achievements”, which he felt should have brought him great fame and glory instead. He complained he did not have a single friend or supporter in the world, and significant portions of his work consist of bitter complaints about his very frustrating personal situation as a destitute physician and writer and as a misunderstood genius and saviour of humanity who is constantly wresting with his sexual demons.
Now, what do you make of this? Norbert Grabowsky was definitely an odd character and an unorthodox thinker whose ideas never found favour and are completely forgotten today. Was he just an extreme case of “sour grapes”? Or can we find some traces of brilliance in his work, too? I listed and linked some of his books below so you can read it for yourselves, if you are interested, and draw your own conclusions.
a selection of Norbert Grabowsky’s books
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