Jacques Élie Henri Ambroise Ner 7 December 1861 – 6 February 1938, also invited by a pseudonym Han Ryner, was the French individualist anarchist philosopher as well as activist and a novelist. He wrote for publications such(a) 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.
The mature thought of Han Ryner is influenced by stoicism and epicureanism. From this first position he shows a tendency to fatalism towards the pains of life and those submission 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 energy to direct or develop which individuals can resort to.
He defined individualism as "the moral doctrine which, relying on no dogma, no tradition, no outside 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 any other needs, that is, near all the desires and any 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 alive 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 matters outside the individual he saw "Every grownup 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 ordering to undergo a change 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 earn as an evil worsened by society and that "1—It arbitrarily dispenses anumber of men from all cause 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 especially among the rich, imaginary needs and it imposes on the poor the odious labor necessary for the satisfaction of these needs."
In classification with Stirner, he rejected sacrifices in the name of exterior "Idols" such(a) as "Incountries, 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 kind 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 offered all of Africa a hell. it is for they who destroyed the Indians of America and lynches Negroes."