Max Stirner - The Ego and Its Own
04.09.2023
Today I have begun reading The Ego and Its Own. Certainly a quite provocative work, as it begins with the declaration that All things are nothing to me
. So far, however (and I am not yet far in at all), I do find it a very interesting piece. There is much in it that I find relevant to post-humanist thought:
God and mankind have concerned themselves for nothing, for nothing but themselves. Let me then likewise concern myself for myself, who am equally with God the nothing of all others, who am my all, who am the only one.
If God, if mankind, as you affirm, have substance enough in themselves to be all in all to themselves, then I feel that I shall still less lack that, and that I shall have no complaint to make of my "emptiness." I am nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.
Away, then, with every concern that is not altogether my concern! You think at least the "good cause" must be my concern? What's good, what's bad? Why, I myself am my concern, and I am neither good nor bad. Neither has meaning for me.
The divine is God's concern; the human, man's. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine, and it is not a general one, but is—unique, as I am unique.
I quite look forward to reading further on in this book.
On the other hand, I do wish every famous philosopher would stop trying to compete for the title of who can say the stupidest things about Jewish people...
The first creation, on the other hand, must come forth "out of nothing,"—i. e., the spirit has toward its realization nothing but itself, or rather it has not yet even itself, but must create itself; hence its first creation is itself, the spirit.
This is essentially what I've been saying about humanity as a category.
But to you the whole world is spiritualized, and has become an enigmatical ghost; therefore do not wonder if you likewise find in yourself nothing but a spook. Is not your body haunted by your spirit, and is not the latter alone the true and real, the former only the "transitory, naught" or a "semblance"? Are we not all ghosts, uncanny beings that wait for "deliverance,"—to wit, "spirits"?
Since the spirit appeared in the world, since "the Word became flesh," since then the world has been spiritualized, enchanted, a spook.
Stirner reminding me why I love "haunting" as a philosophical concept so much. He is right here, I do think.
I am quite loving the critique of humanism as a new spirituality which still elevates an alien concept of "Man" which is a separate thing from any individual.
If I cherish you because I hold you dear, because in you my heart finds nourishment, my need satisfaction, then it is not done for the sake of a higher essence whose hallowed body you are, not on account of my beholding in you a ghost, i. e. an appearing spirit, but from egoistic pleasure; you yourself with your essence are valuable to me, for your essence is not a higher one, is not higher and more general than you, is unique like you yourself, because it is you.
This!!! This is what I've been saying about love and my problem with idealism.
I am quite enjoying what Stirner has written about possession. Nero was possessed! I find also that his concept that:
That is the meaning of the care of souls,—that my soul or my mind be tuned as others think right, not as I myself would like it. How much trouble does it not cost one, finally to secure to oneself a feeling of one's own at the mention of at least this or that name, and to laugh in the face of many who expect from us a holy face and a composed expression at their speeches. What is imparted is alien to us, is not our own, and therefore is "sacred," and it is hard work to lay aside the "sacred dread of it."
is quite applicable to modern conceptions of mental health.
05.09.2023
I am definitely seeing the influence from and departure from Hegel in how he speaks of the development of spiritual ideas being necessary for their proper egoist destruction. It somewhat reminds me of the psychological theory of the "stages of moral development" although certainly Stirner would take much issue with this theory and decry its moral spontaneity
. It also is reminiscent to me of Nietzsche. His tying of this to race, however, is ridiculous and contemptible.
Once again I find myself enamoured with how he speaks of possessedness, even of egoist possessedness, as regards those who sacrifice every for particular passion. He may be right! It is indeed my issue with power-seekers such as Napoeleon or those such as NEro (of whom he himself spoke). They themselves were possessed by their reign!
Stirner's observations on liberal "freedom" merely being a disposal of intermediaries and submitting directly to the state, as well as obsession with an "impersonal" power rahter than the power of a specific person is actually quite insightful—particularly in how he describes the insidiousness of this allowing the rule of the state to be a rule of "reason".
This concept that the unhuman exists within everyone actually reminds me of Agamben's anthropological machines. What's interesting, Stirner also talks about the process of shedding humanity in terms of nudity—it's prompting me to take a further look into Agamben's "bare/naked" life.
Some paragraphs from the end of the first part which very much articulate What I've Been Saying:
"You call me the unhuman," it might say to him, "and so I really am—for you; but I am so only because you bring me into opposition to the human, and I could despise myself only so long as I let myself be hypnotized into this opposition. I was contemptible because I sought my 'better self' outside me; I was the unhuman because I dreamed of the 'human'; I resembled the pious who hunger for their 'true self' and always remain 'poor sinners'; I thought of myself only in comparison to another; enough, I was not all in all, was not—unique. But now I cease to appear to myself as the unhuman, cease to measure myself and let myself be measured by man, cease to recognize anything above me: consequently—adieu, humane critic! I only have been the unhuman, am it now no longer, but am the unique, yes, to your loathing, the egoistic; yet not the egoistic as it lets itself be measured by the human, humane, and unselfish, but the egoistic as the—unique."
...
I on my part start from a presupposition in presupposing myself; but my presupposition does not struggle for its perfection like "Man struggling for his perfection," but only serves me to enjoy it and consume it. I consume my presupposition, and nothing else, and exist only in consuming it. But that presupposition is therefore not a presupposition at all: for, as I am the Unique, I know nothing of the duality of a presupposing and a presupposed ego (an "incomplete" and a "complete" ego or man); but this, that I consume myself, means only that I am. I do not presuppose myself, because I am every moment just positing or creating myself, and am I only by being not presupposed but posited, and, again, posited only in the moment when I posit myself; i. e., I am creator and creature in one.
If the presuppositions that have hitherto been current are to melt away in a full dissolution, they must not be dissolved into a higher presupposition again,—i. e. a thought, or thinking itself, criticism. For that dissolution is to be for my good; otherwise it would belong only in the series of the innumerable dissolutions which, in favor of others, (e. g. this very Man, God, the State, pure morality, etc.), declared old truths to be untruths and did away with long-fostered presuppositions.
I very much loved reading these parts. There is something so comforting and at the same time electrifying to read something that so wonderfully shares one's own thoughts. A friend even wondered if I had included quotes from the above in something I had shown him previously; no, I have just now read this part of the book. But it is so incredibly parallel to me.
08.09.2023
The craving for a particular freedom always includes the purpose of a new dominion, as it was with the Revolution, which indeed "could give its defenders the uplifting feeling that they were fighting for freedom," but in truth only because they were after a particular freedom, therefore a new dominion, the "dominion of the law."
absolute banger
11.09.2023
Stirner words his criticisms of humanism well, but they are occasionally repetitive. I did find insightful his criticism that humanism and "love for Man" is still moralism. It is! I also quite like his criticism of lordship:
He who, to hold his own, must count on the absence of will in others is a thing made by these others, as[Pg 256] the master is a thing made by the servant. If submissiveness ceased, it would be all over with lordship.
Quite a fan of Stirner's criticism of "rights" as something external.
12.09.2023
I do enjoy Stirner's writing about interpersonal relationships, even if he was an edgelord about phrasing; I very much agree that proper "union" is only possible beyond idealism, in enjoying someone's uniqueness.
Interesting that Stirner wrote before the rise of "biopolitics"; his section on "self-enjoyment" nevertheless seems to be an early critique of this.
The moral man wants the good, the right; and, if he takes to the means that lead to this goal, really lead to it, then these means are not his means, but those of the good, right, etc., itself. These means are never immoral, because the good end itself mediates itself through them: the end sanctifies the means. They call this maxim jesuitical, but it is "moral" through and through. The moral man acts in the service of an end or an idea: he makes himself the tool of the idea of the good, as the pious man counts it his glory to be a tool or instrument of God. To await death is what the moral commandment postulates as the good; to give it to oneself is immoral and bad: suicide finds no excuse before the judgment-seat of morality. If the religious man forbids it because "you have not given yourself life, but God, who alone can also take it from you again" (as if, even talking in this conception, God did not take it from me just as much when I kill myself as when a tile from the[Pg 431] roof, or a hostile bullet, fells me; for he would have aroused the resolution of death in me too!), the moral man forbids it because I owe my life to the fatherland, etc., "because I do not know whether I may not yet accomplish good by my life." Of course, for in me good loses a tool, as God does an instrument. If I am immoral, the good is served in my amendment; if I am "ungodly," God has joy in my penitence. Suicide, therefore, is ungodly as well as nefarious. If one whose standpoint is religiousness takes his own life, he acts in forgetfulness of God; but, if the suicide's standpoint is morality, he acts in forgetfulness of duty, immorally. People worried themselves much with the question whether Emilia Galotti's death can be justified before morality (they take it as if it were suicide, which it is too in substance). That she is so infatuated with chastity, this moral good, as to yield up even her life for it is certainly moral; but, again, that she fears the weakness of her flesh is immoral.Such contradictions form the tragic conflict universally in the moral drama; and one must think and feel morally to be able to take an interest in it.
What holds good of piety and morality will necessarily apply to humanity also, because one owes his life likewise to man, mankind or the species. Only when I am under obligation to no being is the maintaining of life—my affair. "A leap from this bridge makes me free!"
But, if we owe the maintaining of our life to that being that we are to make alive in ourselves, it is not less our duty not to lead this life according to our pleasure, but to shape it in conformity to that being. All my feeling, thinking, and willing, all my doing and designing, belongs to—him.
Having finished the book, I do consider it a worthwhile read. I wouldn't consider Stirner's politics a starting point, but they provide some very good bases from which one may build.