
On Revisiting "Saint Max"
by Sidney Parker


  Increasing academic attention to the philosophy of Max Stirner has 
not meant any greater accuracy in interpretation. A case in point is 
an essay by Kathy E. Ferguson which appeared in a recent issue of 
the philosophical review IDEALISTIC STUDIES [1] entitled "Saint Max 
revisited". Ms Ferguson makes some perceptive remarks. She writes of 
Stirner's view of the self as being "not a substantive thing .... but
rather a process" which cannot be confined within any net of concepts
or categorical imperatives. It is "an unbroken unity of temporal
experience that is ontologically prior to any essence later attributed
to [it] .... or any role, function or belief that [it] .... might
embrace." Stirner, she says, calls "the irreducible, temporal,
concrete individual self .... the Unique One; the Unique One is both
nothing, in the sense of having no predicate affixed to it as a
defining essence, and everything, in that it is the source of the
creative power which endows the whole of reality with meaning."

  More's the pity then that these suggestive insights are followed 
by a whole series of misinterpretations os Stirner's ideas. Some of 
these have their origin in that hoary old spook "the human community 
as a whole", others in what appears to be a sheer inability to grasp 
what Stirner's egoism is about. Here are a few examples.

  Ferguson considers that Stirner was an anarchist. As evidence for 
this belief she cites John Carroll's "Break Out From The Crystal 
Palace" and John P. Clark's "Max Stirner's Egoism". Carroll's 
conception of an anarchist, however, embraces not only Stirner but 
also Nietzsche (who called anarchists "decadents" and blood-suckers) 
and Dostoyevsky, although he admits that the latter's anarchism is 
"equivocal".

  As for Clark, he certainly regards Stirner as an anarchist and 
claims that Stirner's "ideal society is the union of egoists, in 
which peaceful egoistic competition would replace the state and 
society" (a piece of doubtful extrapolation). However, he does not 
appear to be very convinced by his own claim for he comments that 
"Stirner's position is a form of anarchism; yet a greatly inadequate 
form" because "he opposes domination of the ego by the state, but 
advises people to seek to dominate others in any other way they can 
manage. Ultimately, might makes right." Since Clark defines 
anarchism as being opposed to _all_ domination of man by man (not to 
mention the domination of "nature" by human beings) it is clear that 
Stirner's "anarchism"  is not "greatly inadequate" but, given his 
own definition, _not_anarchism_at_all_.

  It can be seen, therefore, that Ferguson's effort to include 
Stirner in the anarchist tradition is not very plausible. Stirner 
did not claim to be an anarchist. Indeed, the one anarchist 
theoretician with whose writings he was familiar, Proudhon, is one 
of his favourite critical targets. Undoubtedly, there are some 
parallels between certain of Stirner's views and those of the 
anarchists, but, as I discovered after many years of trying to make 
the two fit, in the last analysis they do not and cannot. Anarchism 
is basically a theory of _renunciation_ like Christianity: 
domination is _evil_ and for "true" relations between individuals to 
prevail such a _sin_ must not be committed. Stirner's philosophy has 
nothing against domination of another if that is within my power and 
in my interest. There are no "sacred principles" in conscious egoism 
- not even anarchist ones .... 

  Ferguson also falls victim to a common mistake made by 
commentators on Stirner: that of confusing the account he gives of 
ideas he is opposing with his own views. She writes that Stirner 
"speaks with great disdain of .... commodity relations" and gives 
as an example a passage in THE EGO AND HIS OWN containing the words 
"the poor man _needs_the_rich_, the rich the poor .... So no one 
needs another as a person, but needs him as a giver." What she 
ignores is that this passage occurs in a chapter in which Stirner is 
_describing_ the _socialist_ case before subjecting it to his 
piercing criticism. It is not possible, therefore, to deduce from 
this passage that it reflects his "disdain" for "commodity 
relations", any more than it is possible to deduce from his poetic 
description of the argument from design that he believes in a god.

  Ferguson claims that Stirner does not recognize the "sociality" of 
human being and that "anthropologically and psychologically, it must 
be acknowledged that human being are born into groups." But Stirner 
quite clearly _does_ acknowledge this fact. "Not isolation", he 
writes, "or being alone, but society is man's original state .... 
Society is our state of nature." To become one's own it is necessary 
to dissolve this original state of society, as the child does when 
it prefers the company of its playmates to its former "intimate 
conjunction" with its mother. It is not, as Ferguson contends, "our 
connection with others" that "provides us with our initial 
self-definition", but our awareness of _contrast_ to them, our 
consciousness of being _separate_ individuals. In other words, 
"self-definition" is a product of _individuation_, not 
_socialization_.

  Nor is Stirner an advocate of "the solitary" as she implies. Both 
in THE EGO AND HIS OWN and his REPLY TO CRITICS he rejects such an 
interpretation of his ideas. Nor is he a moralist - he is an 
amoralist. Presenting as evidence for his belief in "moral choice" 
an erroneous statement by John Carroll will not do. Nor does he 
reject "all socially (sic) acquired knowledge" if by that is meant 
"culture" (acquired by individuals, not by "society"). On the 
contrary, he states "_I_ receive with thanks what the centuries of 
culture have acquired for me."

  Ferguson questions why the conscious egoist should not "wish to be 
free" from ownness. Why not "take a leap of faith into something 
like Christianity as did St Augustine or Kierkegaard?" Precisely 
because ownness is the _condition_ for what she calls "the ontology 
of the self as process" - that is, ownness is _me_ possessing _me_. 
Were I to abandon it by committing myself to the nonsense of 
Christianity, this would not be _my_ self, but a "redeemed self" 
shaped according to an image prescribed by others.

  In her concluding remark Ferguson backs away from the challenge of 
Stirner's egoism. "Ownness is not a sufficient base for human life," 
she claims, because "authentic individual life requires that we have 
ties to others." She admits that such ties can become stifling and 
that Stirner sees this danger, but contends that "he does not see 
the necessity or possibility of a liberating sociality." She thus 
ends up indulging in that half-this and half-that waffle that 
Stirner so unerringly dissected 140 years ago. Once one begins to 
think in terms of "authentic individual life" then that 
"authenticity" has to be distinguished from that "inauthentic". Once 
it is defined one is once again subjected to that "rule of concepts" 
that Stirner is so "startling acute" in rejecting. "Liberating 
sociality" based upon "authenticity" is simply a verbalism 
disguising the intent on deciding our lives for us. It is a 
philosophical confidence trick for which no conscious egoist will 
fall.

[1] Vol XII, No. 3, 1982
