The Egoism of Max Stirner
by Sidney Parker


(The following extracts are taken from my booklet entitled THE 
EGOISM OF MAX STIRNER: SOME CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES to be 
published by the Mackay Society of New York)

        Albert Camus

  Camus devotes a section of THE REBEL to Stirner. Despite a fairly 
accurate summarization of some of Stirner's ideas he nonetheless 
consigns him to dwelling in a desert of isolation and negation 
"drunk with destruction". Camus accuses Stirner of going "as far as 
he can in blasphemy" as if in some strange way an atheist like 
Stirner can "blaspheme" against something he does not believe in. He 
proclaims that Stirner is "intoxicated" with the "perspective" of 
"justifying" crime without mentioning that Stirner carefully 
distinguishes between the ordinary criminal and the "criminal" as 
violator of the "sacred". He brands Stirner as the direct ancestor 
of "terrorist anarchy" when in fact Stirner regards political 
terrorists as acting under the possession of a "spook". He 
furthermore misquotes Stirner by asserting that he "specifies" in 
relation to other human beings "kill them, do not martyr them" when 
in fact he writes  "I can kill them, not torture them" - and this in 
relation to the moralist who both kills and tortures to serve the 
"concept of  the 'good'".

  Although throughout his book Camus is concerned to present "the 
rebel" as a preferred alternative to "the revolutionary" he nowhere 
acknowledges that this distinction is taken from the one that 
Stirner makes between "the revolutionary" and "the insurrectionist". 
That this should occur in a work whose purpose is a somewhat frantic 
attempt at rehabilitating "ethics" well illustrates Stirner's ironic 
statement that "the hard fist of morality treats the noble nature of 
egoism altogether without compassion."


        Eugene Fleischmann

  Academic treatment of Stirner is often obfuscating even when it is 
not downright hostile. A marked contrast is Fleischmann's essay 
STIRNER, MARX AND HEGEL which is included in the symposium HEGEL'S 
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. Clearly preferring Stirner to Marx, 
Fleischmann presents a straightforward account of his ideas 
unencumbered by "psychiatric" interpretations and _ad_hominem_ 
arguments. He correctly points out that the "human self" signifies 
for Stirner "the individual in all his indefinable, empirical 
concreteness. The word 'unique' [einzig] means for Stirner man as he 
is in his irreducible individuality, always different from his 
fellows, and always thrown back on himself in his dealings with 
them. Thus, when he talks of 'egoism' as the ultimate definition os 
the human 'essence' it is not at all a question of a moral category 
. . . . but of a simple existential fact."

  Fleischmann contends that "Marx and Engels' critique of Stirner is 
notoriously misleading. It is not just that ridicule of a man's 
person is not equivalent to refutation of his ideas, for the reader 
is also aware that the authors are not reacting at all to the 
problems raised by their adversary." Stirner is not simply "just 
another doctrinaire ideologue". His "reality is the world of his 
immediate experience" and he wants "to come into his own power now, 
not after some remote and hypothetical 'proletarian revolution'. 
Marx and Engels had nothing to offer the individual in the present: 
Stirner has."

  In his conclusion Fleischmann states that Stirner's view that the 
individual "must find his entire satisfaction in his own life" is a 
reversion "to the resigned attitude of a simple mortal". This is not 
a serious criticism. If I cannot find satisfaction in my own life, 
where can I find it? Even if it is _my_ satisfaction that I 
experience, any satisfaction that the other may have being something 
that he or she experiences - not _me_. If this constitutes being a 
"simple mortal" then so be it, but that it is a "resigned attitude" 
is another matter.


        Benedict Lachmann and Herbert Stourzh

  Lachmann's and Stourzh's TWO ESSAYS ON EGOISM provide a 
stimulating and instructive introduction to Stirner's ideas. 
Although both authors give a good summary of his egoism they differ 
sufficiently in their approach to allow the reader to enjoy 
adjudicating between them.

  Lachmann's essay PROTAGORAS - NIETZSCHE - STIRNER traces the 
development of relativist thinking as exemplified in the three 
philosophers of its title. Protagoras is the originator of 
relativism with his dictum "Man (the individual) is the measure of 
all things". This in turn is taken up by Stirner and Nietzsche. Of 
the two, however, Stirner is by far the most consistent and for this 
reason Lachmann places him after Nietzsche in his account. For him 
Stirner surpasses Nietzsche by bringing Protagorean relativism to 
its logical conclusion in conscious egoism - the fulfilment of one's 
own will.

  In fact, he views Nietzsche as markedly inferior to Stirner both 
in respect to his style and the clarity of his thinking. "In 
contrast to Nietzsche's work," he writes, THE EGO AND ITS OWN "is 
written in a clear, precise form and language, though it avoids the 
pitfalls of a dry academic style. Its sharpness, clarity and passion 
make the book truly shattering and overwhelming." Unlike 
Nietzsche's, Stirner's philosophy does not lead to the replacement 
of one religious "spook" by another, the substitution of the 
"Superman" for the Christian "God". On the contrary, it makes "the 
individual's interests the centre of the world."

  Intelligent, lucid and well-conceived, Lachmann's essay throws new 
light on Stirner's ideas.

  Its companion essay, Stourzh's MAX STIRNER'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE EGO 
is evidently the work of a theist, but it is nonetheless sympathetic 
to Stirnerian egoism. Stourzh states that one of his aims in writing 
it "is beyond the categories of master and slave to foster an 
intellectual and spiritual stand-point different from the 
stand-point prescribed by the prophets of mass thinking, the 
dogmatists of socialism, who conceive of the individual only as an 
insignificant part of the whole, as a number or mere addenda of the 
group."

  Stourzh draws a valuable distinction between the "imperative" 
approach of the moralist and the "indicative" approach of Stirner 
towards human behaviour. He also gives an informative outline of the 
critical reaction to Stirner of such philosophers as Ludwig 
Feuerbach, Kuno Fischer and Eduard von Hartman. Stourzh mars his 
interpretation, however, by making the nonsensical claim that 
Stirner's egoism "need in no sense mean the destruction of the 
divine mystery itself." And in line with his desire to preserve the 
"sacredness" of this "divine mystery" he at times patently seeks to 
"sweeten" Stirner by avoiding certain of his most challenging 
remarks.


        References:

Camus, Albert: THE REBEL: AN ESSAY ON MAN IN REVOLT. Knopf, New 
York. 1961

Fleischmann, Eugene: THE ROLE OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN PRE-REVOLUTIONARY 
SOCIETY: STIRNER, MARX AND HEGEL in HEGEL'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 
Cambridge University Press, London. 1971

Lachmann, Benedict and Stourzh, Herbert: TWO ESSAYS ON EGOISM. To be 
published by The Mackay Society, New York.

