Marx VS Saint Max Stirner

[heiss93]

I finally got a chance to start reading the epic 800 page German Ideology, instead of the usual 200 page abridgment which only covers Feurbach.

Interesting that half the book was devoted to Max Stirner. St.Max certainly seems to be a very modern philosopher. The only major work to defend solipsism. And the precursors to Nietzche, existentialism, and egoism. Its interesting seeing Marx take on some very 20th century currents.

Its very good literature too. A mock-epic Dostoevsky novel in the form of polemic.

Anyone have thoughts on it?
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch03.htm
http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/maxundhegel.html

[Os Cangaceiros]

I consider Max Stirner to be an unusually intelligent historical figure.

Of course, Marx was as well, but I find Stirner's critiques and insights to be very interesting. Der Einzige und sein Eigentum is a really incendiary, radical work.

[Zazaban]

Max Stirner is my single favourite philosopher. He is absolutely brilliant in all respects.

[Hit The North]

Stirner is really one of those historical figures who's names are only known because they were criticised by Marx.

Although it would be interesting to hear why you think he was brilliant.

[gilhyle]

It is probably true that Stirner is only known to the extent that he is because he was criticised by Marx. He would be a footnote in the intellectual origins of Nietzsche, in any case. The work of his translator John Henry McKay (cant remember his name with certainty ?) and the inclusion by George Woodcock (that name might be wrong too) of Stirner as an originator of Anarchism helped to keep him alive as an independent thinker. Patterson's attempt to place him within the existentialist tradition is less successful, and certainly has had much less impact.

I recall that either Marx or Engels expressed some favourable comments about his intelligence many years later at the time he died, in letters. He was clever, but the world is full of clever inconsequential people - and nothing wrong with that.

But when you look at the substance of the somewhat mistitled The Egoist and his Own, what is bizarre about it is not the solipsism but the attempt to recreate a solipsist stance from within a dialectical perspective, i.e. to grasp solipsism as the 'Absolute'. As Marx shows, scorchingly, just about every step in this dialectic is entirely arbitrary and schematic in a way that is probably even worse than Bauer's schematism. As Marx shows carefully, the stance requires the suspension of the scientific understanding and the substitution of an alternative, an alternative created only to lead to the solipsistic conclusion and attractive only because it leads there.

When we read the work historically, this seems much less important to us because the Hegelian Dialectic seems less important to us. Consequently, the book can seem primarily rhetorical, a kind of precursor of Lautreamont.

THere is little doubt that it was not intended to be purely rhetorical
but it is a good example of a work of philosophy becoming what it is perceived to be, rather than what it was conceived to be. By taking its conclusion seriously, one sets oneself up not to take its formulations seriously. If I am truly an egoist in the way Stirner suggests, I can say what I like, to amuse myself and what works is what has the verisimilitude to amuse me.

Stirner is therefore an brilliant modern philosopher because he is entirely without philosophical brilliance. He is a firework rather than an explosive. But if Halloween is the characteristic moment of our times, he is apt.

[Anti Freedom]

Stirner is definitely one of my favorite philosophers. This is not to say that he was the most brilliant philosophers to have ever existed, but I enjoy him.

To be honest though, I have rarely heard about Stirner in the context of Marx, but rather in the context of individualism, and existentialism, as he is mentioned by Albert Camus in the book "The Rebel", and if I know my individualist anarchist history well, Benjamin Tucker was ethically influenced by Stirner.

To be honest, I do not even show a lot of concern about the formulations of Stirner, mostly because I do not see Stirner's work to be concerned with an analytical point. As gilhyle argues "By taking its conclusion seriously, one sets oneself up not to take its formulations seriously. If I am truly an egoist in the way Stirner suggests, I can say what I like, to amuse myself and what works is what has the verisimilitude to amuse me." And I think Stirner is pretty explicit about that, as he states that men should not be slaves to ideas, and degrades the concept of philosophy, and he also states that his work is because he wants to put his ideas forward, but not due to any concern for the readers. Not only that, but Stirner's own ideas are not without merit, as whether *his* formulations are perfect(I mostly consider the Hegelian dialectic a historical curiosity) the issue is that his means of thinking *do* carry much in common with existentialism, and that fact can be noted by the fact that Nietzsche's own works are sometimes questioned as inspired by Stirner.

That said, I have not found a copy of "The German Ideology" that I can hold in my hands.