Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (45 page)

Stirner’s philosophy can only be understood in the context of the Left-Hegelian critique of religion that developed in Germany in the 1840s. Opposing the philosophical idealism of Hegel, which saw history as the realization and unfurling of Spirit, the Left Hegelians argued that religion is a form of alienation in which the believer projects certain of his own desirable qualities onto a transcendent deity. Man is not created in God’s image, but God is created in man’s ideal image. To overcome this alienation, they argued that it is necessary to ‘reappropriate’ the human essence and to realize that the ideal qualities attributed to God are human qualities, partially realized at present but capable of being fully realized in a transformed society. The critique of religion thus became a radical call for reform.

Stirner developed the Hegelian manner, including its dialectical progression of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, and adopted his theme of alienation
and reconciliation. He saw his philosophy of egoism as the culmination of world history. Indeed, Stirner has been called the last and most logical of the Hegelians. Instead of attempting to replace Hegel’s ‘concrete universal’ by any general notions such as ‘humanity’ or ‘classless society’, he only believed in the reality of the concrete individual.
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But Stirner went even further than the Left-Hegelians in his critique. Where Feuerbach argued that instead of worshipping God, we should try and realize the human ‘essence’, Stirner declared that this kind of humanism was merely religion in disguise: ‘the Christian yearning and hungering for the other world’.
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Since the concept of human essence is merely abstract thought, it cannot be an independent standard by which we measure our actions. It remains, like the fixed ideas of God, the State, and Justice, nothing more than ‘wheels in the head’ which have no more reality than a ‘spook’.
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Although Stirner celebrates the primacy of the unique individual, he is not in metaphysical terms a solipsist. He recognizes the independent existence of the external world and of other people: ‘I can make very little of myself; but this little is everything, and is better than what I allow to be made out of me by the might of others.’
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The ego does not therefore create all, but looks upon all as means towards its own ends: ‘it is not that the ego
is
all, but that the ego
destroys
all.’
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Again, Stirner talks sometimes as if others are the property and creation of the ego, but he usually means that they should only be considered so: ‘For me you are nothing but — my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one relation to each other, that of
usableness
, of utility, of use.’
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While the ego is not the only reality or all of reality, it is therefore the highest level of reality. It uses all beings and things for its own purposes.

The exact nature of the ego is not entirely clear in Stirner’s work. The ego is prior to all supposition, neither a thing nor an idea, without enduring form or substance. As such, the ego is a ‘creative nothing’, not one self but a series of selves: ‘I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.’
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The ego is therefore a process, existing through a series of selves. Unfortunately Stirner is not entirely explicit or consistent here. He does not explain how an enduring ego can become a series of selves. Nor does he tally his conception of the self-creating ego with his assertion that people are born intelligent or stupid, poets or dolts.

As well as being creative, the ego is also
einzig
– unique. Each individual is entirely single and incomparable: ‘My flesh is not their flesh, my mind is not their mind.’
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Stirner thus has a completely atomistic conception of the self. But he does not suggest like Rousseau that man was originally independent: ‘Not isolation or being alone, but society is man’s original
state. … Society is our
state of nature.
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But society is something which the individual should emancipate himself from to become truly himself. It is for this reason that Marx and Engels ironically dubbed ‘Saint Max’ as ‘the Unique’.

As an atheist and materialist, Stirner considers the ego as finite and transitory and often seems to identify it with the body. To the question ‘What am I?’, Stirner replies: ‘An abyss of lawless and unregulated impulses, desires, wishes, passions, chaos without light or guiding star’.
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In addition, as the ego is corporeal, the products of the intellect or ideas can have no independent existence.

This leads Stirner to a nominalist position, rejecting universals or species since reality only consists of particular things. Abstractions or general ideas like ‘man’ are therefore only concepts in the mind, whatever Feuerbach or Marx might say. At times, Stirner seems to recognize that objective truth does exist, but it has no value apart from its uses for the ego. Stirner is principally concerned with the type of existential truth which is lived, not merely known. He does not say like Kierkegaard that truth is subjective, but holds subjectivity to be more important than truth.
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Unlike Godwin, Stirner is no perfectibilist. Indeed, the ego is completely perfect in its present state in every moment: ‘We are perfect altogether, and on the whole earth there is not one man who is a sinner!’
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What is possible is only what is. If this might seem paradoxical given his stress on development, it becomes less so if we interpret it to mean that the perfect ego can develop in the sense of becoming more aware of itself and other things as its property. It can thus develop its ‘ownness’
(eigenheit)
, its sense of self-possession. The problem still remains that if we are ‘perfect’, why do we need more knowledge and awareness? Although he does not, as Marx suggested, make a new God out of it, Stirner becomes almost mystical in his negative description of the ego. It is not only unspeakable but unthinkable, comprehensible through non-rational experience alone.

In his psychology, Stirner divides the self into desires, will and intellect. But it is the will which is the ruling faculty for to follow the intellect or desires would fragment the ego. The self is a unity acting from a self-seeking will: ‘
I
am everything to myself and I do everything
on my account.’
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But rather than achieving a balance between desire and intellect, the will seeks power over things, persons and oneself. Stirner thus anticipates Freud in his stress on the force of the desires to influence the intellect, and Adler in his description of the will as the highest faculty of the ego.

Stirner develops the psychological egoism of the eighteenth-century moralists to its most extreme form. It is in the nature of every ego to follow its own interest. Altruism is a complete illusion. The apparent altruist is really an unconscious, involuntary egoist. Even love is a type of egoism: I
love ‘because love makes me happy, I love because loving is natural to me, because it pleases me’.
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The same applies to creativity, religion, and friendship. The argument however remains a tautology, and as such is no proof. Apart from mere assertion, Stirner offers no evidence to support his belief that universal self-interest is a true description of human conduct.

The corollary of psychological egoism for Stirner is ethical egoism. He tries to show that conscious egoism is better than egoism disguised as altruism since it allows the development of the will which gives one the dignity of a free man.

In his ethics, Stirner argues that the ego is the sole creator of moral order. There are no eternal moral truths and no values to be discovered in nature: ‘Owner and creator of my right, I recognize no other source of right than — me, neither God nor the State nor nature nor even man himself.’
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One has no duty even to oneself since it would imply a division of the ego into a higher and a lower self. Since this is the case, the conscious egoist must choose what pleases him as the sole good: the enjoyment of life is the ultimate aim. The question is not therefore how a person is to prolong life or even to create the true self in himself, but how he is ‘to dissolve himself, to live himself out’.
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He has no moral calling any more than has a flower. If he acts, it is because he wants to. If he speaks, it is not for others or even for the truth’s sake but out of pure enjoyment:

In the public realm, moral right is just another ghostly wheel in the head. There are no natural rights, no social rights, no historical rights. Right is merely might: ‘What you have the
power
to be you have the
right
to.’ It is completely subjective: ‘I decide whether it is the
right thing
in me; there is no right
outside
me.’
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The dominant morality will therefore be furnished with the values of the most powerful. The individual has no obligation to law or morality; his only interest is the free satisfaction of his desires. The conscious egoist is thus beyond good and evil, as conventionally defined:

Indeed, Stirner goes so far as to place one’s ‘ownness’ above the value of freedom. He recognized that his freedom is inevitably limited by society and the State and anyone else who is stronger, but he will not let ‘ownness’ being taken from him:

With this stress on the primacy of the ego, Stirner goes on to develop a view of freedom which involves the free and conscious choice of the uncircumscribed individual: ‘I am my
own
only when I am master of myself.’
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Stirner’s analysis of freedom is penetrating and profound. In the first place, to make freedom itself the goal would be to make it sacred and to fall back into idealism. Secondly, the negative freedom from physical constraint could not guarantee that one would be mentally free from prejudice and custom and tradition. Thirdly, the kind of positive freedom advocated by Hegel — serving a higher cause — would be no different from slavishly performing one’s duty. As Stirner points out, the problem with all these theories is that they are based on ‘the desire for a
particular
freedom’, whereas it is only possible to be free if one acts with self-awareness, self-determination and free will.
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But whatever stress Stirner places on individual freedom it is always subordinate to the ego, a means of achieving one’s selfish ends. He therefore places ownness
(eigenheit)
above freedom. It follows for Stirner that ‘all freedom is essentially — self-liberation — that I can have only so much freedom as I procure for myself by my ownness.’
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What is owned by the ego is property. This central concept in Stirner’s thought is equated with actual possession, but the ego can also look on everything as a candidate for ownership. The only limit to property is the possessor’s power: ‘I think it belongs to him who knows how to take it, or who does not let it be taken from him.’
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The egoist can, however, never forfeit what is most important — the ego. He can treat everything else ‘smilingly’ and ‘with humour’, whether he succeeds or fails in the battle to acquire property.
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Thus, while Stirner usually urges the maximum
exploitation of others and the world, at times he implies an almost Stoic acceptance of the limitations of one’s power.

While most anarchists make a sharp distinction between the State and society, and reject the former in order to allow the peaceful and productive development of the latter, Stirner rejects both the State and society in their existing form. The State, he argues, has become a ‘fixed idea’ demanding my allegiance and worship. In practice, it is utterly opposed to my individuality and interest. Its sole purpose is always ‘to limit, tame, subordinate the individual — to make him subject to some
generality
or other’.
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As such it is a ‘stalking thistle-eater’ and stands as ‘an enemy and murderer of
ownness’.
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