Stirner The Pure Irrationalist

The absolute rejection of Abstractions (at least abstractions over the private individual) by Max Stirner and the postmodernists is what I would describe as pure irrationalism, epistemological nihilism and severe epistemological pessimism.

As I read Stirner more and more, it occurs to me that he is a negative, epistemological moderate. In his greatest work, The Unique And Its Property, he cites sample after sample of abstractions that he does not want the self to be possessed by. When the abstraction or cause controls the ego, the self becomes the involuntary egoist and his ownness and property are alienated from himself and he is alienated from himself, as he worships this objective predicate that he now holds as sacred, objective and unassailable.

Rather as the voluntary egoist, the self is to utilize each predicate, creating it and destroying it as the self decides to do. No idea or predicate is to be made sacred and worshiped. None is to be utterly reevred or scornfully dismissed. Each concept is merely one's property to use for one's own pleasure, as long as such utilization brings the self pleasure.

Under Mavellonialism, or positive, moderate epistemology, I would suggest that every idea, every feeling, ever desire and every instinct are all to be preferred or dis-preferred in uneven but proportionate amounts. None is solely good or evil, and none is perfectly true or correct, or bad or incorrect.

None of these manifestations of consciousness or mental contents are to possess one, or be worshiped as the absolute cause or final answer for all humans all the time. When duped egoists take this stance, then, as possessed fanatics, they will hurt others and themselves while promoting and extending the reach of their cause.

Now, reasoning or rationalism (the realm of the objective) more than feeling or irrationalism (the realm of the subjective) is mostly more individual, good and moderate, while the irrational is naturally more groupist, evil and immoderate.

Stirner is an moderate irrationalist more than a immoderate rationalist so he is a epistemologically negative, subjective individualist. I am a moderate rationalist more than a fanatical irrationalist so my epistemological stance is that of an epistemologically positive, objective individualist.

As I move onto my study of Ayn Rand, what I have discovered here about Stirner's and my own epistemologies influence and enlighten my interpretation of her epistemology. This further will be explained and fleshed out as what would serve as the proper, workable epistemology for my book on moderate egoism, which includes my hermeneutics on the works of Mandeville, Stirner and Rand. How this epistemology would apply to the theology of Maellonialism would be an interesting, rewarding inquiry, should I live long enough, and be clear enough in my old age to lay out for the reader such an epistemology.