The Ego And Its Own

In the Stephen Byington translation of Max Stirner's, The Ego And Its Own, at the bottom of Page 250, Stirner writes this: "If the point is to have myself understood and to make communications, then assuredly I can only make use of human means, which are at my command because I am at the same time man. And really I have thoughts only as man; I am at the same time thoughtless. He who cannot get rid of a thought is so far only man, is a thrall of language . . . "

Observe that Stirner introduces a paradox here: the self has thoughts but is at the same time a thougtless nothing. Is this gibberish and nonsense, or is Max writing a profound truth. As a duped egoist the possessed ego bound to an abstraction above him cannot get rid of his thought. His addiction and boundness as slavish devotion to this concept converts his zeal for its worship and the need to convert others to worship this causes as he so fervently does, renders his devotion to it a fanatical lie, a hopeless, dead-end subservience.

Stirner, the negative moderate, the bourgeois insurrectionist,  follows the taoist line of thinking at the the self, the creative nothing, exists and prospers only as a voluntary egoist, disallowing any abstract, cause or ism to control him, the slavery of the extremist, possessed mermidon, pious and reverent.

The voluntary egoist is a man with thoughts that is, at the same time, thoughtless regarding each of his ideas that he creates as a thought, and his property, and in the next instance, or a month later, when he is bored with it, he destroys that thoughtless (thus his psyche in that sense is thoughtless).

If I may translate Stirnerism, negative metaphysical and epistemological moderation for him is bringing any and all thoughts and feelings into and out of existence as he sees fit, so that none of these thoughts or sentiments would get above and outside of him as objective principles to rule and steer him. He refuses to become their property. They must be his property.

Thus if as I assert, the concentration of power is fanatical and evil, then to live as a creative nothing like Stirner did is one way to keep our ideas and our feelings from getting above us, and ordering us about as possessed dupest egoists, altruists in their collective, the general, the hierarchy being knocked around and ordered about without will or redemption.

Stirner seems to recommend that if the ego as a creative nothing (nothing is the conscious Ego as existent but not possessing an essential nature) by applying the practice of epistemological paradox to every thought--and I add to every feeling--then the both thought/thoughtlessness and feeling/lack of feeling are power neutral, not either/or as occurs under excessive aristotelian abstractionism or out concentrated sentiment.