Max Stirner on Dupes

 On Page 2 of his masterpiece, The Unique and Its Property, Max Stirner writes of the need for humans to no longer be duped by unselfishly serving the causes and purposes of the great egos. Instead, he challenges humans to wake up, smell the coffee and only serve themselves. He is correct in identifying the unselfish devotion that the duped give to the causes they serve, and that they do so as collectivists, and that it is not in their best self-interest. 

I am not as against serving causes and abstractions as Stirner is, for some of them are holy, virtuous, and good, but we need to serve them through enlightened self-interest more than as ardent, enthusiastic nonindividuators. Stirner's Unique seems rather selfish, and unwilling to serve humanity, whereas my version of enlightened self-interest goads the self to improve mightily to bolster God, the self and society indirectly All benefit. My egoism is value-laden and not selfish like that of Stirner's Unique.

Let me quote him and then make some comments: "And won't you learn from these shining examples that the egoist gets on best? I, for my part, take a lesson from them, and instead of serving those great egoists unselfishly anymore, I would prefer to be the egoist myself."

My comment: From Stirner we can glean that living life as an egoist is how a human advances. I would prefer that the egoist do it as an objective egoist, a value-laden living angel of God, not Stirner's merely self-seeking, subjective egoist. At least he got the egoist orientation right for people to follow and live by.

Let me continue with Stirner: "God and humanity have based their affair on nothing, on nothing but themselves. I likewise base my affair on myself, this I who am the Unique."

My comment: God and humanity, for Stirner are the great egos or abstractions that humans unselfishly serve. Stirner wants the self, the Unique One to base his affair on himself solely. This is a proper way to proceed and live one's life.

Let me continue to quote Stirner: "If God, if humanity, as you affirm, have enough content in themselves to be all in all to themselves, then I feel I would lack it even less, and that I would have no complaint to make about my 'emptiness.' I am not nothingness in the sense of nothingness, but am the creative nothing, that nothing out of which I create I myself create everything as a creator."

My comment: Stirner's unique individual will enjoy his emptiness, his loss of conscious, worldly ego, his rational bracketing of people and reality, his reliance on abstracting, his Eastern-hard-to-define sense of the annihilated ego, replaced by living, mortal consciousness empty of all universal concepts. Once the self is epistemologically free from such enslaving rational obsessing, his empty mind will be freed up as a creative nothing to create everything (and destroy his created ideas at will, should he want to terminate them). The Unique is a creator.

In what follows Stirner suggests that the Unique is only free and creative if he is neither good nor bad (he defies all labels, especially moral labels), and the only cause that he will serve is his own affair. He proclaims that nothing is greater than himself. He is an egoist, pure and simple.