Vicious Abstractions As Revealed By Max Stirner

 F.H. Bradley denounced  empirical facts as vicious abstraction, based on a false, realist ontology. The entire world is mental, he taught..

Max Stirner would likely denounce facts as vicious abstractions too. I would like to quote a paragraph by Stirner from his book, The Ego and Its Own, translated by Steven Byington, Page 7: "As I find myself back of things, and that as mind, so must I later find myself also back of thoughts--namely as their creator and owner (Eigner). In the time of spirits thoughts grew until they overtopped my head, whose offspring they yet were; they hovered about me and convulsed me like fever-an awful power. The thoughts had become corporeal on their own, were ghosts, such as God, Emperor, Pope, Fatherland, etc. If I destroy their corporeity, then I take them back into mine, and say: 'I alone am corporeal'. And now I take the world as what it is to me, as mine, as my property (Eigentum): I refer all to myself."

Bradley the Idealist believed in the Absolute, which may have been God for him. Stirner the atheist and subjective materialist dismissed all abstractions. (For Stirner, facts might exist but to objectify them as scientific atoms is an illusion or distortion of their realitv as illusory fantasy. )

My response to the quote above: Stirner insists that thoughts are his creations and do not exist in objective reality. To allow private thoughts to become public abstractions or universals that one worships is to enslave oneself to what is not real, an illusory ghost. He wants the reader to control his thoughts and to knock them down to size and keep them down to size, so to speak, so that the individual rules his ideas, not allowing them to be "universalized", and worshipped by him. Only the self is corporeal or real, and ideas do not exist. The self exists and the world exists, but the self acts upon and grabs the world as the property of the self, and all is referred back to the self.

I regard Stirner as a subjective egoist and I am an objective egoist, not quite as pure an objective egoist as Ayn Rand is.

Stirner is to skeptical, too amoral, too relativistic in his epistemology and ontology, but he provides the reader and future generations with two excellent pieces of advice. First, let not an abstraction become an ism or cause to be worshipped, or it enslaves and sickens all its adherents and damages society. Second, people become true believers as group-livers and then their fanatical devotion to their universal, now objectified into a creedal ism to show devotion towards. People must grab ideas and their personal ideas especially to consume them, and bring them down to size.

Eric Hoffer described  how true believers followed an ism, and Jordan Peterson reminds us that our need for meaning and religious stories that satisfy or help feed our spiritual cravings for a positive relationship with the divine can be perverted or distorted into an ism that we fanatically follow, and that sickens and harms all. The innate religious appetite is mutilated beyond recognition. Our cause, our ism, must never be what we worship.

We need control it, not allow it to control us Now, unlike Stirner, I go with Dennis Prager that espouses that there are objective, universal moral truths, and spiritual verities. We may or may not be that certain about these ultimate propositions as Prager insists, but we know enough to lean towards Prager's ontology and epistemology and away from Stirner's bleak epistemology and ontology, but there is no denying that Stirner providers a corrective admonishment to believers that are drifting over into true believership.

I do not know the ultimate truth, but I feel I can describe it with a degree of high probable certainty. if I am wrong and we can only know objective reality as epistemic pessimist Stirner posits, then let me recognize the truth of that state. We cannot live well, prosper, be good or serve God or save our souls unless we embrace the truth as wholly as we may. If that essence is that there is no truth to be had or that it is not knowable, then that is acceptable. I love the truth, and seek the truth, wherever it takes me, pleasing or unsettling as the journey may be.

I will now quote that same paragraph from Wolfi Landsreicher's translation of Max Stirner's The Unique and Its Property (The Ego And Its Own): "As I find myself behind things, that is, as mind,, so I must later also find myself behind thoughts, namely as their creator and owner. In the time of mind, thoughts grew in me until they were over my head, though they were its offspring; they hovered about me and shook me like the fever dreams, a horrifying power. The thoughts had become embodied for themselves, were ghosts, such as God, emperor, pope, fatherland, etc. If I destroy their embodiment, then I take them back into my own, and say: 'I alone am embodied.' And now I take world as what it is to me, as mine, as my property: I related everything to myself."

Stirner introspects and concludes that when he gets back of worldly facts (maya) and his thoughts about these facts or other issues in consciousness, are spooks that do not exist, but are mental fabrications made up and shared with the world--or not--and he is their creator and owner. Thoughts now embodied in the world become a mass fantasy, like emperor, pope or fatherland that deceives, mind-controls and enslaves millions of devoted followers of this empty, meaningless creed. Only the private self exists and the world out there and its objects are his property.

I am an essentialist more than an anti-essentialist, so I believe that universals are real, and perhaps our ideas or just pale copies of universal forms. Ideas and laws and the Word come from God, but Stirner is wise in complaining that these abstractions must not be isms that we idolize and bow down to.