MisUnderstood Stirner

 

Jason McQuinn, in his introduction to Wolfi Landstreicher’s translation of Stirner’s Critics, suggests that Max Stirner’s masterwork, The Unique And Its Property, was one of the most subversive, radical, misunderstood and misread texts in Western thought. That is no exaggeration.

 

I wish to quote McQuinn’s full footnote # 3 on Page 6: “3. It can be plausibly argued that Stirner’s text is one of the most misread, misinterpreted and misunderstood books in the entire history of thought, if not the most misunderstood in modern Western thought. Paradoxically, as a European text it is definitely Western—though not necessarily in its perspective and orientation (being completely nominalistic, atheistic, anarchistic, amoral and egoistic at the same time, counter to major themes of Western thought). Historically, though it falls squarely with the modern world, it is also clearly anti-modernist to a degree only vaguely hinted by nominally post-modern texts of contemporary theory.”

 

My response: Stirner has never previously been much understood, by McQuinn and his ilk 150 years late may now understand Stirner’s Eastern, perhaps Taoist epistemology. I note how Stirner wrote his masterwork in complete isolation, as did Eric Hoffer, as I have done. From this I will generalize that individuators, if quite self-isolating, may perhaps be our most creative and original thinkers because no one is there to pollute their fabricating a metaphysical narrative to make the mysteries in their lives seem sensible, intelligible and meaningful.

 

That a brilliant thinker like Stirner was disappeared for over 100 years is a fate that I might suffer. I believe that I have been that mistunderstood too.

 

Max Stirner may end up being regarded as near a great a genius as Kant, and just as influential epistemologically—but in ways detracting from the dogmatic optimism about knowledge of reality.

 

I cannot take dogmatic stance that universals exist and that general terms conceptualize and define these universals, but I lean that way in refutation of Stirner’s severe subjectivism and skepticism about all abstractions being spooks.

 

I reject his atheism but love his anarchism and egoism, though his egoist is subjective materialist, and mine is primarily objective and idealistic. He is amoral but his lack of values and standards would deprive people of values to guide their lives, so evil grows where moral values are not defined, shared communally, and enforced by the self on the self, and by the communal members on everyone to guarantee a minimum standard of decency, lawfulness, and peace. In short, Stirner’s ethical assumption are either immoral, or lead to a loss of values, thus a wicked society emerges.

 

His masterwork is Western, but he is Eastern in his ontological, normative and epistemological, complete repudiation of all things Western, Judeo-Christian and Modern.

 

McQuinn is spot-on in contrasting drastically anti-modernist Max Stirner versus the milder postmodernist of today.