Stirner And Idealism

 

 

 

 

Max Stirner was skeptical of idealist on several counts. First, it was the prime concern of young men, too callow and unknowing to know how to live. Second, Stirner is an egoist, and he disapproved of the selfless young, so idealistic, so pure of heart, so ready to sacrifice themselves for that abstraction, that ideal, that cause that they revered and sought to extend everywhere. Third, though he referred to young men as intellectuals (not too different from the intellectuals that Hoffer was wary of), it was their passionate, selfless, altruistic devotion to a word or concept regarded as sacred by them, something that did not even exist, a ghost. Fourth, Stirner the subjective materialist was only concerned with his own affairs and was deeply suspicious of serving an ideal or spiritual fantasy, where thousands and millions of devoted followers wasted their lives chasing after what is unreal.

 

I agree with him on point number one. Jordan Peterson wants the young to get their own personal house in order, before seeking to change the world.

 

On Stirner’s second point, it is noble to sacrifice one’s life to save a loved one or stranger, to die fighting to defend one’s nation, honor, or one’s noble faith, but usually it is practical and worthy to work one on one’s own projects, especially if one maverizes and dedicates the fruits of one’s labor the Good Couple.

 

Third, intellectuals for Hoffer and Stirner, more nearly refers to educated members of the ruling elite of a community or nation. Hoffer and Stirner are not anti-intellectual at all, but the intellectuality of the young intellectuals serving a cause is the uniform, conformist, all-think-alike robot approach of true believers piously and sincerely mouthing the party line.

 

Implicit in the criticism by Hoffer and Stirner of the young idealists slavishly devoted to growing their cause is that genuine intellectualism is the independent reasoning and pondering and rational intuitions displayed by the sophisticated egoist intellectual, the anarchist-individuator well on her way to becoming an living angel.

 

Fourth, the young intellectuals flee from themselves into the collective anonymity by which they never discover their own thoughts, feelings, and insights, welling up from soul-depths, feedback whose meaning and teleological guidance are now transparent to them.

 

What prompted the above musings was a paragraph from Page 6 of the Byington translation of Max Stirner’s book, The Ego And His Own: “The man is distinguished from the youth by the fact that he takes the world as it is, instead of everywhere fancying it amiss and wanting to improve it, model it after his ideal; in him the view that one must deal with the world according to his interest, not according to his ideals, becomes confirmed.”

 

My response: Implicit in Stirner’ stated preference that the adult takes the world as it is instead of fancying it amiss so ready and needful to be reformed or replaced. The mature adult is an egoist, a conservative, distrustful of any ideal, any spook that requires immature, callow devotees to serve and advance it. The mature adult, if he were to maverize, would be the most revolutionary, yet a peaceful revolutionary—grafting new wood onto the old apple tree, rather than cutting the tree down--, force in the world because this moderate moral, artistic and intellectual giant would be a creative, innovative mixture of tradition and the latest, all peacefully and quietly processing its change seamlessly.

 

Let me quote that same paragraph by Max Stirner from Landstreicher’s translation of Stirner’s , The Unique And His Property, Page 8: “The man is distinguished from the youth in that he takes the world as it is, instead of presuming that it is everywhere in the wrong, and wanting to improve it, to mold it to his ideal. In him, the view that one must deal with the world according to his interest, and not his ideal, is established.”

 

Two response from me: Notice that Stirner advises that the thinking mature adult spends his time and effort working on what is real, his personal interests, whereas the youthful idealist, not knowing who or what he is, and is completely out of touch with his inner self, wastes his time, energy and may lose his life to further the interests of the guru or demagogue at the head of the ideal, the spook, that the youth worships. The youthful altruist is quite confident, but is misdirected and foolish, not knowing how to live.

 

Second, Max Stirner was no traditionalist nor apologist for the middle class though he has been accused of such. Nor was he a revolutionary. He was surrounded by humanists and socialist radicals like Marx and Engels, but he was one of the few German intellectuals at that time that realized that all these idealists of competing stripes were really but true believers, altruistic foot-soldiers for the empty ideal or abstraction that they devoted their lives to extending and perpetuating.

 

Now lying, fanatical excessiveness and fringe approaches go with the mass movements growing out of any demagogued cause with thousands or millions of selfless followers.

 

By contrast, Max Stirner is implicitly moderate intellectually, morally, ontologically, and epistemologically as I am. He realized that the Unique and his property should be each individual’s primary interest. There he will discover, experience, and uncover happiness, adventure, truth, meaning and fulfillment.