Stirner: Back Of Things

 

Here is a quote from Byington’s Translation of Max Stirner’s book, The Ego And Its Own, Page 7: “As I find myself back of things, and that as mind, so I must 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 around me and convulsed me like fever-phantasies—an awful power. The thoughts had become corporeal on their own account, 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.’ Now I take the world as what it is to me, as mine, as my property (Eigentum); I refer all to myself.”

 

My response: When Max Stirner offers that he has gotten back of things and thoughts, I do not see that he is referring to their objective or noumenal state. Rather, these concepts that he has of things and thoughts are illusory if they become independent of them as their creator. To get back of them is to convert them from being illusions or ghosts that people worship, by taking them back into his mind, they lose their power, their status, their independence. These ideas were only ever ghosts, immaterial in that they did not exist on their own. These figments of his thinking and imagination lose their corporeity once he brings them back into his mind. He alone then exists in reality as a conscious, biological, living material being. He then takes the world out there as his property to enjoy as he sees fit.”

 

I like the idea of universals, at least some of them, existing in reality outside of the human originator’s mind. Still, Stirner is spot on is chastising the reader not to allow ideas to become ideals, worshiped by thousands of people as the one true answer.

 

Let me quote the same paragraph from Max Stiner’s, The Unique And His Property, Page 9 and 10, translated by Landstreicher: “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, people, 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 the world as what it is to me, as mine, my property: I relate everything to myself.”

 

My response: Stirner, is no solipsist, suggesting that he cannot know if there is a world out there, or if other human exist. Stirner knows that others exist, and he firmly believes in objective reality, a world out there, but it is to be phenomenologically encountered not like an objective, observational scientist would perceive the world, but the world, Stirner’s property, is to be experienced, with awareness and with instinctive, pure stream-of-consciousness appreciated, interacted with and upon, and characterized and labeled, ever provisionally lest any objectified concept or idea from Stirner’s brain over grow him, and become an independent, corporal reality, though it is a fabricated ghost, a waste to contemplate about.

 

I am a modified foundationalist with my correspondence theory of truth, but Stirner’s epistemology, ontology and egoist ethics offer a view of the world that must be studied and taken seriously, if not ultimately embraced.