Stirner And Mandeville

 

I try to be as honest and transparent as I can be about sharing with the reader the sources of ideas that interest or influence me. In that spirit, I am typing out a two-paragraph excerpt from a 2/25/2023 entry in Wikipedia. The short category was entitled Egoism and the author or authors were writing some interesting points about Max Stirner’s subjective egoist outlook. When I read it, it made me think of a comparison to the modestly objectivist ethics of Bernard Mandeville.

 

Though both thinkers are regarded as psychological egoists, they are very different philosophers. Still, below I will elaborate one way that they seem to think in a similar vein. First, I will give my response to both paragraphs, separately, and then I will try to show how Stirner and Mandeville think alike in this one way.

 

Wiki Excerpt: “Stirner’s egoism argues that individuals are impossible to fully comprehend, as no understanding of the self can adequately describe the fullness of experience. Stirner has been broadly understood as containing traits of both psychological egoism and rational egoism. Unlike the self-interest described by Ayn Rand, Stirner does not address individual self-interest, selfishness, or prescriptions for how one should act. He urged individuals to decide for themselves and fulfill their own egoism.”

 

My response: When one considers the self to be the brain and biological consciousness, of a living, walking animal, it is hard and likely impossible to fully comprehend or describe, with clear language, the fullness of experience. When one adds on that the soul connected to and part of each person’s biologically existing consciousness, that res cogitans or soul, in touch with God, the infinite and the near limitless potential enjoyed in the outward flowering of the talents, learning, creativity and power of the self-realizing individual, then it becomes patent that we cannot fully comprehend the fullness of experience.

 

Still, Stirner is too pessimistic about our ability to provide an explanatory account of what is an essentialist picture of human consciousness and its enormous potential as envisioned and acted upon. I may not be as dogmatic and optimistic as Ayn Rand about my ability to provide such an account, but we are smart enough, and our generalizations are accurate enough and meaningful enough that we have much applicable knowledge about what it means to be human.

 

I agree that Stirner is a psychological egoist, that people do pursue what interests them personally. He is a rational egoist—after his own indefinable, quirky, quixotic fashion-- but his creative-nothingness brand of subjective egoism so introduces the individual, following his amoral directive, into chaos and a lazy lifestyle, that the non-individuating lifestyle will be the life of an immoral sinner that group-lives. The paradoxical moral and existential reality is that it is joiners that are altruistic and selfish at the same time, while loners—especially maverizers—are egoistic and generous, for the most part, with themselves, with others and towards nature and God.

 

The moral danger of subjective egoism is that it traps the deluded egoist (Stirner may have suffered from this delusion. He is moderate in some of his offered solutions, but his nihilistic ethical predilection would allow Satan to rule the world without effective opposition.) into irrational, extreme, undiscipline living and experiencing, and that is the lifestyle of selfish yet altruistic joiners and group-livers, that would deny vehemently that they are selfish.

 

Yes, I agree that Stirner does not offer moral prescriptions for the life of rational egoism as championed by Ayn Rand. His brand of egoism entails not naming, categorizing, generalizing, or labeling any goal to avoid worshipping a reified concept, a spook and false idol.

 

Wiki Excerpt: “He believed everyone was propelled by their own egoism and desires and that those who accepted this—as willing egoists—could freely live their individual desires, while those who did not—as unwilling egoists—will falsely believe they are fulfilling another cause while they are secretly fulfilling their own desires for happiness and security. The willing egoist would see that they could act freely, unbound from obedience to sacred but artificial truths like law, rights, morality, and religion.”

 

My response: For someone to be a self-proclaimed willing egoist would require that they actually were individualists, individual-living, self-aware to the extent that Stirner was, but his level of self-awareness was rare and exceptional—and the number of openly existing willing egoists, whether practicing objective, Randian egoism or subjective Stirnerian egoism, have historically been few in number in any community in pre-history or in historical times.

 

A willing egosts would definitely be free to live his individual desires, but, the familial, social and even legal repercussions, would be heavy but varying depending on setting and generation of occurrence.

 

Most people are unwilling egoists as would self-identify as communal joiners, as willing altruists, collectivist and selfless, moral self-sacrificers dedicated to preserving their families, their community, their divinity, and their country.

 

I, unlike Stirner and Mandeville, am a psychological altruist, not a psychological egoist, but I am a psychological altruist with a twist: people are selfless and group-oriented naturally, but selfless and group-oriented are predominantly satanic. I would characterize them as instinctive/teleological altruists and willing, self-conscious altruists. They serve, defend, and will fight for the cause or abstraction that has central narrative value for their group or nation.  Their selfish desire to avoid the hard, painful work and journey of maverization as commanded by the Good Spirits drives them to embed themselves in their group and its favored ism or spook, so they there find the happiness and security as they define it and would own it.

 

The willing egoist, as an objective, individuator-egoist, not as a subjective non-individuating, Stirnerian subjective egoist, would be liberated to do her own thing while bound to obey sacred, artificial and divine truths like law, rights, morality and religion.

 

Stirner’s finest moral point is his warning to egoists, willing or unwilling, to avoid worshiping an abstraction that leads to total subjugation by its propounding guru, demagogue, ruler or totalitarian regime, a mass movement in its passive, asleep mode, or its rare, vibrant, on-the-march, radicalized mode.

 

Wiki Excerpt: “Power is the method of Stirner’s egoism and the only justified method of gaining philosophical property. Stirner did not believe in the one-track pursuit of greed, which as only one aspect of the ego would lead to being possessed by a cause other than the full ego. He did not believe in natural rights to property and encouraged insurrection against all forms of authority, including disrespect for property.”

 

My response: I agree that power is the method of Stirner’s egoism and the only justified method of gaining philosophical property. My own version of power, as the preferred method of exercising one’s rights, duties, and responsibilities under Mavellonialist egoism, would dictate that the individuators-anachist supercitizen use his natural and acquired share of power to do his thing while avoiding conflict or grabbing such share of power as wielded by each of his maverizing neighbors. This would apply to intellectual property as well as material wealth.

 

Stirner was wise and insightful to discourage one-track pursuit of greed, or any other obsession, for being possessed by any experience, hyper-giantized as the abstraction to serve and peddle.

 

Part of Stirner’s genius and moral greatness is his conscious, intuitive (the law moral moderation to avoid extremes as the way to lead a good and happy life) worry that one aspect of our experience becomes a “made-sacred”, sickening idol that we worship and that it possesses us, should we join others in bowing down to this false cause, this spook, this pagan god, an abstraction that now is above us and rules over us, and we are deprived and deprive ourselves of an independent existence as free agent and willing egoists.

 

Implicit in Stirner’s philosophy is his advocacy of the law of moderation, and something like advocacy of that law flows through Eastern metaphysics and at least the Buddhist religion. Jordan Peterson is tapping into this ancient advocacy of something like the moral law of moderation as he urges the individual to avoid extremes, either too much order or too much chaos, and these reified extremes, disguised as causes, collectively worshiped by millions of adherents leads to all kinds of human suffering unhappiness and unjust social conditions.

 

Unlike Stirner, I do believe in natural rights to property: the government and other people have no right to steal it or mug the owner to grab his property. The egoist and his property comprise the social field where he will do his own thing as a living angel.

 

Stirner champions insurrection not revolution against all forms of authority, and in this too he is a moral moderate. I would add that the willing egoist as a Mavellonialist would insurrect and not revolt, most of the time, against all authorities, while, simultaneously obeying, preserving, and protecting the social order, the social contract that he was born into and is working on updating. Like a Jordan Peterson conservative, he will not overthrow a democratic capitalist democracy, and nor will he fail to improve himself and then be a political activist in lawful, sensible way, dialoguing, cooperating with and reaching concord via compromise with neighbors, maverizers to decide how the system can be improved and made more fair and more efficient.

 

Mandeville and Stirner Compared: These ethical egoists are very different from each other. I do not know if Max Stirner every heard of or read Bernard Mandeville.

 

The similarity that I see occurs as Max Stirner lays out his categories of egoists as of two types: the willing egoists are openly pursing their own interest, and the unwilling egoists who self-deceive that they are altruists serving some higher purpose or cause, when in fact they find pleasure in selflessly serving a cause outside of themselves and their own interests.

 

The realistic and cynical Mandeville flat asserts that people are fallen creatures that always pursue their selfish interest, whether they are open about it or pretend to be selfless religious believers and charitable givers.

 

Both thinkers point out that psychological egoism is what drives people no matter what set of values they proclaim to themselves or the world whether they believe their rationales or not.

 

I regard people as damaged by their psychological altruism. They are willing altruists by their altruist ethics and unwilling altruists in that they are built that way as non-individuating, group-living collectivist obsessed with their group and its worshiped abstractions.

 

To bring up a moral and free child is to teach her to self-realize, to leave the group, to develop her virtuous character as a willing egoist pursuing ends of enlightened self-interests that will still require some amelioration and adjustment to serve the general good, a secondary moral demand upon her, but one that she should be able to accommodate.