Max Stirner, By Wes Cecil

 

Professor Wes Cecil put out a video (11-22-2015) on Forgotten Thinker, Max Stirner.

 

Cecil’s account seems fair, accurate and insightful. He thinks that Stirner would advocate that a fully integrated, uplifted, powerful person would be reluctant to sacrifice themselves—their life—for another, and he is correct about this.

 

Then he lost me a bit when he attributed to egoists the self-reflection that they are God and the universe. I hope they are not that delusional and arrogant. I would be afraid of God’s wrath to declare such blasphemy.

 

I disagree with Cecil that Stirner is not an anarchist. He is but not in any organized, radical, and revolutionary mode.

 

Cecil is right that Stirner could not be the typical anarchist who joiner a cause, a worshipped abstraction, and is part of a party of devotees pushing their cause. Yes, Stirner was an anarchist, if not a formal anarchist.

 

Cecil noted that Stirner liked private property not communal property, and that property was material, not just mental property, I suggest.

 

Cecil wisely points out that Stirner is warning against true believers radically promoting their cause, their fixed idea by which they are deceived, and do not hesitate, at their worst, to utilize murder and torture to force people to joint their warped cause. This was Stirner’s most moral, noble objection to mass movements.

 

I did enjoy how Cecil introduced Stirner as coming to adulthood in the midst of revolutionary ferment in the early 1840s.

 

Cecil does a great job showing how Stirner would criticize any abstraction or generalization, to be vehemently opposed by the Unique that judged any issue by how it worked or did not work in his own life, not how it impacted the public good.

 

Cecil makes a strange allusion to a ‘certain brand of Christians” believe, because people are chaotic, they require laws to govern them.

 

I object to this mischaracterization of Jews and Christians: traditionally and classically, most of these Western believers  likely held that people were born bad or chaotic, and that is why laws were required to govern them. As an aside, as an anarchist-individuator supercitizen I would urge people to learn to control themselves, self-legislating morality upon their naturally sinful selves.

Cecil adds that Stirner thought people were good, so they did not need all that order. Other anarchists viewed human nature as good but Stirner did not, instead believing we could do evil, and that was our right to commit as we expressed our liberty. I disagree, we require liberty, but we must curb our love of evildoing.

 

I would like to provide an account of what I heard Dennis Prager say about human nature on his happiness hour on the radio to compare and to contrast it with Stirner’s view of human nature. Stirner the anarchist and nominalist would never agree that human nature can be pegged down like Prager and I claim that it is, so then people can largely act in ways that please them. Our certain view about moral matters is a reflection of Prager’s acceptance that objective morality exists and is knowable by humans that study the Bible, pray to God and follow the Ten Commandments. I the moderate mostly go along with Prager here.

 

Deniis Prager wants us to apply our reason (following our head) so that we can control but not follow our hearts for our sensible thinking and logic needs to calm, tame, redirect and guide our savage hearts. We are not born good, and mut learn to behave. I think that Prager’s emphasis on the head ruling the heart in the morally good individual (learned to be good) is a Hebrew example of God, reason and natural law, a sign that reason is sacred to God.

 

Prager the wise then goes on to suggest three ways to be happy. If one accepts that people are flawed, then cutting them some slack will lead to one being happy by being less disappointed or bitter.

 

If we think people are born bad, then when we encounter good people that makes us happy for such a pleasant, unexpected surprise.

 

The brilliant Prager also advises that we know and accept that people are born bad then we will not be shocked, disappointed, and shattered when we encounter real evil unfolding in front of us or by us as the doer or receiver. If we are expecting it, we can survive the experience better and be happier despite our sad knowledge of flawed humans.

 

A woman called in and disagreed with Prager that people are born bad, and she justified her disagreement by commenting that we are made in God’s image and likeness, and God is morally perfect, so we must be born good after all, or we would not be made in God’s image and likeness after all.

l

Prager vigorously countered that we are make in God’s image in likeness in that we have free will and knowledge of good and evil, as God has free will and knowledge of good and evil, unlike animals that have no free will so they have not knowledge of good and evil.

 

Prager warns that we are born not to follow our natures but to fight our natures.

 

I loved this remarkable synopsis and primer of Judeo-Christian outlook, presented by Prager, on the nature of human nature, and I enjoyed how Prager ‘s view defies the moral optimism of pure anarchists—those so-called strong anarchists contrasting themselves against Stirner.  (They criticize him as a weak anarchist.), and the Stirnerian denial that human nature exists and can be described by words and concepts for what they are and now we act accordingly.