Stirner: Not A Philosopher

 

Paul Strathern in his short book, Kierkegaard In 90 Minutes, on Page 7 writes this: “Kierkegaard wasn’t really a philosopher at all. At least not in the academic sense. Yet he produced what many people expect of philosophy. He did not write about the world, he wrote about life—how we live, and how we choose to live.

 

Kierkegaard philosophized about what it meant to be alive. His subject was the individual and his or her existence: the ‘existing being’. In Kierkegaard’s view, this purely subjective entity lay beyond the reach of reason, logic, philosophical systems, theology, or even ‘the pretenses of psychology.’ Nonetheless, it was the source of all these subjects. As a result of such thinking, philosophers, theologians, and psychologists have all at some time disowned Kierkegaard. The branch of philosophy—or nonphilosophy, for many purists—to which Kierkegaard gave birth has come to be known as existentialism.”

 

My response: I have tried to read Kiekegaard, but he is hard for me to grapple with but, if I had the time, it would be worth the arduous undertaking. I am concentrating on Max Stirner, and do not see if the literature that anyone is much analyzing Max Stirner in light of the seminal work of Soren Kierkegaard. That simple comparison is one I will undertake as I read this short book.

 

First of all, Max Stirner and Kierkegaard were either students of Hegel or learned of his philosophy while students in Germany. Both were existentialist, though Stirner does not mention existentialism. Stirner is a subjective egoist and a subjective materialist. Kierkegaard seems to have no interest in egoism, but his radical subjective individualism is rather similar to Stirner’s unwavering championing of the egoist living his concrete existence.  Kierkegaard is an eccentric but devout Christian, but Stirner is an avowed atheist. Stirner will worship no abstraction, but Kierkegaard is idealistic enough to believe in God and the realm of spirits.

 

They are both irrationalists.  They pushed or seemed to promote that existence precedes essence, not the other way around. They hostility to abstract, formal thought and the construction of metaphysical castles. This radical deemphasizing reasoning and the use of abstraction to categorize, name, define and make sense of the world in effect makes philosophy, as commonly understood, not doable. They were intellectuals but not philosophers.

 

Strather points out that Kierkegaard’s interest was about the private, subjective individual and how he was to live, how he was to choose to live, having been thrown into this world of Being. Stirner the rational egoists insists that the focus for the ego’s energies and consciousness is wrapped up in his own interests, concrete existence, and his property.

 

Stirner is an unannounced existentialist and Kierkegaard is the founder of it. As an ontological, moral, ethical and epistemological moderate, I would side with Aristotle more than with Stirner and Kierkegaard but these existentialists remind us that though essence does precede existence, we must not forget to take seriously and address the ontological needs, desires and challenges that each individual encounters, so existence follows essence in priority but it must be enjoyed and studied too.