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Hegel and Stirner: Thesis and Antithesis

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Hegel and Stirner: Thesis and Antithesis HEGEL AND STIRNER: THESIS AND ANTITHESIS LAWRENCE S. STEPELEVICH The recent profusion of studies directed to uncovering the "Young . Marx" has also provoked so me renewed interest in his contempo­ rary, Johann Caspar Schmidt (1806-1856), better known as Max Stirner. With a few exceptions, the most important being William Brazill's The Yo ung Hegelians, Stirner has been retained in his traditional role as Marx's first critic, the harried "Sankt Max" of The German Ide ology. This perspective, established firmly by Sid­ ney Hook and continued by David McLellen, does cast light upon Marx's development, but it cannot be expected to do justice to Stirner, who is more than a mere anti-Marxist. Since the recovery and popularization of his work just before the turn of the century, a small but undaunted group calling them­ selves "individualistic anarchists" have c1aimed Stirner as their mentor. However, they have largely ignored the philosophical as­ pects of his thought in favor of its possible political consequences. This expected ignorance is the cause of those one-dimensional anarchist sketches of Stirner, such as drawn by John Henry Mackayl or Benjamin R. Tucker,2 which are usually more inventive than representational. Nevertheless, it was mainly through their singular devotion to the anarchistic implications of Stirner's major work, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, which has accounted for its ap­ pearance in eight languages and oyer fifty complete editions.3 Still, the continued interest evoked by Stirner's teachings, even when limited to defending anarchism or providing fodder for Marxian scholars, suggests that these teachings have a firm metaphysical grounding. Indeed, there is no reason not to anticipate a me ta- I John Henry Mackay, The Anarchists, trans. George Schumm (Boston: Benjamin R. Tucker, 1891). 2 Benjamin R. Tucker, Instead 01 a Book (New York: Benjamin R. Tucker, 1893). 3 The most comprehensive bib1iography of Stirner 1iterature is appended to Hans G. He1ms, Die Ideologie der anonymen Gesellschalt (Kii1n: M. DuMont Schauberg, 1966). 264 IDEALISTIC STUDIES physical basis for his thought, for Stirner had fully studied Hegelian philosophy. But, up until the present time, the philosophic relation­ ship holding between Stirner and Hegel has been left virtually unexplored.4 To continue to leave this nexus unexamined not only leaves a wide gap in the history of ideas, but it also fails to do jus­ tice to Stirner's philosophic significance as weB as to Hegel's philosophic influence. It will then be the intention of this paper to institute the examination of the relationship holding between the famous Hegel and his notorious disciple, Max Stirner. Unlike a later generation of Hegelians, a generation which in­ cluded Marx, Engels, and Bakunin, Stirner had the advantage of being taught his Hegel by Hegel. Moreover, he was introduced to Hegelianism even before encountering Hegel as his teacher. During his years as a gymnasium student in Beyreuth from 1819 to 1826, Stirner had as a teacher Georg Andreas Gabler, one of Hegel's first disciples. As Hegel's student in the Nürmberg Gymnasium and then at the University of Jena, Gabler's dedication was finally re­ warded in 1835, when he was appointed to fiU Hegel's vacated chair at the University of Berlin. Although it seems possible, it is not known if Stirner ever met Hegel directly, but he did hear the most important of his lectures. In the spring of 1827, during his first year at the University of Berlin, Stirner attended Hegel's lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. In the following winter semester, Stirner enrolled for two of Hegel's courses, the History of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Spirit.5 Unfortunately, Stirner left no record of his impressions of these famous lectures. In the faU of 1828, just as Feuerbach before him, Stirner left Berlin for the University of Erlangen. But unlike Feuerbach, Stirner returned to Berlín within a few years, there to spend the rest of his obscure life caught up in a series of personal and professional mishaps. In the fa ll of 1841, Stirner joined an informal circle of radical Y oung Hegelian teachers, poets, and publicists who bravely called themselves the "Free Ones."6 In this prerevolutionary group, 4 With the exception of the limited study by Kurt Adolf Mautz, Die Philosophie Max Stirners im Gegensatz zum hegelschen Idealismus (Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1936). 5 The main biographical source regarding Stirner is John Henry Mackay, Max Stirner: sein Leben un sein We rk (Berlin: Berhard Zack, 1910). 6 The most complete study of Die Freien is found in Mackay's biography of Stirner, ib id. , and Gustav Mayer, "Die Anfiinge des politischen Radikalismus im vormarzlichen Preussen," Zeitschrift fü r Politik, 1913 (6), pp. 1-1 13. HEGEL AND STIRNER: THESIS AND ANTITHESIS 265 which had evolved from Marx's "Doctor's Club," Stirner soon be­ came acquainted with the young Engels, and developed a deep friendship with Bruno Bauer. The lifelong friendship of Stirner and Bauer, at least in respect to its intellectual form, was a perfect Hegelian union-one grounded in mutual criticism. They first met in the spring of 1842, when Bauer returned to Ber­ lin after a short and sensational career at the University of Bonn. Bauer had been suspended from teaching by reason of his outspoken atheism, and as he returned "with an aureole of martyrdom about his forehead,"7 he easily established himself as a spiritual leader of the Berlín Y oung Hegelians. Bauer had, within five years, traversed the theological-philosoph­ ical path from an orthodox and theistic Hegelianism to an extreme form of critical atheism. The end of his speculative journey from theism to atheism was suddenly revealed with the publication, in J une of 1841, of his most significant work, Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Sy noptiker. Within a year he also settled accounts with Hegelian philosophy in his critical study, Hegels Lehre von der Religion und Kunst. In the eyes of conservative Hegelians and orthodox theologians, Bauer's ideological inversion was a double tragedy; not only had the dangerous Hegelians of the left gained a powerful thinker, but the conservatives had lost, in him, one of their most promising young champions. In his early career, with the sup­ port of the Prussian Minister of Culture, von Altenstein, as well as the conservative Hegelian faculty at the University of Berlin, Bauer had been the first chosen to rebut Strauss' masterwork, the Leben Jes u. Later, his further competence in regard to Hegelianism was recognized when he was elected to prepare the second edition of Hegel's lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. And so, if Stirner fe ll under the inftuence of Bauer, as Karl Lowith maintains,8 then he had most certainly found a brilliant tutor. As their contemporary Rosenkranz noted, "Among the so called 'free-thinkers' in Berlin, Bruno Bauer is undoubtedly the most important, in character as in culture and talent.''9 Moses Hess was of the same ópinion: "He 7 /bid. , p. 50. X Karl Lowith, From Hegel lo Nielzsche, trans. David E. Green (New York: Holt, Rine­ hart and Winston, 1964), p. 343. 9 Karl Rosenkranz, Aus einem Ta gebuch (Leipzig, 1853), p. 113. 266 IDEALISTIC STUDIES [Bauer] stood at the head of the Y oung Hegelians."IO Then again, it might have been Bauer who found a tutor in his older com­ panion, as William Brazill suggests, II and in easy opposition to Rosenkranz and Hess, there is the judgment of Friedrich Engels. In a letter to Marx announcing the publication of Stirner's Der Einzige, Engels was obviously not displeased with the work of his "duzbruder" who "had obviously, among the 'Free Ones,' the most talent, independence, and diligence."12 But this question of in­ ftuence can be left unresolved, for, in any case, Stirner could cer­ tainly say, with much more justification than Marx, that he also "had come to know Hegel and most of the Hegelians as well."13 Having now touched upon Stirner's apparent knowledge of Hegelianism�or at least of his many opportunities to gain that knowledge�but before proceeding to compare some of their funda­ mental views, a brief examinatiop of Stirner's literary style and production might serve as a further introduction to their relationship. The most evident fact regarding Stirner's literary career is that he was, unlike so many Y oung Hegelians, neither prolific nor pre­ cocious . Whereas Engels, in a properly Victorian manner, started his shelf of lengthy works before he was twenty, and David F. Strauss was only twenty-seven when his sensational Leben Jesu appeared, Stirner was already in his late thirties before his writings were published. This belated career began with a series of letters and essays appearing in the more liberal journals and newspapers of prerevolutionary Germany: Gutzkow's Te legraph fü r Deutsch­ land, the same which introduced a pre-Marxian Engels to its reader­ ship, and the Leipziger AlIge meine Zeitung, known as a vehicle for the Young Hegelians. Stirner also wrote a few articles for the Rheinische Zeitung, though before Marx became its official editor. But these early writings, as well as those which followed upon the publication of Der Einzige, can now only serve as a frame for that 1 0 Moses Hess, Philosophische · und SozialistÚche Aufsiitze, 1837-1850, ed. Cornu und M onke (Berlin, 1961), p. 381. II WilIiam J. BrazílI, The Yuung Hegelians (New Haven: Yale Uníversíty Press, 1970), p. 213. 1 2 Engels to Marx, November 19, 1844; Marx-Engels, Werke (Berlín: Dietz, 1965), XXVII, p. 13. 13 Marx 10 hís father, November 10, 1837, We rke, Erganzungsband, Ersler Teil, p.
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