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THESIS TJTLE: Egoism and the Post-Anarchic: Max Stimer's New Individualism

AUTHOR: Kristian Pr'Out

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Egoism and the Post-Anarchic: Max Stirner’s New Individualism

Kristian Pr’Out

Pr’Out 2

Table of Contents

Preface 3

Chapter 1 Max Stirner: Biographers and Interpreters 13 Stirner and The Dialectic: A Genealogy of Liberalism 23 Fichte and the Unique One: Speaking the Intangible 32

Chapter 2 Stirner and the Case for Anarchism 39 Stirner’s Egoism Meets Classical Anarchism 48 Welsh’s Dialectical Egoism and Post-Anarchist Individualism 64

Chapter 3 May 1968 and Its Impact 67 Post-Anarchism: A Contemporary Theoretical Model 82 Narrative and the Critique of Modernity 89 ‘Ownness,’ Power, and The Material 92

Conclusion: A Revenant Returns 102

Bibliography 104

Pr’Out 3

Preface

In the 19th century, the influence of Georg W. F. Hegel was widespread. His works

influenced anarchists, communists, the moderately liberal, and the staunchly traditional. In

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1977), history operates in certain movements - namely, that of

a world spirit that ushers in new and different epochs (6-7). The accomplishments of science

render the world intelligible and perceivable to the conscious mind. Through the act of

perceiving the world, one is able to understand its content (7-8). Additionally, in Elements of the

Philosophy of Right (1991), Hegel asserts that one of the chief objects of reality is the state (21).

More than just social, political, and governmental institutions, the state constitutes the

individuals that act within it. For Hegel, the state is a necessity because it protects the lives of its

members; they are a part of it because it is in their best interest to be. Indeed, to act rationally,

according to Hegel, is to act according to the altruistic nature of the state. Naturally, his thought

as contained within the Elements of the Philosophy of Right was problematic for his more liberal readers, as it elevates the state to something beyond reproach. A few modern interpretations, however, seem to depict Hegel not as a political sycophant, as he may have been seen, but as one who was aware of the political turmoil of his time. Hegel wrote with this in mind and was careful to avoid provocation, but was also able to offer some criticisms. However, there were, and are, others who were less concerned with any political fallout resulting from their ideas.

Among the many provocateurs who read Hegel, few would be as infamous, controversial, and misunderstood as Max Stirner - a scholar that I believe is worth reconsidering.

A direct student of Hegel, Max Stirner has been relatively unexplored in modern academia, notwithstanding a few mis-readings and subjective analyses. In the few instances where he has Pr’Out 4 been explored, he was either relegated to a cursory position within the history of Marxism and/ or anarchism, or he was outright dismissed for the idiosyncrasies of his thought. His definitive work, The Ego and Its Own (1995), was polarizing in its assertions. He attacked the abstractions of modern liberalism, accusing them of repurposing the old religious doctrines of servitude to the abstract and the conceptual. He repudiated government as an enemy of the individual, and finally suggested that individuals actualize their ‘uniqueness’ in voluntary unions with other egoists.

The old orthodoxies would be shattered by new forms of social organization in the wake of conscious egoists, who ‘owned’ their thoughts and actions. Prompting a number of responses,

Stirner’s work was dismissed as lunacy by the Prussian government, and perceived as hypocritical by his contemporaries. Karl Marx, who devoted much of The German Ideology

(1932) to a critique of Max Stirner, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Bruno Bauer accused his notion of

‘uniqueness’ of being another abstraction to which people would have to conform. It was not until John F. Welsh’s work Max Stirner’s Dialectical Egoism (2010) that a new vision of Stirner was promulgated - a work that inspired this thesis.

Welsh’s interpretation considered not just the thought of Stirner, but the historical and social context in which he had found himself. Stirner drifted among a circle of liberal thinkers known as “The Free,” including Feuerbach and Bauer. As a group, they published on topics such as art, history, and philosophy - all haunted by the specter of Georg W. F. Hegel. Specifically, in

Stirner’s departure from Hegel we see an evolution of his own unique contribution to philosophy and social criticism. Stirner didn’t just regurgitate Hegel, he was using Hegelianism as a springboard from which to launch his own dialectical assault against modernity.

Stirner begins with an analogy comparing his dialectic to certain life stages in human development, eventually resulting in an analysis of a few key historical periods: classical Pr’Out 5

philosophy, followed by the Reformation, and finally a critique of modernity. However, the idea

of an overarching “spirit” that moved within each historical epoch is dismissed as nonsense. He

uses the Hegelian dialectical method of tracing periods of history to their conclusion in the

present as a convenience. Stirner claims that the supposedly “radical” thought that circulated

among “The Free,” and modern liberals in general, was another ideology that sought to enthrall a

congregation. Indeed, it was this very same notion that inhabited religious doctrine and had been

re-instated in modern liberalism.

Stirner’s book is divided into two parts: in the first half, Stirner begins with a summary of sorts. ‘The ancients’ (19) is a sub-heading given to an outline of the philosophical traditions of

classical antiquity. He mentions the Sophists (20-21) who focus on reason and rationalism,

Socrates who dabbles in morality (22), several Greek poets (25), and the Stoics (25). He

concludes that the goal of classical antiquity was to ascertain the world as object, in which

people find for themselves joy in knowledge and the material world. The next section, 'The

moderns’ (27), is dedicated to elucidating the stranglehold of religion on contemporary society;

Stirner claims that Christianity is dedicated to the fulfillment of the spirit at the detriment of the

body. Modern liberalism, and one of his contemporaries in particular, Feuerbach, is guilty of re-

animating the religious spirit under the guise of the moral law; the ‘spirit of Man’ has become

equivalent, and possibly superior to ‘the spirit of God’. Both of these are revered beyond

reproach, yet unattainable. Where modern liberals cry out for morality, freedom, and justice, they

are really calling for servitude to another power greater than the individual; the spirit of morality,

freedom, etc, is one that embeds itself wholly into an individual until they become mere vessels

of that spirit. The spirit is what animates them, not their personhood. This is not to say that these Pr’Out 6

ideas are necessarily wrong, but Stirner warns against them becoming the absolute. He suggests

that the individual maintain control over these ideas, so as to not let his ideas control him.

The second half of the book is used by Stirner as an exploration of self-mastery. Whereas the first half of the book traced the genealogy of ‘spirit’, the second half explores the ways in which one may live without 'spirit’- or at least the concept of spirit as an irrefutable truth, or immovable ideal. How one can accomplish this is through an exercise in control over oneself: not to allow the 'spirit’ of an idea to haunt your every waking moment; not to surrender entirely to the realm of essences, but to remain within a space that allows for the flexibility of your personhood.

This is the primary author that I explore in my thesis. Max Stirner has been largely dismissed by contemporary scholars, and the few instances where he has been cited are largely lacking in scope and content, with only a small sampling giving Stirner fair consideration. Stirner is a contemporary of Georg W. F. Hegel, but his thinking isn’t restricted to Hegel’s phenomenology in particular, or his philosophy in general. What I think Stirner is attempting is something akin to the postmodern movement; an awareness of liminality, of the slipperiness of language, and of the role of ideology in culture. He is responding to both conservatives and liberals. Some treat Stirner as an anarchist and/or a nihilist. I offer a hybridization - a looking at

Stirner in the realm of post-anarchism, perhaps even in the context of a model of post-

individualist anarchism. I think he provides a unique and different perspective today, in a world

where movements towards social justice and political correctness are on the forefront of social

and independent media. Even academia is saturated with issues of gender, race, and politics - the

ideal outcome as far as I understand it is to foster a group of thinkers capable of helping people

change their material conditions of existence (or at least to cultivate an awareness of their Pr’Out 7

conditions of existence). My intention is not to offer an evaluative judgment on political

correctness or social justice; my intention is merely to point out that these ideas are more widely

discussed than ever before and that they reflect how people see themselves and the world around

them. It is important to discuss them. Therefore, it would be wise to discuss the idea of these abstractions themselves; what abstractions are and how they function to constitute our real lives.

However, in the ‘tradition’ of Max Stirner, and the likes of Derrida and Foucault, one begins to

wonder who or what is excluded from these proceedings; what abstractions do we value now as

opposed to what we used to value centuries or even decades ago? What is the function of abstraction in constituting real individuals? Who has been historically demonized in issues of

race or sexuality? How did their categorization into abstraction morph their real being? What is

the function of abstract categories today? These aren’t particulars that I aim to answer, but are

rather the byproduct of a consideration of marginality, and the ever-present danger of

abstraction. Specifically, I will be dealing with Stirner’s idea of the ‘spook’, ‘ownness’, and the

‘unique one’ as definitions that resist the abstractions of modernity.

Additionally, as Welsh helpfully discusses, Stirner had his own sphere of influence that

emerged after The Ego and Its Own was published and subsequently translated into English.

Though egoism is, by its very nature, resistant to collectivization and dogma, there are those who

brought Stirner’s doctrine into their own philosophies. Individualist anarchists such as Benjamin

Tucker (1854-1939), Dora Marsden (1882-1960), and James L. Walker (1845-1904) gravitated

towards Stirner, with Tucker himself publishing the first English-language edition of The Ego

and Its Own (1907). 1

1 Translated by Steven T. Byington. Pr’Out 8

As the intellectual descendants of Max Stirner, each of these three thinkers built upon the

residual ideas present in The Ego and Its Own. They formulated their own unique approaches to

a philosophy of individualism, egoism and anarchism. 2 Welsh built an admirable framework out of their ideas, contributing much-needed scholarship to the rather limited body of knowledge on

Stirner and his influence. Welsh traced Stirner’s thought to its sources, and expanded on its usage in individualist anarchism. Welsh was also careful to distinguish between Stirner the anarchist and Stirner the dialectical egoist. To contribute to the scholarship on Stirner, I intend to re-think his work, The Ego and Its Own (1995), in terms of a relatively recent academic venture: post-anarchism. My goal is to conduct a post-anarchist examination of Max Stirner by uncovering the epistemological and ontological roots of his discourse - a retrospective interpretation using post-structuralist thought. In order to achieve this, I believe it would be helpful to begin with an explanation.

To address post-anarchism is to address, perhaps unsurprisingly, post-structuralism and anarchism. Though postmodern anarchism does exist, it would be helpful to ignore it for the time being. The marriage of anarchism and post-structuralism has been a recent development, though not an entirely unexpected one. Speaking very broadly, both espouse a relatively similar end- goal of individual fulfillment against the background of a critical examination of legitimacy and the end of external coercion. ‘Classical’ anarchism, which includes (among others) the work of

Emma Goldman (1869-1940), Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), and

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), aims at the dissolution of government, an end to property rights, and the elevation of the individual as the ultimate good. Post-structuralism includes the

2 Welsh, in Max Stirner’s Dialectical Egoism, outlines this in three chapters dedicated to each author: The Political Economy of Modernity: Benjamin R. Tucker and the Critique of the Capitalist State, Reciprocity and Predation in Everyday Life: The Egoist Thought of James L. Walker, and Beyond Feminism, Beyond Anarchism: Egoism and the Political Thought of Dora Marsden (117-191). Pr’Out 9

work of Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), Michel Foucault (1926-1984), and others. It offers a

critique of the legitimacy of language, and history, while bringing to light the power of social

constructions and the limitations they impose. An accurate definition of post-anarchism, then, would be: an examination of ‘classical’ anarchism, its canon, its methodologies, and its legitimations through the lens of post-structuralist epistemologies, with the goal of constructing a stronger anarchism.

Post-anarchist thinkers like Andrew M. Koch think of Stirner’s work as being critical of

modernity while also being critical of the idea of representation. In his essay, “Post-Structuralism and the Epistemological Basis of Anarchism,”3 he speaks of Stirner as a stepping stone in the

direction of Nietzsche, but largely focuses on the impact of post-structuralist thought on the ideas of classical anarchism. Todd May asks a question that is also the title of his essay: “Is Post-

Structuralist Political Theory Anarchist?”4 – the answer to which is a resounding “yes”. Saul

Newman, in “Post-Anarchism and Radical Politics Today”5 attempts to reveal the anarchist

leanings in contemporary political debates, but also how post-structuralism and anarchism can be merged to create something more than the sum of its parts. My project is a hybridization of all of these thinkers and more. I will focus specifically on Max Stirner as an individualist-anarchist

thinker who’s critique of representation is captured more fully by the post-structuralists over a century later. I will show how Stirner’s thought can be read in the context of post-anarchism as

an ancestor of the critique of representation through unexplored notions of individual self-

determination: Stirner’s notions of ‘ownness’ and the ‘unique one’.

3 Koch, M. Andrew. “Is Post-Structuralist Political Theory Anarchist?” Post-Anarchism: A Reader, ed. Duane Rousselle and Sureyyya Evren. Pluto Press, 2011, p.23-40 4 May, Todd. “Is Post-Structuralist Political Theory Anarchist?” Post-Anarchism: A Reader, ed. Duane Rousselle and Sureyyya Evren. Pluto Press, 2011, p.41-45 5 Newman, Saul. “Is Post-Anarchism and Radical Politics Today” Post-Anarchism: A Reader, ed. Duane Rousselle and Sureyyya Evren. Pluto Press, 2011, p.46-68 Pr’Out 10

Regarding Max Stirner, it can be difficult to classify his thinking as the very nature of it

is highly idiosyncratic. I would consider him first and foremost a person who espied a zeitgeist of

anti-individualism, who possessed the desire and skill to express his views. The Ego and Its Own

(1907) is his response to that blossoming epoch of liberal humanism; it is, ultimately, a highly

idiosyncratic statement. Thus, his discourse can be notoriously difficult to classify within an

established or structured framework.6 However, his attacks directed against the state, ideology,

and collective abstractions have been used to elucidate his potential for a specifically

individualist-anarchist position. I will likewise think of Stirner as a part of the anarchist canon

for my work. His notions of ‘ownness’, the ‘fixed idea’, and the ‘unique one’ in particular are designed to usurp imposed notions of collectivism, abstraction, nationalism, and theology. His thought parallels the more ‘humanitarian’ goals of Kropotkin, Proudhon, and Bakunin in the elevation of individual freedom above external influence. However, it also goes beyond these thinkers to a realm of abstractions that are not dictated by any collective consciousness or abstract ‘humanity’, but by individual choice and egoistic consciousness. Using the thought of

Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Francois Lyotard (1924-1998), I will then explore

Stirner’s philosophical materialism and anti-determinism, as well as his use of the Hegelian dialectic in his analysis of modernity. The inclusion of these three later philosophers will act as the bridge between Stirner and post-anarchism; if I succeed in demonstrating Stirner as a worthy successor of anarchism and as a formative figure in modern critical theory, I will have succeeded in recontextualizing Stirner into post-anarchism. There, his is an individualism that revolves around ‘ownness’ and a critique of abstraction.

6 The Ego and Its Own, translated by Stephen T. Byington, edited by David Leopold. Cambridge University Press 1995. The first page lists his most recent labels: an anarchist, a nihilist, an existentialist, and possibly insane. ‘Egoism’ as Stirner discusses it, is left entirely to the discretion of the individual. Pr’Out 11

Specifically, in my analysis I have used Foucault’s ideas regarding power and knowledge in looking at the formation of Stirner’s egoist critique of modernity, his ideas of power relationships between individuals, between the self and ‘property’ and between individuals and the state. The discursive formation of individuals in specific times and places is also of great importance in driving home the centrality of Stirner’s ‘ownness;’ this is the animus behind his entire project. Derrida’s concept of “hauntology” has also played a valuable role in exploring

Stirner’s ontological movements within a history of metaphorical ‘ghosts’. Stirner posits the existence of the individual within the dominion of political and collectivist ideology through an egoist doctrine. Lyotard will act as the means to examine Stirner’s critique of the narrative of modernity as subservience to the abstraction “Man”. Stirner builds upon the Hegelian dialectic by tracing historical movements through their manifest ‘spirit’, but breaks away from the dialectic by condemning the notion of spirit, and the narratives of history as detrimental to the development of the individual.

A reading such as this would, ideally, advance our understanding of a wholly unique philosopher who deserves better than to be relegated to the margins of history. Ironically,

Stirner’s condemnation of liberal humanism has perhaps become one of the most distinguishing features of the college of humanities; postmodern and post-structuralist thinkers operate with a healthy skepticism which has also evolved in many directions over the past few decades. The legitimacy of Western philosophy, its canon, and its influence has, in the 20th century, been called into question. Not only in terms of the validity of its contents, but also how such a structure can happen in the first place. Stirner was a kindred spirit alongside the other progenitors of post-structuralism and postmodernism, but he has been largely shunned by the academy;7 he

7 Due, in large part, to the extremely individualistic nature of Stirner’s egoism, but also to The German Ideology (1845-1846) by Karl Marx. Pr’Out 12 has become one other marginalized voice, a specter that haunts through its absence, though its presence may still be felt to this day. In the re-awakening of this ‘ghost’, I hope to promote a richer understanding of an often-misunderstood philosopher in the context of an often-dismissed method of social inquiry: anarchism. Pr’Out 13

Chapter 1

Max Stirner: Biographers and Interpreters

There is a strange paradox within the scholarship on Max Stirner; for decades, he has

been a marginalized figure in the history of the development of Marxism, anarchism, nihilism

and existentialism. Scholarship on his contributions to the development of each is limited, and I

don’t believe it would be presumptuous to say there are more people who are unfamiliar with

Max Stirner than familiar. Surprisingly, despite his status as an intellectual pariah, there is a

significant amount of biographical work done by those that have deemed Stirner to be of interest.

Three of his biographers, John Henry Mackay (1864-1933), R.W.K. Paterson (1933-), and John

F. Welsh each offer their own interpretation of Stirner’s life and work. Thus, I can scarcely do better than to draw on their work for some of the key events in Stirner’s life. Afterwards I will elaborate on the relationship between Stirner and his philosophic forefathers, Georg W.F. Hegel

(1770-1831), and Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814). But first, I think an introduction to

Stirner’s biographers, as well as a brief biography of Stirner himself, will serve to familiarize the uninitiated.

The earliest of Stirner’s biographers is John Henry Mackay (1864-1933). What becomes immediately apparent from Mackay’s efforts within his book Max Stirner: His Life and Work is the relative paucity of information regarding Stirner himself. Additionally, Mackay is surprised by the lack of any “extraordinary” events in Stirner’s life (5). Mackay, in a moment of clarity, sees this as “the clear and simple expression of his final doctrine… he was an egoist who knew he was one!” (6). Mackay divides his book into three sections, or three periods: his (Stirner’s)

“rise, height, and fall” (14). The first describes Stirner as a willful and talented participant in the academic community. The second focuses on the influence of ‘The Free’, a circle of radical Pr’Out 14

German thinkers that includes Bruno Bauer, Karl Marx, Frederich Engels, and others. The third

and final section focuses on his relative disappearance from life in general following the

whirlwind reception of Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (1844).

This formula is followed similarly by R.W.K Paterson’s (1833-) study of Stirner The

Nihilistic Egoist (1971), which is also divided into three parts: biographical information (x), the

influence of Stirner on other theorists and schools of thought (xi), and finally, the interpretation of Stirner’s unique egoism as a vacuous nihilism (xii). Paterson believes that Stirner’s

“…nihilistic response to what he sees as his metaphysical situation is therefore one which the existentialists are bound in turn to answer” (viii). This obligatory response on part of the existentialists is due to what Paterson sees as an inevitable consequence of existentialism – that is, facing the monster of nihilism. Ultimately, Paterson’s objective is to portray Stirner as an unabashed nihilist who shuns the moral and social bonds that constitute society without a consideration of ownness and the unique one as armaments in the war against abstraction; he

depicts Stirner as an intellectual pariah, an example of what not to do in terms of philosophical

inquiry and everyday living (16).

A recent Stirnerite scholar would be John F. Welsh. His book Max Stirner’s Dialectical

Egoism: A New Interpretation (2010) is focused primarily on portraying Stirner as “a critic of modernity” (5). Welsh contends that “he [Stirner] was primarily concerned with uncovering the collectivist and statist dimensions of the political and philosophic alternatives that emerged in the

1800s (5). Meaning, that Stirner lived and wrote during the twilight of Hegelianism – a time when communism, anarchism, socialism, and liberal humanism were each vying for their space on the stage of history. Stirner, instead of allying himself to any of the aforementioned ideologies, instead became one of their “earliest and most insightful critics” (5). The culmination Pr’Out 15

of Welsh’s work is the reading of Stirner and his influences as constituting a dialectical egoist

system of critique in its own right (6).

In addition to the theoretical interest in Stirner, each of these authors has written a biography about him as well. What follows are specific details regarding the more foundational events in Stirner’s life, including his tutelage under Hegel himself, his relationship to a particular

circle of radical German intellectuals, and the publishing of Der Einzige und Sein Eigentum in

1844. What follows is borrowed from each of his biographers: Mackay, Paterson, and Welsh.

‘Max Stirner’ was not his real name. He was born in Bayreuth on November8 6th, 1806,

as Johann Caspar Schmidt and adopted the name ‘Max Stirner’ because he was teased as a youth

for the preternatural dimensions of his forehead (Welsh 6). In German, “Stirn” is the English

equivalent of “forehead,” and those with particularly large foreheads were thought to be more

intelligent than average. Mackay gives us a vivid image:

He wore short blonde sideburns and mustache, while his chin was always clean-shaven, and his blond, reddish, lightly curled and short-cut, soft hair left completely free his massive, domed, quite strikingly high and conspicuous forehead. (86)

He was an above-average student following his graduation from the gymnasium in Bayreuth in

1826 (Mackay 31). His academic preclusion would serve him well in the next years of his life;

beginning in the Fall of 1826, he attended a variety of lectures at the University of Berlin on

theology, philosophy, logic, geography and psychology. He would also attend lectures by Hegel

himself during the following semesters (37).

Following these initial experiences, his life, not just as a student, was truly chaotic. From

1829-1832, he absconded from Berlin and his studies. His biographers speculate that it was

8 Mackay and Paterson write he was born in October, but Welsh (his most recent biographer) contends that he was born on November 6 Pr’Out 16 either due to financial hardship, and/or the rapidly decreasing sanity of his mother.9 Ultimately, the matter remains conjectural. He returned to Berlin in the Fall of 1832 and, judging by his voracity in previous scholarly endeavors, was eager to immerse himself in his studies once again.

However, “a long-term illness” (39) quickly hindered his work. This unnamed sickness impeded his past schooling in 1822-1824 (30), and would manifest itself again in 1839 (41). Coupled with the arrival of his mentally-ill mother, also in 1839, Schmidt was hard-pressed to submit the written work for his application for teaching at a gymnasium while still attending lectures (40-

41). Ultimately, he was unable to secure a teaching position in one of his requested fields and instead elected to teach at a private school that same year (Paterson 6). He also married in

December of 1837, though neither his child nor his wife survived the delivery of the child – they both died in the summer of 1838 (6). Despite these tumultuous events, the teaching position he held from 1839-1844 was a temperate and stable one, allowing him to work comfortably on his philosophical musings (6-7). He was reportedly well-liked, and enjoyed a peaceful existence.

Unquestionably a moment of respite, the universal pendulum finally swung in Schmidt’s favor.

He published Der Einzige und sein Eigentum in 1844 – what would later be known in English as

The Ego and Its Own.

What cannot be overstated in the formation of the man known as ‘Max Stirner’ is the circle of thinkers present at Hippel’s bar. This venue close to the University of Berlin was a haven for the avant-garde in the 1840s (Welsh 8). Radical ideologues, calling themselves Die

Freien, (‘The Free,’ or ‘The Free Men’), had bolstered their ranks with such prominent men as

Bruno Bauer, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. Stirner appears among them in 1841 (9). He is depicted as calm, collected, always slightly amused, and merely content to contribute a remark or

9 Mackay, 39; Paterson, 5; Welsh, 7. Pr’Out 17

two to the conversation – a stark contrast to the rabble-rousers of The Free (9-10). An image of

Stirner at this time emerges from a poem written by Friedrich Engels.

Look at Stirner, look at him, the peaceful enemy of all constraint. For the moment, he is drinking beer, Soon he will be drinking blood as though it were water. When others cry savagely “down with the kings” Stirner immediately supplements “down with the laws also.” Stirner full of dignity proclaims; You bend your willpower and you dare to call yourselves free. You become accustomed to slavery. Down with dogmatism down with law.10

One can see that Stirner seems a few degrees removed from the concerns of The Free, both in

word and deed. His aloof mannerisms among ‘The Free’, a hotbed of radical ideologues, seem to

complement his skepticism towards metaphysical assertions of any transcendent law as

irrefutable. This includes the metaphysical assertions of ‘The Free’. Engels’ depiction of Stirner

seems to have an air of legitimacy, especially when compared to what Stirner wrote within Der

Einzige und Sein Eigentum. In light of his scathing refutations of socialism, communism,

liberalism in general, government and morality, a depiction of Stirner emerges as one who saw

‘The Free’ as little more than slaves to their own particular ideas of right.

Der Einzige und Sein Eigentum, when finally finished, was a manifesto of egoism written

by, and for, one man: Max Stirner. Unanimously, his biographers agreed that it attacked every

mode of thought that existed at the time, sparing no one from critique and derision. This included

the members of ‘The Free’. Despite being a participant among them, Stirner’s book was a direct

repudiation of all that they stood for.

10 Verbatim, from Welsh’s Max Stirner’s Dialectical Egoism p. 10. His notes indicate it was published on Marxists.org, a digital library. But as near as I can tell, the work was moved due to copyright issues. The URL Welsh provides links to a work by Engels, but every link on the work itself leads to an error message as of November 21st, 2018. He was able to access it in 2010. Pr’Out 18

The publication prompted a number of responses from ‘The Free’ – the most notorious of which is Marx’s The German Ideology, published posthumously in 1932. The text stands as an introduction to Marx’s dialectical materialism, as it savagely attacks the ideologies of the Young

Hegelians (Stirner, Feuerbach, and Bauer) while promoting an understanding of the ‘real’ dimensions of history: people, their conditions of existence, and their relations to their conditions of existence.

The furor caused by Der Einzige und Sein Eigentum, however, was short-lived. Stirner’s biographers unanimously agree that it generated a frenzy of rebuttals and refutations, with each member of ‘The Free’ publishing a defense of their ideology. The ultimately self-centered philosophy of Max Stirner was seen as static and unchanging; it seemed to shun the growth of a traditional philosophical system by alienating every possible direction it could go. So, it was discarded. Max Stirner then seems to disappear entirely, translating works of economy into

German, but doing little else. He eventually contracted a fever due to an insect bite, and died in

June 1856 (Welsh 15).

The Legacy of Hegel

I do not believe it to be hyperbolic to say that without the necessary foundations laid by

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), either Hegel or Stirner would have been the philosophers we know

today. Aristotle’s groundbreaking work on the advancement of scientific knowledge as a whole

included two substrata: first, knowledge verifiable through experimentation, and, second,

knowledge verifiable through common wisdom (Shields). The first mode of knowledge

production is the fruit of scientific inquiry, dependent on verifiable phenomena. The second is a

form of logical inquiry. Though it is a prerequisite for scientific inquiry, it lacks access to the

verifiable phenomena present in experimentation. In other words, knowledge through common Pr’Out 19

wisdom is dialectical – it is a reasoned inquiry into universally-held or acknowledged beliefs and

systems.

Though it is an oversimplification to say that Aristotle and Hegel are simply ‘dialectical thinkers’ with no further analysis, a true and worthwhile comparison is beyond the scope of this thesis. What I have attempted to show (and will continue to show) is only the abstract roots of

Hegel’s dialectic, and to explain that we are primarily dealing with rational thought itself. To endeavor to explain Hegel, for anyone, is no small undertaking, and requires an intimate knowledge of one of the most labyrinthian philosophers the world has ever seen. This is not to say that I am one among a rare breed of person who is capable of doing so – I only endeavor to do my best to explain what I find to be connections between Hegel and Stirner’s philosophies. In this chapter, I will be drawing on Hegel’s own work, as well as the indispensable aid of J.N

Findlay and Frederick G. Weiss within the pages of Hegel: The Essential Writings (1974).

Hegel’s philosophy is notoriously complex because it cannot be assessed from a single work. Indeed, Hegel’s intention was to explain the movements of rational activity as it propelled the human race towards totality; it is a progression of the infinite and continual unfolding of thought that has neither beginning nor end, but a purpose. Likewise, Hegel’s work too must be taken as a whole, what Findlay points to in the foreword as “…well-chosen selections, duly meditated upon, and seen in their mutual relevance” (ix). The Herculean effort of this foreword by Findlay has been supremely helpful, and it is a testament to his understanding of Hegel that he was able to form such a ‘complete’ picture of his philosophy in roughly five pages. He argues that Hegel’s philosophy might instead be “…identified with philosophy itself, rather than with a special philosophy” (xii). In other words, Hegel’s work is not one important philosophy in a history of philosophies. Rather, Hegel has a created a methodological system with which we can Pr’Out 20 do philosophy itself. And so, he draws from Hegel a purpose – or three methodological principles (xi-xii) that he contends are the crux of Hegel’s project: the first principle is the inadequacy of description. Simply put, it is not enough to accrue empirical accounts of a thing, or to amass factual information in a mechanical way. This information is insufficient in understanding without counter-arguments or contradictions. In fact, it is these counter-arguments and rebuttals which are paramount to the understanding because they inform the assertions of these facts and observations (xi). The second principle is the attention given to those “infinite” concepts which “…show their self-sufficiency and their independence of external justification simply by turning up again and again, however much we vary the context” (xii). ‘Truth’ for example is a concept that has captured the attention of philosophers for thousands of years. In recent years, we have turned from the pursuit of obtaining Truth, to questions about Truth: what is Truth? Are we even capable of understanding it? Is there only one Truth? Though we have shifted from trying to understand one Truth, we now seek what is true about the pursuit of Truth itself. The true remains the content of this thought. Findlay’s third principle is that of an

“Absolute (that) must not be without something which contrasts with it, but that it also only can be an Absolute if what contrasts with it has no true independence from it, but exists only as providing the contrast in question” (xii). The notion of an Absolute is one that appears often in

Hegel’s writing. In the words of Weiss, it is the “highest reality” that contains within it “an undivided unity of differences” (5). He continues:

What it means is that the changing world and all its history is none other than this principle’s own manifestation, the revelation of itself in various modes of consciousness or stages of unity culminating in philosophic thought, which alone adequately exhibits the full development of Spirit (the Absolute) as nothing other than the raising of itself to truth. (5)

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This is a central notion of Hegelianism: the blending of contradiction and affirmation across time

is at the same time the process of reason ‘raising itself to truth’. This blending manifests itself

within but also as different epochs of thought at different levels in different civilizations at

different periods of history. At each time and place there is the movement of rational,

philosophic thought, towards an understanding of itself; what Weiss (and Hegel too) personifies

as ‘Spirit’.

In these historical movements there are two kinds of thought: concrete thought and

abstract thought. From Hegel’s History of Philosophy,11 a text which comments upon the similarities of its namesake, “concrete” thought is philosophical, rational thought. These concrete

thoughts are not physical, but their substance consists of fundamental truths about reality which

are guided by reason and rational activity. This is distinct from “abstract” thought which lacks

the grandiose principles of the concrete. Instead, this abstract thought is subjective and

insubstantial. As Hegel speaks of it, the history of philosophy is the history of this concrete, rational thought. He writes of spirit, too, which is the “world-historical manifestation” (II.1.b) of philosophy. This manifestation appears as “the thought which is fundamental to a given time”

(II.1.b). And since these manifestations of spirit occur in time, and philosophy contains the history of philosophy, each are bound by their progression in the total activity of their

actualization. They develop, and develop from themselves. For Hegel, this process of developing

spirit is central to his ideas on history and philosophical progress.

11 Hegel, G.W.F. “Introduction to the History of Philosophy”. Hegel’s Idea of Philosophy, by Quentin Lauer, S.J. Marxists.org https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hp/hpintroduction.htm

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From Paterson’s introduction to Hegel, the state occupies a central role in Hegelian

philosophy – as the physical manifestation of this living spirit.

In its fullest nature, however, the ‘self-conscious ethical substance’ finds its final identity in the State, which is no less than ‘the manifestation of the Ethical Idea as Substantial Will’, for it is in the State that ‘absolute right’ particularizes itself as the concrete ethical universal. (23)

Hegel believed the state acted as a universal conduit for rational activity and that individuals

therefore must act in accordance with the state to secure their own personal freedom. Indeed,

since the fulfillment of their lives rests upon the shoulders of the state, it is in their best interest

to safeguard the state. Naturally, this was an attractive philosophy to what was then the current

political order:

Almost to the specifications of the regime, a conclusive philosophical refutation of its liberal and socialist critics had been furnished by the most celebrated thinker in Europe, who in the course of an irresistibly logical account of the nature of reality had firmly incorporated the existing Prussian state within the architecture of the spiritual universe. (Paterson 24)

With the state now entrenched “within the architecture of the spiritual universe,” it suddenly transcended the earthly boundaries of a mere institution. Its censorship and aristocratic dogma seemed justified as the very stuff of rational activity, posited by one of history’s most impactful

philosophers.

However, there is no direct evidence of Hegel overtly justifying the activities of the

Prussian government – on the contrary, Hegel’s political views were more liberal than

conservative, and were more closely aligned with other progressive members of the political

sphere (Elements of the Philosophy of Right xvi). Regardless of his personal leanings – or the

reputation he gained with the Prussian nobility – there were those who disagreed with Hegel for

one reason or another. But, while they combated Hegelianism, they nevertheless expressed their Pr’Out 23

gratitude towards the methods through which Hegel reached his philosophical conclusions

(Paterson 25).

Even after Hegel’s death in 1831, there still loomed the specter of Hegelianism over

Europe. Whether it was being re-affirmed by the efforts of the so-called ‘Old Hegelians,’ or dismantled by the efforts of the ‘Young Hegelians’, it was Hegelianism itself that helped to shape the whole of European thought in the 19th century. But it was soon to be the Young

Hegelians that would rise to claim the throne that Hegelianism once occupied. Two among them

were Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, names that would become even more familiar in broader

society than Hegel. Stirner too was there in the circle of Young Hegelians, and would gain the ire

of Marx himself after the publication of Der Einzige und Sein Eigentum. Nevertheless, it is

within that monograph that contains Stirner’s affirmation, and partial refutation, of Hegel’s

dialectical project.

Stirner and the Dialectic: A Genealogy of Liberalism

Though Stirner rejects the value of Hegel’s notion of absolute spirit, Stirner does see and

acknowledge the dialectical process of its development. Hegel’s project tries to encompass and

explain the entirety of our objective reality; human history is at the same time the history of the

development of rational thought. This rational thought is explained through philosophy, by philosophy – as philosophy, as spirit. Stirner argues that the notion of this living spirit finds a

particular manifestation in modernism – spirit appears in the destruction and reification of

religious and humanist constructs. My goal for this section was three-fold: the first was to

explore Stirner’s definition of liberalism. Second, I aimed to explore the movements behind

Stirner’s interpretation of the development of liberalism. Finally, Stirner’s manifestations of

liberalism appear in three distinct areas that emerge out of the conflict with with others. An Pr’Out 24 introductory remark: Stirner is not so much an enemy of liberalism specifically as he is to the idea of relinquishing his self control – whether that lack of control is caused by liberalism or conservativism, it matters not. He attacks ‘liberalism’ specifically because of what he sees as its unencumbered emergence into a vast new dogma. Stirner is critical of the ‘fixed idea’ as such; his goal is the complete determination by himself alone. I believe that is a very liberal idea and one that should not be so easily brushed aside by the feather duster of history. In an era where the very pursuit of Truth, not just ‘Truth’ itself, has been found wanting, people strive for new modes of being and new ways of understanding. What should never be sacrificed to that pursuit is the individual will, or the recognition of individualism generally. More accurately, we should never lose the idea that we can, at least partially, determine ourselves.

Though his definition of liberalism is not directly indicative of those dialectical moves between liberalism and religion, the definition serves as a starting point for Stirner’s criticisms.

To begin, Stirner defines liberalism as such: “’Liberalism is nothing else than the knowledge of reason, applied to our existing relations.’ Its aim is a ‘rational order’, a ‘moral behavior’, a limited freedom’, not anarchy, lawlessness, self hood” (95-96). Liberalism prioritizes “reason” and the rational over “self hood.” It replaces the old yearning for spirit, with a new yearning for

‘humanity’. It distinguishes itself from the particular, ‘selfhood,’ as well as from the ‘lawless’ and unpredictable. ‘Reason’ for Stirner, is not inherently valuable because of its position as an immovable ideal. It is not that Stirner devalues reason itself, but he is critical of the transcendental status of Reason which is open to exploitation and illuding.

Stirner is so harshly critical of liberalism because he views it as the continued evolution of the tenets of religion, in which people must submit themselves to contradictory and detrimental notions that have been posited as eternally true and independently justifiable (much Pr’Out 25

like Nietzsche will assert later). Stirner is concerned with the idea that the natural self-generation of the individual is stifled by this ideology – that religious ideology separates people into two selves: a body and an ‘essence’ that must be preserved at the cost of the body. Stirner interprets this as religion declaring people as incomplete and insufficient. He sees this same disjoining of the person within liberal ideology. An essential component for the development of spiritualism is the presence of a ‘spirit’, any transcendental ideal. Liberalism simply replaces one spirit with another – ‘God’ for ‘humanity;’

“The human religion is only the last metamorphosis of the Christian religion. For liberalism is a religion because it separates my essence from me and sets it above me, because it exalts ‘man’ to the same extent as any other religion does its God or idol, because it makes what is mine into something otherworldly, because in general it makes some of what is mine, out of my qualities and my property, something alien – namely, an ‘essence’. (158)

The idea of “essence,” of spirit, is equally important for both religion and liberalism, Stirner says. Both liberalism and religion declare the existence of a transcendental spiritual life and our particular material life. We are then cleft in two – elements of our selves are taken from us by religion or liberalism and “set above us” as something we must now strive for. We are dictated to serve the cause in order to earn them back; the “idols” we must appease are “man,” “God,” and so on. Liberal humanism and religion takes what belongs to us, our “qualities,” and makes them

“something alien”. Stirner condemns Christianity specifically and religion generally because of it’s dismissal of individualism and the material world. Religion is a yearning for the spiritual. It offers an interpretation of the ‘essence’ of mankind. More importantly, it posits that such an essence exists in the first place as something worthy of preservation. However, we are inherently separated from this essence. The progress of humanity towards its spiritual self is only one link in the chain of the development of spirit itself. Pr’Out 26

How Stirner conceives of the evolution of spirit in modern times is dependent on some key concepts present in Hegel’s writings. The Introduction to the History of Philosophy12 serves as one of the most important texts in understanding Hegel’s thought. Some of Hegel’s concepts from this text – “thought”, the thing “in-itself”, the thing “for-itself”, and “spirit”, each manifest themselves in Stirner’s interpretation of the dialectic.

Hegel begins with the “thought as concept.” Philosophy is thinking of itself; ‘reason’ is thought that is occupied with itself – thus, philosophy is the history of reason (Section A. ¶4).

This reasoned thought is concrete because it determines itself (Section I.1a ¶1). Being concrete does not mean being physical, Hegel says, nor are these thoughts abstract. Abstractions are whimsical and arbitrary, not reasoned philosophical inquiry; philosophical thought alone is concrete (Section I.1a ¶1). Thought is concrete when it is rational – when it is formulated based on the principles of logic and reason. Thus, philosophic thought is rational and consequently concrete.

Stirner battles with this idea by asserting that the human, the egoist, exists beneath these ideas. “Concepts are to decide everywhere, concepts to regulate life, concepts to rule…

Everything is sung according to concepts, and the real man, I, am compelled to live according to these conceptual laws” (The Ego and Its Own 88). Stirner notes the ubiquity of the ‘concept’ – or the prevalence of ideological constructs that compartmentalize our real selves. Liberalism, for

Stirner, has for its concepts, ‘reason’, ‘law’, and ‘order’. In Stirner’s critique of modernity, these concepts have superseded the religious prelates of divinity and holiness. However, both of these sets of principles are locked in mutual combat at all times; liberalism justifies itself in direct

12 Hegel’s Idea of Philosophy, by Quentin Lauer, S.J. with a new translation of Hegel’s Introduction to the History of Philosophy; Translated: from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Einleitung in die Geschichte der Philosophie, Hamburg, 1940. Marxists.org. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hp/hpintroduction.htm Pr’Out 27 opposition to the ‘dogmatism’ of religion, yet posits its own dogmas in return that, Stirner argues, are scarcely different from religion itself.

Hegel explores ‘the concept’ further by reconstructing its teleological nature. The idea is something that contains the potential for further development – and is thus in itself (Section 2.a.

¶1) Hegel explains with an example of peoples that exist as slaves, and those that are free: “The former are also in themselves free, but they do not exist as free” (Italics added, Section 2.b. ¶4)

Thus the characteristic of a thing in-itself is possibility; though the individual be a slave, it is in their nature to be free – they still contain the possibility to be free, and it is that which will burst into being the moment their servitude comes to an end. Hegel also uses the metaphor of the seed that contains the potential for development into a tree; its goal is to become the tree. That is its teleology.

Stirner accepts the teleological nature of the Hegelian dialectic, and uses it to posit the development of religious principles in liberalist ideology. Though Stirner rejects the usefulness of Spirit, the characteristics of the in-itself and for-itself are not exclusive to Spirit. For Stirner, the unspoken thing in-itself, that contains the potential for development, is Protestantism:

Luther, with whom the so-called Middle Ages end, was the first who understood that the man himself must become other than he was if he wanted to comprehend truth, must become true as truth itself. Only he who already has truth in his belief, only he who believes in it, can become a partaker of it; only the believer finds it accessible and sounds its depths. (76)

As Stirner points out, Luther heralded the end of the Middle Ages, but also the beginning of the

Protestant Reformation. Michael Mullett, Professor of Cultural and Religious History at the

University of Lancaster, calls Luther’s 95 Theses “…a sensational printed artefact” that act as a

“manifesto of change and rebellion” (“Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses” 49). According to

Mullett, the 95 Theses were written in opposition to the sale of indulgences: religious pardons Pr’Out 28 bought with money that conferred their benefits in the afterlife. The 95 Theses, otherwise known as ‘Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences’ (47) heralded the start of the

Protestant Reformation that emphasized an individual relationship between “sinners” and the

Christian god, what Mullett describes as forgiveness gained from “genuine heartfelt contrition”

(49). Indeed, Luther himself believed that the Christian idea of salvation could only be achieved through “…the doctrine of justification by faith alone” (qtd. in Mullett 50). Truth is something that must be “believed” in; it is internalized in the hearts and minds of the faithful. It is through this belief that man could “become other than what he was”. For Luther, simply the belief in truth allows for the ascension of the humanity. And it is the presence of this belief in truth that has within it the potential for development into 19th century liberalism.

Hegel calls the thing that develops - and is developing- the thing for-itself. He uses this example:

If, in regard to realization, what came first was the in-itself, the seed, etc., and second, existence, i.e., what emerges, then third comes the identity of both, more precisely the fruit of development, the result of the entire movement; and this is what I call, abstractly, being-for-itself. ( Section 2.c. ¶4)

The seed is in-itself a tree; that is its teleology. It exists to develop into a tree. The seed is for- itself when it has developed into the tree, when it has come into its existence, and has become the process which is was made for.

For Stirner, the seed of religion contained the development of liberalism. This potential for development has for its existence Protestantism, which then realizes its total process of becoming through the manifestation of modern liberalism. Stirner writes:

…the dominion of spirits… was never before so all-embracing and all-powerful, because the present one (the liberal dominion), instead of rending the religious principle from art, state, and science, lifted the latter altogether out of secularity into the ‘realm of spirit’ and made them religious. (77)

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The idea of Truth across different interests became synonymous with a belief in Truth; a religious, spiritual transformation. “Art, state, and science” were “made religious” because the pursuit of Truth led us to a belief in Truth: a “dominion of spirits”. And thus Stirner traces the lineage of humanism, which has for its object the spiritual principles of truth, justice, right, wrong, etc. Religion (Protestantism) that is in-and-for-itself sees its development in humanism, where it recognizes itself and returns to itself. Humanist morality is distinguished from religion, but is constantly reified as a metaphysical postulate only because of its continual conflict with religion.

Again, Stirner sees the progress of spirit as emerging from the conflict of religion and liberalism. The continued development of this spirit appears in three separate but unified epochs of liberalism: political liberalism, social liberalism, and humane liberalism. Each breaks from the last but emerges into a new realm of unification with the religious, with the spiritual.

Political liberalism consists of the emergence of the State and of the citizen as valuable only in their obedience to that State (The Ego and Its Own 90). During the 18th century, Stirner see’s a transition in French politics, in that ‘the people,’ the commonality is given the strength of rulership (92). A new concern for the “equality of political rights” (93) arises in this new organization, and those deserving of those rights are the obedient, prostrating citizen. Stirner cries out, “The obedient servant is the free man! What glaring nonsense! Yet this is the sense of the bourgeoisie, and its poet Goethe, as well as its philosopher, Hegel, succeeded in glorifying the dependence of the subject on the object, obedience to the objective world” (95). Hegel’s insistence on the material world as the vessel for spirit is a key part of his work, and one that has not gone unnoticed by the Young Hegelians – specifically Stirner. Hegel asserts that the

“objective world” is the rational and real (Elements of the Philosophy Right, 20). Because the Pr’Out 30

State is also a part of this actuality by preserving the relationships between members of society,

it too is deserving of “obedience”. In Stirner’s mind, its purpose was to proliferate a “…moral

influence” regardless if a subject was rich or poor (95). This moral influence too was exerted in

the name of reason, in the same way that servitude was rational, and thus lauded and rewarded

with ‘freedom’. Stirner writes:

…they (liberals) want to see no more trials for heresy. But against the ‘rational law’ no one is to rebel, otherwise he is threatened with the severest penalty… The liberals are zealots, not exactly for the faith, for God, but certainly for reason, their master. (96)

Stirner sees reason as the guiding torch for the epoch of political liberalism; a beacon that has seemed to supplant the waning light of ‘faith.’ The latter two epochs of liberalism preserve the

‘spiritual essence’ of political liberalism – the deference towards morality and the lordship of humanism – but rally against the privileged status of government.

Social liberalism is the domain of revolutionary ideologies: communism, socialism, anarchism. If political liberalism has achieved it’s goal of equality in political rights, socialism, in Stirner’s view, rises up to say “…even if the persons have become equal… their possessions have not…” (105). The rich require the labor of the poor, and the poor pine after the wealth accumulated by the rich, and require them as “a giver” – their need stems from what they can give, labor or wealth (105). “So what he has makes the man. And in having, or in ‘possessions’,

people are unequal… so now society alone obtains the possessions” (105). In the case of social

liberalism, this “society” that “obtains the possessions” might mean a proletarian government à

la communism, or any variety of anarchist collective, or different forms of socialism. To rectify

the economic imbalances of political liberalism, ownership is shifted from the private sphere to

public domain. Pr’Out 31

Stirner calls the final manifestation “humane liberalism” (111), or ‘liberal humanism’ in

the literary tradition. Stirner writes: “Again the imperious postulate: Cast from you everything

particular, criticize it away! Be not a Jew, not a Christian, but be a human being, nothing but a

human being… recognize humanity as you all-determining essence” (114). Egoism,

“particularity”, is sacrificed for a new ‘human’ spirit or “essence”. This unifying ‘humanity’ is

created with the intention of breaking down all other categories and bring them back together

under the universal category of the human. This is the final transformation of liberalism because

it completes the exchange of religion for humanism in every stage of life. Religion was backed

into a corner during the era of political liberalism, but was preserved in spirit in the physical

world (government, society). Social liberalism pursued the excision of religion further, while

maintaining it’s spirit during the chase for equality. It destroys government, but bows before

morality. Humane liberalism is the last and truest reincarnation of religion because it completes

the exchange of ‘God’ for ‘humanity’. In social liberalism, the humane liberal sees work as valid

if it is done for humanity and not “only to nourish yourself” (117). The humane liberals are

thinkers, performing physical and mental labour for the benefit of humanity itself (118). For

Stirner, this sacrifices the egoistic character of self-development for the development of mankind: “To man belongs the lordship” (123). It is here, in the presence of ‘man’ that the teleology is complete, that its destination is reached.

For Stirner, the overcoming of our personal limits is something worthy of praise, instead of laboring for the seething hordes of ‘humanity’. See here: “Liberate yourself as far as you can, and you have done your part… Who has ever succeeded in tearing down even one limit for all men?... He who overturns one of his limits may have shown others the way and the means; the overturning of their limits remains their affair” (127). Stirner first speaks of the particular, of the Pr’Out 32

individual, as the central figure. ‘Liberate yourself’ is the fundamental axiom of Stirner’s

egoism. For Stirner, enacting some grand historical change is secondary to the smallest of

actions; indeed, it is difficult enough to change ourselves. But if we succeed even for a moment,

that may be enough to show others the way. Stirner is laying the foundations for existentialism

that will emerge a few decades later, at a time when Nietzsche and the ‘superman’ will take

center stage.

Now that Stirner’s distinct epochs of liberalism have been situated, it is my hope that the

overall scope of Stirner’s project may come into focus.

Fichte and the Unique One: Speaking the Intangible

In keeping with the theme of this chapter, I have continued to speak of those that have

had a direct impact on Stirner’s writing. The idea of a self-generating ‘I,’ in Stirner’s work, is borrowed from Fichte’s philosophical project. Stirner treats Fichte largely in the same manner that he treats Hegel – as a senior philosopher that has something to offer, but that also contains incompatibilities. He ultimately distinguishes his own project from both Hegel and Fichte, though it is important to understand what philosophical grounds Stirner sets for his own work.

Fichte’s notion of the ‘I’ is influential in Stirner’s conception of individual autonomy, but it is insufficient in describing Stirner’s project in total.

Two of the key works I will be drawing upon for the explanation of some of Stirner’s ideas are Fichte’s Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre and Other Writings (1797-1800)

(1994), and the Foundations of Natural Right (2000). What Fichte is attempting is to show, specifically within the Foundations of Natural Right, is that the idea of right is predicated on and necessitated by the existence of rational beings. Pr’Out 33

To be a rational being is to recognize yourself as a unique subject that is distinct from

other unique subjects. This realization of subjectivity is “…the character of rationality… that which acts and that which is acted upon are one and the same” (Foundations of Natural Right 1).

Acknowledging yourself as subject is a self-referential action, where the ‘I’ posits itself through its acting, and refers its acting back into itself. To say that I, this author, am a subject is only possible through the action of myself already as a subject.

What Fichte calls the ‘I’ recognizes acting as such when it is able to distinguish itself from its object of consciousness: “this or that exists, as sure as I live” (5), says Fichte. This new activity of the ‘I,’ distinguishing itself from itself and its object, is rational because it recognizes itself as independent from its object of consciousness as well as other autonomous subjects. And so, this rational activity is a precursor to the idea of right in that this distinct subject recognizes and respects the mutual independence of other distinct subjects. ‘Right’ emerges out of the respect for mutual autonomy.

These ideas are directly acknowledged by Stirner, and then dissolved into the framework of the unique one:

Fichte’s ego too is the same essence outside me, for every one is ego; and, if only this ego has rights, then it is ‘the ego’, it is not I. But I am not an ego along with other egos, but the sole ego: I am unique… And it is only as this unique I that I take everything for my own, as I set myself to work, and develop myself, only as this. I do not develop men, nor as man, but, as I, I develop myself. (318-319)

Stirner levels the same criticism towards Fichte as he does against Hegel, Christianity, the Young

Hegelians etc. The concept is not the self. The concept is the “essence outside (him),” the specter that seeks to possess a body and move about in corporeity. The ego is not Stirner’s ego, or my ego, but the ego as idea; the “sole ego” is no longer ego as such, but the individual man that was

Stirner himself. The distinction between ‘egos’ and the ‘sole ego’ is in the recognition of Pr’Out 34

personhood, in the recognition of uniqueness; a subject that is distinct. ‘Ego’ is the abstraction,

‘the sole ego’ is only a description. Until this recognition takes place, it is the concept which has

right, not the men or women to whom the concept corresponds. Their actual persons only obtain

rights inasmuch as their abstract egos have rights. The meaning of the ‘unique’ is concretized in the form of Stirner himself. It is self-determining – not as conceptualized by Fichte, Hegel, or

‘mankind’, but as he himself lived it.

This may seem contradictory. What is the ‘unique one’, then, but another abstraction?

Indeed, Stirner posits the existence of a gradient of egoism, from strong and weak egoism, to cheated egoism13. Each is categorically explored by Stirner and postulated in a number of circumstances. “Cheated egoism” is born out of the neglect of all our desires for the sake of one

desire in particular (149). Thus, by only entertaining one desire, we satisfy our egoism, but not to

the fullest extent. It is not ‘real’ egoism, but a partial one. This appears once more in a discussion

on the nature of family. When discussing familial ties, Stirner uses Shakespeare’s Romeo and

Juliet as an example of the kind of the loyalties that family puts to the test. Juliet’s “strong

egoism” (197) appears when “the unruly passion can at last no longer be tamed, and undermines

the building of piety” (196). On the contrary, “weak egoism” (197) is posited in a question:

“What if the pliable girl were conscious of having left her self-will unsatisfied and humbly

subjected herself to a higher power? Subjected and sacrificed, because the superstition of piety

exercised its dominion over her!” (197). Here, we see an example of Stirner’s “weak egoism” as

egoism that is only exercised in the name of an idea. In this hypothetical situation, the egoist (in

this case, Juliet) would instead acquiesce to the idea of familial piety, thinking that this would

offer a greater sense of self-satisfaction than the fulfillment of her desires. She perhaps wanted to

13 Elsewhere, he calls this a “narrow egoism,” or “possessedness” (70). Pr’Out 35 relinquish herself before the idea of piety, but again, this would seem to be a partial egoism, an illegitimate egoism, as opposed to a ‘pure’ egoism. But is that not what Stirner meant to oppose in the first place? Was not the expounding and proliferation of a ‘pure’ idea the very impetus for

Stirner’s vitriolic writings?

Marx certainly noticed this as well, as he devoted much of The German Ideology (1932) to a repudiation of just such contradiction.

To begin with they (the Young Hegelians) took pure, unfalsified Hegelian categories such as ‘substance’ and ‘self-consciousness’, later they secularised these categories by giving them more profane names such as ‘species’, ‘the unique’, ‘man’, etc. (35)

Marx is claiming that the young Hegelians were perhaps not so far-removed from Hegel as they would have liked to believe. Instead, they appropriated “Hegelian categories” and simply gave them different names: “species”, “the unique”. Hegel sought to realize the spiritual life as the real life, present in the world around us. His progeny had taken up arms against this stance by enunciating “Man” as the real. A humanitarian effort would take up the mantle of the spiritual.

Stirner thought differently from the rest of the Young Hegelians: he believed “Man” to be an even more insidious dogma, and offered that we are all unique individuals with actual existence under the sway of ideologues. Marx offered a third solution: that neither “Man” as such nor the

“unique one” were ‘real’; that is to say, capable of real change. Marx writes:

Since the Young Hegelians consider conceptions, thoughts, ideas, in fact all the products of consciousness, to which they attribute an independent existence, as the real chains of men (just as the Old Hegelians declare them the true bonds of human society) it is evident that the Young Hegelians have to fight only against these illusions of consciousness. (35- 36)

Because Hegel thought in terms of the spiritual life, the Young Hegelians responded in kind. Not to the materialist concerns of a historically contingent Germany, but to the spiritual assertions of

Hegel’s philosophy. He believed that to act ‘rightly’ was to act in accordance with the universal will of the state. Thus, to show why this concept was harmful, arbitrary, etc. one only needed to Pr’Out 36

deal with its metaphysical assertions. One had to deal with the concept: be it ‘right’, ‘the state’,

or the idea of a universal will. Once these “real chains of men” were broken, the individuals

would be free. Marx however, believed that both parties attempted to supplement the spiritual for

the spiritual, or the unreal for the unreal. Combating abstraction with abstraction is ultimately

useful to no-one.

And so begins one of the earliest attempts of Marx’s materialist outline of history – a

dialectical process based on the historical manifestations of class struggle. This ultimate

conclusion was a communist utopia. The first premise of this dialectical materialism was the

existence of actual humans as they work to produce their means of subsistence (37). Indeed, how

these people produce is a key element for their existence:

This mode of production… is a definitive form of activity of these individuals… As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. Hence what individuals are depends on the material conditions of their production. (37)

This idea lives in stark contrast to the ideas of Hegel and those that came after him. We therefore have a transition from the ethical and spiritual life of the members of a society to the physical means that enable the continuation of that life. Marx’s materialist conception of history undermines the notions of Hegel and Stirner, who seemingly insist on responding to the ideal.

Instead of a world spirit living within the notions of a society, Marx has traced a society built upon the economic and social life of its constituents.

Thus, a conflict emerges: the struggle between the “real” and the “ideal” (Stirner 320).

Standing at odds with one another are the reconciliations made by several authors: Fichte,

Stirner, Marx and Hegel. Each seeks a totality, whether it be within the ‘I,’ ownness, communism or the Absolute, respectively. Hegel, in particular, recognizes the true as the whole, Pr’Out 37 the entire process of logical spirit unfolding over the entirety of human history, culminating in a total understanding. Stirner responds thus:

…people (Hegel, for example) in the end introduce the idea into everything, into the world, and prove ‘that the idea is, that reason is, in everything’… (But) no idea has existence, for none is capable of corporeity. (321)

Stirner aims for this corporeality within the unique one. Hegel’s abstractions see the idea in the world, Stirner’s see none but himself. The latter claims nothing but what he owns – and what he is capable of owning, he will. “That the individual is of himself a world’s history, and possess his property in the rest of the world’s history, goes beyond what is Christian” (323). “Christian” can be transposed to ‘abstract’ or ‘spiritual,’ ‘conceptual’ or ‘idealistic’. The unique one is Stirner himself; and like Stirner, it is we who decide who and what we are:

When Fichte says, ‘the ego is all’, this seems to harmonize perfectly with my thesis. But it is not that the ego is all, but the ego destroys all, and only the self-dissolving ego, the never-being ego, the – finite ego is really I. Fichte speaks of the ‘absolute’ ego, but I speak of me, the transitory ego. (163)

Stirner translates Fichte, seemingly, as speaking of the ego as such, the ego as it exists within everyone – “the ego is all”. The procedural ego, the “finite ego”, is the man, the person, the individual. The person is transient, their actions measured, their influence limited. Stirner reduces the philosophical dialogue of the ego as such, to the ego that is himself. At least, he reaches an approximation of his real existence. He writes “…ownness…: it is only a description of the owner” (154). Stirner acknowledges the shortcomings of language; a shortcoming that

Marx notes, but largely ignores in his critique of German idealism. Stirner views his own critique of abstraction as abstract itself, and stresses the importance of his real self. Marx seems to completely ignore this and is content to deride Stirner as simply an idealist who uses ideas to combat ideas. Marx, in the end, never really gets at what Stirner is trying to say – he wrestles with ‘uniqueness’ and ‘ownness’ as if they were metaphysical abstractions that were separate Pr’Out 38

from material reality. Stirner states time and again throughout his book that the unique one and

ownness function not as transcendental laws for being, but as “descriptions” of how people could

escape the hypocrisy and autocracy of modernity. Stirner is not trying to speak himself so much as he is trying to speak of himself.

Pr’Out 39

Chapter 2

Stirner and the Case for Anarchism

There are those who contend that Max Stirner is many things. I feel that this is an

appropriate assessment, as he made a case for himself being, firstly, an eccentric individual. This

would make him difficult to classify, as people are complex beings. For the purpose of this

project, I would like to focus on one particular aspect of his writing: his anarchic tendencies. My

intention in this second chapter is to build upon his reputation as an anarchist. This will act as a

foundation for his re-contextualization as a post-anarchic individualist. In my final chapter, I will

elaborate on the specifics of this post-anarchist individualism by interpreting Stirner with the

help of the ideas of several modern critical theorists.

It seems to me a point of debate whether one can even consider Max Stirner an anarchist.

While some of his assertions within The Ego and Its Own are undoubtedly anarchic, some

assertions clearly contradict the traditionally anarchist preclusion towards moral obligation, especially within the domain of social organization. Indeed, his entire project hinges upon the discarding of traditional moral obligations – an idea not shared by the classical anarchists. Thus, to consider Stirner a post-anarchist requires an elucidation of his anarchist tendencies, but also a consideration of where Stirner critiques anarchism from the vantage point of his own individualism. Nevertheless, what makes him a candidate for anarchism are precisely the same features that he criticizes anarchism for. His critique of anarchism, the moral life, and the state is anarchic, as is his opposition to socialist modes of existence. These criticisms add to Stirner’s contributions towards a post-anarchic individualism that posits ‘ownness’ and the ‘unique one’ as the singularity of being. He is a post-anarchist who is critical of anarchism, humanism and Pr’Out 40

abstraction. He circumvents these by offering a mode of actualization on the micro-political level

that stems from the individual themselves, as they live as self-conscious beings.

A Survey of Ideologues: Bakunin, Proudhon, Kropotkin, and Goldman

To suggest Stirner is an anarchist who goes beyond classical anarchism one must define

classical anarchism in the first place. Its definition is, unsurprisingly, complex. Jim Mac

Laughlin in his text Kropotkin and The Anarchist Intellectual Tradition (2016) explores the

lineage of anarchism from its earliest appearances in Greek antiquity to more recent anarchists

like Kropotkin and Proudhon. Rooted in the Greek ‘an’ (‘the absence of’) and ‘archos’ (‘ruler’ or

‘authority’), ‘anarchy’ literally means ‘no ruler’ or ‘no authority’ (1). There were those in Greek

society, as well as outside of it, that would congregate in what were called “acephalous

communities” that existed “without a leader” in any from, be it political or militaristic (1). This

definition of anarchism has evolved and changed over the centuries. More recently, ‘anarchism’

denotes everything from pure lawlessness, chaos, and destruction in the popular consciousness,

to utopian socialism, no-government socialism, anarchist-socialism, along with many other

hybrid ‘isms’. It boasts adherents from all walks of life, which is both a paradox of its appeal and

its function. Functionally, it seeks to abolish upper-class rule and government as a whole.

However, its main proponents are usually middle- and upper-class intellectuals. At the height of its popularity during the 19th and 20th centuries, it counted among its members the highest

echelons of the Russian aristocracy as well as the unfathomably poor and destitute.

There is a broad history of anarchism that had existed long before the handful of anarchic

theorists I have explored here. Why I have chosen the following theorists is because of their

historical settings; relatively speaking, they are all operating in a similar timeframe with each

other and Stirner. Thus, comparisons and contrasts may be more clearly drawn between them. Pr’Out 41

Arguably one of the first self-identified anarchists was Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876). He

was born into the upper class, and, like most other revolutionaries in Russia, had both the time

and money to spend on more esoteric pursuits. Throughout his life he sampled the thought of

both Fichte and Hegel, the latter of which had a great influence upon him.14 His relationship with

Karl Marx devolved from an amicable acquaintanceship to open hostility, a hostility that was

born as much from differences in principle as from personal dislike. Marx finally convinced the

members of the International Working Men’s Association to expel Bakunin in 1872 on the

suspicion that he was a government agent.15

This event did nothing to stall Bakunin’s writings; indeed, it may be considered just one of many obstacles he faced during his lifetime. This includes, beginning in 1851, a five-year imprisonment in St. Petersburg.16 One of Bakunin’s most well-known works, Statism and

Anarchy (1873), was among the last he published, and it contains a diatribe against Marx (141) and Marxism in general. What we are interested in here is the latter, as he offers a critique of a proletarian government from the vantage point of anarchism. Bakunin writes:

We have already expressed several times our profound aversion to the theory of Lassalle and Marx, which recommends to the workers… the creation of a people’s state… If there is a state, then necessarily there is domination and consequently slavery. A state without slavery, open or camouflaged, is inconceivable… (176-177)

The “people’s state” is one ruled by the proletariat. After a Marxist revolution, the means of production would be distributed among the workers, as they share in the spoils of victory. Class distinctions would vanish, and the proletarian government would secure a better future than one

14 Marshall Shatz, ed. Statism and Anarchy. He contributed, under a pseudonym, to a Left Hegelian journal about the contemporary conflict between “reaction and revolution” (xvi). 15 Marshall Shatz, ed. Statism and Anarchy (xxvii). 16 Bakunin participated in a myriad of insurrectionist plots in Saxony, Austria, and Prague. He was sentenced to death in Saxony, then in Austria, but was finally extradited to Russia, when he spent five years in a political prison. Only after the pleadings of Bakunin’s family did Alexander II release him to exile in Siberia (xix-xxi). Pr’Out 42 under capitalism. Bakunin offers another viewpoint. The centralized proletarian government would still function as a centralized government, one as capable of oppression as any other.

Indeed, there would “necessarily….(be) domination” and “slavery”. A ruler must be a ruler of something. Bakunin and the anarchists insist on the dissolution of the state, as the state, regardless of its incarnation, is intrinsically over-bearing if not openly despotic.

Living in the same period was another self-identified anarchist: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

(1809-1865). Within the substantial work of the Essential Proudhon (2013), edited by J. Bates, are a number of Proudhon’s correspondences and essays. The start of a biography of Proudhon can be found nearly 300-pages from the start of the book, written by J. A. Langlois (367). This section has two titles. The first is What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of

Government. The secondary title is P.J. Proudhon: His Life and His Works. Which belongs to

Proudhon and which belongs to Langlois is unclear, though it’s safe to assume the latter was not written by Proudhon himself.

The introductory remarks of Langlois refer to “the correspondence of P.J. Proudhon”

(367), where the reader is directed to a footnote. The footnote refers only to “the French edition of Proudhon’s works” without name or date (704), as well as another mysterious fact: that this introduction to Proudhon was included in the “first volume” of his correspondence, and was included “here” because the translator thought it would be clearer (704). Where the distinction lies between this elusive first volume and “here” is unclear, as well as which volume of correspondence we are actually reading (Second? Third?). The translator, who is also distinguished from the biographer I might add, are both unnamed in the footnote. Bates’ voice seems utterly absent throughout the text, and whatever scarce introductions exist are written by two others whose names appear as Shawn P. Wilbur on page one and J.A. Langlois on page 390. Pr’Out 43

The confusing nature of my explanation only further serves to indicate the baffling organization

of this book. Nevertheless, P.J. Proudhon: His Life and His Works, provides dates, sources, and

letters of correspondence between Proudhon and his publishers. What warrants our attention,

however, is Proudhon’s theories which begin on page 398.

Firstly, Proudhon begins by reconsidering the metaphysical postulates of “justice,”

“equity,” and “liberty” as fundamental epistemic problems. He writes “… we had never understood the meaning of these words, so common and yet so sacred” (401). This becomes important for Proudhon, as to understand his assertion, “property is robbery” (399), commonly translated as “property is theft,” it is necessary to know property itself. Thus, he outlines his project in three areas: first he attempts to understand our rights to property, second, he attempts to explain the link between equality and property, and finally are his attempts to explain why

they are contradictory by nature (418).

According to Langlois, Proudhon’s exploration of the contradictions of property and

equality are in fact Hegelian. “Considered in their thesis, that is, in the law or tendency which

created them, all the economical categories are rational, - competition, monopoly, the balance of

trade, and property… But, like communism and population, all these categories are antinomical;

all are opposed, not only to each other, but to themselves…” (Langlois 379). Communism, etc.

are opposed to themselves and other categories because, in Proudhon’s words, “communism

rejects independence and proportionality; property does not satisfy equality and law” (589). The

merging of two opposed ideas is the start of the Hegelian dialectical process of unification within

totality. The result of merging these two categories is a third category that preserves and

continues the development of its constituent categories. Proudhon writes of this third category as

“…the synthesis of communism and property… liberty” which blends both into a harmonious Pr’Out 44 play that allows for the progression each in the development of something new (589). This

‘something new’ necessitates the advent of a stateless society, where the only permissible government is that “of necessity” (589). This particular sentiment is indicative of his earlier insistence on knowing. For Proudhon, knowledge and reason are fundamental aspects of our existence, and they are the only faculties that are capable of accurately interpreting what is right and just. Indeed, reason is necessary for the creation of the most just societies. The only law that

Proudhon recognizes is what is dictated by reason.

Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) was one of the most influential anarchists in the period following Bakunin and Proudhon (and Stirner). His particular brand of anarchism was hybridized with communism, but his fame is the result of his attempt to elucidate anarchism as a science; anarchism as a theory closer to Darwinism than Hegelianism. It relied upon verifiable evidence present in the world, as well as a dialectical understanding of the development of society. For example:

The anarchist thinker does not resort to metaphysical conceptions… He follows, on the contrary, the course traced by the modern philosophy of evolution. He studies human society as it is now and was in the past… he merely considers society as an aggregation of organisms trying to find out the best ways of combining the wants of the individual with those of cooperation for the welfare of the species. (Anarchist Communism: It’s Basis and Principles 47)

The basis for this particular brand of anarchism is science; it dismisses “metaphysical conceptions”, and exchanges them for the concrete. It is historically located in the stuff of material life, as a process that considers the development of society, through “the course traced by the modern philosophy of evolution”. Instead of the economic approaches to civilized life in the work of communism, Kropotkin’s anarchism relies upon the social and evolutionary advancements of the community on a macro – level. Rather than the conditions of production as a determining factor in the lives of the people, Kropotkin asserts it’s the community- Pr’Out 45 consciousness that reconciles “the wants of the individual” with “the welfare of the species”.

Indeed, society evolves in a Darwinian sense for the betterment of all. However, rather than mutual competition acting as the great motivator, Kropotkin asserts that mutual cooperation will win the day.

Additionally, his particular brand of anarchist communism borrows only certain things from a more typical communism. Because it is firstly anarchist, it shuns the centralized structure of a proletarian authority, and maintains a predisposition towards “economic freedom and political freedom (61). Additionally, rather than seeking to make violent proletarian revolution a reality, it instead seeks to lead a people by example (51). It is based upon the unfolding tendency of human society towards mutual cooperation, or, what Kropotkin calls mutual aid.17 He shuns the Darwinian view of species locked in competitive struggle with one another, and instead asserts that the tendency of evolution is one of mutual cooperation. More importantly, he suggests that the current trends of human existence are pushing civilized life towards a specific mode of cooperation: communism. In his essay Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles he produces a laundry list of communal enterprises:

Museums, free libraries, and free public schools; parks and pleasure grounds; paved and lighted streets, free for everybody’s use; water supplied to private dwellings, with a growing tendency towards disregarding the exact amount of it used by the individual; tramways and railways which have already begun to introduce the season ticket or the uniform tax, and will surely go much farther in this line when they are no longer private property: all these are tokens showing in what direction further progress is to be expected. (60)

Here, he has listed concrete examples that support his socio-scientific worldview of expansive modes of cooperation. Additionally, he comments upon their potential when (and if) they are to progress beyond “private property”. If societies are built upon mutual cooperation, and there is empirical evidence to support this, Kropotkin can infer that if society has progressed this far, it

17 See Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution (1902). Pr’Out 46

can also be pushed further to a domain where the means of production are publicly owned and

operated. However, this seems nothing if not idealistic. In economics, market trends set the precedent for what sells well and what doesn’t; it fluctuates based on a number of factors that can change almost overnight. On the macrocosmic stage of world history, or even Western

history, I think it would be naïve to say that these trends have only one end-point. Much like

Hegel’s Absolute Knowledge, Fichte’s I, or the vision of utopian socialism, the endpoint is

forever the process of becoming; when the goal is reached, it ceases to be a goal, and is

transformed by the wealth of influences that exist in the material world. When the ideal becomes

the real, something is always lost.

An additional facet of this ideal world of free cooperation is the absence of government.

Because Kropotkin’s thought-project is a hybrid of anarchism and communism, it necessitates

the destruction, or is at least based upon the absence, of government in all forms. Indeed

Kropotkin believes that:

…free agreement is becoming a substitute for law. And free cooperation a substitute for governmental guardianship… And the more we study the advance made in this direction, as well as the inadequacy of government to fulfill expectations placed in them, the more we are bound to conclude that humanity, by steadily limiting the functions of government, is marching towards reducing them finally to nil. (63)

This “march” of history, for Kropotkin, is the unstoppable approach to freedom, from “limiting

the functions of government” to having no government whatsoever. A society of the future

would be one based on the principles of mutual cooperation, free enterprise, and self-governance.

His popularity would soon reach the United States, where he would make direct contact with

another well-known anarchist: Emma Goldman.

Emma Goldman was born on June 27th, 1869, in Russia. Her collected works appeared

during her lifetime, entitled Anarchism and Other Essays, and was first published with a Pr’Out 47

biographical sketch written by Hippolyte Havel. The third edition was published in 1966. She

was one of the most infamous agitators in the American anarchist movements, seeing firsthand

the horrible mistreatment of workers (and female workers in particular) in both tsarist Russia and

industrial America (Havel 13-14). After a year-long stay in Blackwell Island prison for inciting a

riot (26), she emerged “developed and matured, and intellectually transformed” (27). Her

involvement shifted from a socialist/anarchist position to a position of pure, unfiltered

anarchism. She participated in several literature tours, but most notably, engaged in

correspondence with one of the most well-known anarchists in the history of the movement:

Peter Kropotkin (33-34). She was so engrained in the public’s consciousness that she was even persecuted for the assassination attempt of President McKinley in September 1901 (34). In response to these accusations (as well as to the detainment and physical abuse that followed),

“she was overwhelmed by the realization of the stupidity, lack of understanding, and vileness which characterized the events of those terrible days” (34). Her writings yet stand the test of time within the anarchist canon, as her fiery spirit and profoundly human sympathies depict her as one of the most impassioned proponents of freedom in recent memory.

She defines anarchism in her essay “Anarchism: What It Really Stands For” as follows:

“The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary” (56). Goldman’s anarchism is a philosophy of social transformation with an emphasis on the decentralization of government. It condemns “violence” and is focused on society as “unrestricted by man-made law”. She makes several assumptions: first, that only government rests on violence, second, that an unrestricted society would not be destructive Pr’Out 48

(either to itself or towards other societies), and, third, that man-made laws, are, by their very nature, restrictive of liberty.

One of the critiques that has been leveled at anarchism over the centuries is the lack of a unified approach, or practical set of attainable goals. Its ceaseless conflict with communism and other forms of socialism has only furthered its reputation as idealistic and impractical. Emma

Goldman found herself disillusioned after being ostracized from society in America following the assassination attempt of President McKinley in 1901. Kropotkin redacted several of his statements following the application of his anarchist theories in Russia. Where his theories were applied, the reality of the situation was that the material demands generated by a populace devoid of government was too great. These facts do not invalidate anarchism as a method of social organization and critique – nor are they an exhaustive representation of every problem anarchism has encountered. They only serve to highlight some areas that are open for re-visitation.

Specifically, questions of individualism: how does anarchism conceive of individualism and what does anarchism offer the individual. These re-evaluative questions are the domain of post- anarchism, though they are not the only expression of post-anarchism.

Stirner’s Egoism Meets Classical Anarchism

In what I wrote above I tried to outline the ideology of anarchism, and the differences

between some of its more notable representatives. What should have emerged is a clearer picture

of the break in the history of anarchism that Stirner represents with The Ego and Its Own. This

break makes him a candidate for inclusion in the category of “post-anarchism,” if we understand

“post-anarchism” to include two things: the first is a meta-commentary on the function of ideology within and above ‘revolutionary’ ideology. The second criterion is a critique of Pr’Out 49

representation. I will return to these later. For now, I would like to focus on the relationship

between Stirner and Proudhon specifically because it manifests directly within the pages of

Stirner’s book. Stirner’s repudiation of Proudhon’s ideas allow me to better distinguish Stirner’s

contributions from anarchism. In this separation, Stirner offers a critique of liberal humanism –

arguably the most defining feature of anarchism. The absence of external coercion and the

presence of decentralized forms of organization, both indispensable elements in themselves, are

only the means of anarchism to secure the greatest possible amount of human freedom.

I would like to explore the following: firstly, a brief reappraisal of the ideals of

anarchism, secondly, a concrete example of anarchism at work, and finally, Stirner’s break from

anarchism into a new realm of social organization that is dependent on individual dynamism.

To some of the words of the classical anarchists: Emma Goldman sees government as

“wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary” (Anarchism and Other Essays 56). Kropotkin sees

correlations: “Absolute monarchy corresponded to the system of serfdom. Representative

government corresponds to capital-rule. Both, however, are class-rule…” and are thus

unnecessary in a society of free association, where class-distinctions are no more (Anarchist

Communism: Its Basis and Principles 52). And in the words of Bakunin, a revolution must:

Abolish all states, destroy bourgeois civilization, organize freely from below upward, by means of free associations – organize the unshackled laboring hordes, the whole of liberated humanity, create a new world for all mankind. (Statism and Anarchy 197)

Each of these authors may be ascribed to the later two epochs of Stirner’s liberalist genealogy:

the criticism of government, the replacing of centralization with free association, and the

allegiance to ‘humanity’ and ‘mankind’ all fit within the domains of social and humane

liberalism. Though these singular quotes are by no means exhaustive of these theorists individual Pr’Out 50

dispositions, they do provide the groundwork that is their ideological justification for advocating

anarchism – independent of how they approach its manifestation.

The vagaries of anarchism’s method of organization and it’s idealistic nature is a common criticism, but in fact, these vagaries make it open to a variety of practical experiments; there is no one ‘definitive’ historical example of anarchism because the means through which

people organize themselves and for what purpose is left to the discretion of those that would

constitute such an arrangement. There are, however, many examples of freely constituted

collectives and societies that move with the spirit of anarchism, though they are as varied as the

people that created them.

One of the more well-known attempts at independent organization comes from Paris, in

the later 19th century. In his essay, The Paris Commune of 1871 and the Bibliotheque Nationale,

Gerald S. Greenberg writes: “The Paris Commune of 1871 may have been the first great uprising

of the proletariat against bourgeois exploitation…” (442). However, this event is not universally

seen as a positive effort in enacting political and social change. For example, in his survey The

Scarecrow on the Other Side of the Pond: The Paris Commune of 1871 in the Canadian Press,

Alain Bargain-Villeger relates the viewpoint of the Canadian government as they regarded the

Paris Commune. Fundamentally, “the principles that animated the Parisian revolutionaries were antithetical to the cautious, less democratic precepts of the nation-building processes then taking shape in Canada” (73). And so the government was zealous in its attempt to distance itself from the goings-on of the socialists, anarchists and communists of the Commune. It was seen as something to be feared, not as something to aspire towards (especially in the eyes of the government). Fundamentally, the Commune was a response to a newly elected monarchical government that came hot on the heels of Paris’ surrender to Prussia in the later 19th century Pr’Out 51

(Greenberg 443). It was not strictly “anarchist” in content; instead, it gathered together socialists and republicans (Bargain-Villeger 73), no small number of communists, and was led by

Proudhonist anarchists (Mac Laughlin 229). Though it may be argued that it was anarchist in its form.

Kropotkin believed that the Paris Commune represented a medieval form of organization that relied upon “initiative” and “spontaneity” (Mac Laughlin 230). Within the larger city, there would exist “small communities and ‘sub-towns’ that were arranged around the ‘mother city’, each maintaining its own way of living and working, and resolutely defending its social and cultural independence (Mac Laughlin 230). What is important for this historical example is the initial success of this venture in constructing a state of independent organization in direct opposition to what was perceived as the ineptitude of ‘legitimate’ authority i.e. the newly constituted Parisian monarchy in the wake of their surrender (Greenberg 443).

The Paris Commune is the political ideology of anarchism at work, as distinct from something like collectivism à la the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia or libertarian theories of

Constitutional government.

For example, Leon Trotsky, an associate of Vladimir Lenin, in his The History of The

Russian Revolution (1932) writes about both the February and October Revolutions that shook

Russia in the year of 1917. The February Revolution was a response to the incompetence of

Russia’s Tzar, Nicholas II. The loss of Russia to Japan in the Russo-Japanese War stained the legitimacy of the monarchy as a whole, but it was Nicholas II’s particularly poor leadership during the first World War, as well as the massacre of Bloody Sunday that marred his reputation.

He resigned as monarch and shortly after he and his family were captured and executed by revolutionaries. In the wake of the assassination of the royal family in the Spring of 1917, a Pr’Out 52 joint-operative ‘government’ was put into place: a Soviet (“workers”) government, and a

Provisional government that aspired towards a more liberal democratic future for Russia.

The October Revolution can be said to have evolved from the goings-on of the February

Revolution, with Lenin being a key player. Living in exile, Lenin sends a telegram from Sweden to St. Petersburg, renamed ‘Petrograd’: “Our tactic; absolute lack of confidence; no support to the new government; suspect Kerensky especially; arming of proletariat the sole guarantee; immediate elections to the Petrograd Duma; no rapprochement with other parties.” What Lenin is referring to here is his total mistrust of the Provisional government, the “new government”, which he believes is to some extent counter-revolutionary and to some extent imperialist.

Instead, Lenin calls for an allocation of power within the Petrograd Workers government with

“no rapprochement” to any other party. If a communist revolution was indeed to come to pass, it had to deal with, in large part, other parties within the Soviet itself as well as the competing

Provisional government.

And so, the actual moment of authorizing and committing to an insurrection was one beset by bureaucracy. If the Soviet was to sanction this action, it would have to put it before the

Soviet itself – a committee composed of various revolutionary camps with opposing visions. A decision was made to create an independent committee that could take revolutionary action, but this too was beset by bureaucracy. This independent committee was named the Military

Revolutionary Committee and was organized with the power to sanction insurrectionist activity

(it also hid its powers from the Provisional government). Trotsky notes the difficulty of who then to include in this new political body, and the resistance of those who would be outside of it:

To take advantage of the majority in the Soviet and compose the Committee of Bolsheviks alone, would have provoked discontent among the non-party men, to say nothing of the Left Social Revolutionaries and certain groups of anarchists. The Bolsheviks in the Military Revolutionary Committee would submit to the decisions of Pr’Out 53

their party – although not always without resistance – but it was impossible to demand discipline of the non-party men and the Left Social Revolutionaries.

The question remained of how to deal with the outliers (to varying degrees) of Bolshevism: namely, “non-party men”, and “Left Social Revolutionaries”. These non-party men, specifically anarchists, would have their own political ideologies to guide them. The Left Social

Revolutionaries were, to some extent, supporters of Bolshevism, but not ubiquitously. Thus the conclusion was to involve everyone – Trotsky relates that “…the masses…” were to be involved.

In the closing hours of the revolution, ‘the masses’ again would be involved in the new government in the wake of October 1917:

The management of the various branches of the state life is allotted to commissions who are to carry into action the programme announced by the Congress of Soviets ‘in close union with the mass organisation of working men and women, sailors, soldiers, peasants and clerical employees.’

The heads of these branches of state and local life were then organized into a singular body of authority known as the “Soviet of People’s Commissars” – the first of several names for what is commonly known as the Communist Soviet Union. At the center of this government is the

“Central Executive Committee” lead entirely by the figureheads of Bolshevism – the president of which is Vladimir Ilych Lenin.

Additionally, the “Council of People’s Commissars” was composed of a majority of

Bolsheviks, and a minority of Left Social Revolutionaries. However, this was not the end of its growth:

The Central Executive Committee was to complete itself in the future with representatives of the peasant soviets and the re-elected army organisations. The factions who had abandoned the Congress were granted the right to send their delegates to the Central Executive Committee on the basis of proportional representation.

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In addition to the centralization of power largely within Bolshevism and its followers, it would seem that some basis for representation within the governing body was permitted to those that had abdicated from its ideology.

The centralization of power in the hands of the Bolshevists provides a comparison to the workings of the Paris Commune. The Commune’s leadership was composed of different hues of socialists, and were not at all a single party. Bargain-Villeger suggest that the “Communal

Council” (182) that directed the actions of the Commune was anything but homogenous; although the representatives “…agreed on some points, they did not share the same worldview”

(182-183). Indeed, it functioned on the basis of a council of representatives from several branches of socialism. This distinguishes itself from the Soviet of People’s Commissars which relied on a single-party system that also included a congress of largely the same political demographic; the Bolshevists and the Left Social Revolutionaries that comprised the congress were distinct groups, but their ideology was so similar as to be imperceptible, with the LSR’s lending their support to the Bolshevists on numerous occasions (including the election of an at first exclusively Bolshevik central committee). This is not to say that the Paris Commune was more or less effective than Bolshevism, nor is the Commune the only way a political dimension of anarchism can emerge; I only aim to say that the Commune is one practical experiment that utilizes the ideals of anarchism as distinct from other forms of collectivism. The Commune is how anarchism can look in practice.

Additionally, the practices of the Paris Commune distinguish themselves from forms of constitutional government such as Western democracy, described, for instance, by John J.

Parker, a judge on the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, as follows: "It is a philosophy of life, based upon the worth and importance of the individual, which postulates that institutions Pr’Out 55 exist for men and not men for institutions” (52). Philosophically, anarchism is remarkably similar to democracy. Both anarchism and democracy rely upon “the individual” and the authority that is derived from their collective decision-making. Institutions would only function on the sanctions of the people. But western democracy (the United States for example) is not a

‘pure’ democracy (no government is a ‘pure’ form of its namesake) – it is democracy under a capitalist economy. The institutions that arise in western democracy under capitalist economies are, for the anarchists, inherently exploitative. This is not to say that institutions cannot exist “for men”, only that the ones that arise under Western democracy, under capitalism, do not exist “for men”.

The idea of the modern democratic state owes much of its formulation to the philosopher

John Locke (1632-1704). In the introduction to Locke’s The Second Treatise of Government

(2004), Joseph Carrig contends that Locke emphasized “…the ultimate sovereignty of the people, their right to establish the form of government and, in the case of the abuse of power, their right to revolution” (xiv). This largely seems to echo the words of Parker, quoted above.

Again, importance is placed on the willpower of the people themselves, their “ultimate sovereignty” in establishing the mechanisms that will govern their lives. Additionally, Carrig asserts the “right to revolution” as well. Both Parker and Carrig seem to believe that the people themselves are the true rulers in legitimate democratic states.

Locke himself believed that Nature was the ruling state of mankind, before any collective organizations or institutions. In this natural state, mankind was given “…perfect freedom” (3).

Under this freedom, all is permissible. But the faculty of reason, which mankind alone possess, acts as a kind of failsafe mechanism. Reason, for Locke, “…teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, Pr’Out 56 liberty or possessions” (4). Thus, reason acts as a method through which we can interpret our thoughts and actions; we can think before we act. And, if we utilize reason, we realize we are “all equal and independent”. This alone prevents the ‘perfect freedom’ of the natural state of

‘mankind’ from running rampant. The cessation of this natural state ends in the mutual coming- together of individuals – into a society.

Small or otherwise interpersonal agreements do not lessen the rule of Nature. The end of the natural state of humanity is at the same time the transition into an organized whole. Locke writes:

Wherever, therefore, any number of men so unite into one society as to quit everyone his executive power of the law of Nature, and to resign it to the public, there and there only is a political or civil society. And this is done wherever any number of men, in the state of Nature, enter into society to make one people one body politic under one supreme government. (47)

“Man” in his “state of nature” can only create this union of individuals through the voluntary relinquishing of the “law of Nature”. Only then can a “political or civil society” be formed. The emphasis is once again, as in Parker’s interpretation, as in Carrig’s definition, placed upon individual action: the individual surrenders their Natural freedom to create a society. The society then serves as the political body that is beholden, that is “under” the law of the government, but whose laws (in theory) serve to benefit the body politic. Should this power be abused, it is then in the interest of the civil or political society to rebel.

The difference between the development of Locke’s civil society and something like the

Paris Commune is that the former uses rebellion to preserve the ‘pureness’ of the bond between ruler and ruled. The later exists to destroy the bond entirely. Locke envisions the coming together of people to constitute a government, to sanction a ruling body. The Paris Commune, our extended example, was specifically the result of revolutionary action; it’s goal was to Pr’Out 57 establish a sovereign collective in opposition to a ruling body. Locke’s political society rises out of a ‘Natural’ state, the Commune arose in response to a perceived ‘unnatural’ state. Anarchism, along with other forms of socialism, communism, etc. envision the development of the truly natural only in the wake of the upheaval of the distinctions between rich and poor, ruler and ruled.

With these distinctions being made, we can now see more clearly where anarchism fits into the realm of political as well as social ideology. It is my hope that the reader is now endowed with a more concrete political reference point for the words and ideas of anarchism as it has been expressed over the last few centuries.

To finally venture a comparison between Stirner and the anarchists, it would be easy to see why scholars may be tempted into conceiving of Stirner as purely anarchic: “As long as the state asserts itself, it represents own will, its ever-hostile opponent, as unreasonable evil… every state is a despotism…” (175). This is but one of many examples of Stirner’s malice towards government. He regards the hierarchical structures and organization of authority as inherently

‘despotic’, much like the anarchists. However, their differences lie within their justifications for their malice. Anarchists from the 18th – 20th centuries were, as stated earlier, preoccupied with the elevation of humanity as a whole. Stirner’s concerns lie with the preservation of his idea of

‘ownness’, his original solution to problems of modernity (and government). The ‘owner’ enacts their “own will” when they are in control of their thoughts and actions. The state, for Stirner, represents this willpower as a negative – it is “unreasonable evil” because the state functions on collectivism; it is a construct based on social contracts. Conceived as a centralized authority, it cannot exist without a functioning hierarchy, so it commands obedience from those within that hierarchy. Thus, “own will,” individual will, must be demonized to ensure the survival of its Pr’Out 58

collectivist architecture. Stirner is ultimately critical of the humanist postulates of classical

anarchism, too, because they don’t allow for the growth and expression of unique individuals.

Anarchism’s ontology fundamentally relies upon an idealized subject that adheres to certain

humanist principles. Thus, it is a mistake to consider Stirner as simply an anarchist when his

ideas are based on self-determination in opposition to all transcendent ideas (including and

especially ‘mankind’).

Stirner’s refutations of the ideologies of anarchism emerge in two areas: the inadequacy

of the traditional notions of ‘freedom’ and the deference toward ‘morality.’ These criticisms of

freedom pave the way for Stirner’s departure from classical anarchism, and situate him within

the context of post-anarchism. Within post-anarchism, he can be seen as contributing a new

individualism that uses ‘ownness’ as a critical weapon against an aging humanism, and an

increasingly compartmentalized social and political sphere. Additionally, Stirner’s conflict with

Proudhon offers further specificity regarding his break from classical anarchism. In the tradition

of post-anarchism, the Stirnerite response to Proudhon is a re-evaluation of classical anarchism according to more modern sensibilities. Stirner calls it ‘ownness’. Welsh calls it ‘dialectical egoism’ in the way that it is an egoism that continually creates itself through conflict with the external world (Max Stirner’s Dialectical Egoism: A New Interpretation 87)). I wish to offer another vantage point: ‘post-anarchic individualism’.

Stirner’s first criticism of the humanist notion of freedom is as an idealized and fickle notion that lacks specificity. As Stirner says:

Freedom can only be the whole of freedom; a piece of freedom is not freedom. You despair of the possibility of obtaining the whole freedom, freedom from everything – yes, you consider it insanity even to wish this? (145)

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What he is alluding to in this passage is the idea that to be truly free, means to be “free from

everything,” otherwise the person is still restricted by one thing or another; the phrase ‘to be

free’ is insufficient and unspecific. To be from what? Why? How? When these questions are not

asked, ‘to be free’ then means freedom from everything; it would mean from freedom from

humanity, freedom to do great and terrible things. In Stirner’s interpretation, this pure, unspecific

freedom is what liberals consider “insanity”. So, what liberals strive for is the “unattainable”

(145); ‘freedom’ in and of itself is not desirable. What liberals truly clamor for is a specific

notion of freedom that is not implicit in the word itself. Liberalism wants everyone to be “free”

but only if they act in accordance with a specific definition of “freedom”. Thus, the traditional

notion of freedom according to Stirner is nothing more than the imposition of new systems of

control; it is not freedom as such because that type of freedom is considered dangerous. In

Stirner’s words, “The craving for a particular freedom always includes the purpose of a new

dominion…” (145). To use Stirner’s examples: the free servant in political liberalism, those free

from possessions in social liberalism, and those free from egoism in humane liberalism. Even an anarchist society would still function on the basis of a particular freedom, and necessitates the

asking of these same questions: freedom from what? For whom? Why? To what extent?

Stirner gives the example of a liberal communality where the freedom of the press is

dictated by the notion of a particular freedom. The presence of “order” and “law” (97-98) acts as security from conflict between people: “The liberty of the commonality is liberty or independence from the will of another person…” (98). They are not to oppress others or otherwise interfere with others. When discussing freedom of the press, whatever is to be printed must conform to the specific liberal sensibilities of the commonality. In Stirner’s words:

…only liberal matter, only lawful matter, is allowed to be printed; otherwise the ‘press laws’ threaten ‘press penalties’… For one is rid of orders indeed, and ‘no one has any Pr’Out 60

business to give us orders’, but one has become so much the more submissive to the – law. (98)

The imposition of this particular freedom still engenders servitude to a ruling power. The people are free from one another, but not free from law. The press does not own freedom because the ruling power dictates what constitutes “lawful matter,” as well as all the consequences that entails; in the case of freedom of the press, “press penalties” are also left to the arbitrary discretion of the law. People are free from one another, from the imposition of other wills, but they are still beholden to the “law”.

Stirner’s second criticism of freedom is based on the ‘longing’ for freedom as a notion that is out of our reach. This is a resurgence of his criticism of liberalism in general as the resurgence of religious mysticism; it takes from us what we own, and declares them as something above and beyond us. He writes: “…the craving for freedom as for something absolute, worthy of praise, deprived us of ownness: it created self-denial” (142). The positing of freedom as beyond ourselves means that we must continually strive to be free – we must constantly chase freedom at every level of our existence, at every moment we feel ourselves unfree. The pining for freedom is not a manifestation of true self-determination – it is only to chase a ghost. He offers a solution in the form of ‘ownness’:

Ownness, on the contrary, is my whole being and existence, it is I myself. I am free of what I am rid of, owner of what I have in my power or what I control…. To be free is something that I cannot truly will, because I cannot make it, cannot create it: I can only wish it and – aspire toward it, for it remains an ideal, a spook. (143)

Stirner posits ‘ownness’ as distinct from freedom due to the embodied nature of the latter.

Freedom shows its inadequacies not only in its abstract terms – a yearning for particular freedom, not freedom as such – but also in its material conjurations. People are free to be ‘rid’ of things, but not to have them, to own them; if you are ‘free’ to have something, you are its owner. Pr’Out 61

Here it may be argued that ownness, like freedom, are equally fantastical ideas. Marx certainly

tries this in a concentrated effort. Perhaps ‘ownness’ and ‘freedom’ are both merely words, and

the true crust of the matter is the material lives of people; that these are merely ideas which exist

in a separate realm with little or no bearing on the external substantive universe. This is a

concept I will flesh out further in my discussions between Stirner and modern critical theory, but

I will endeavor a brief overview. ‘Freedom’ is an ideal: ‘ownness’ is a localized surge of power

within the material body of individual people.

Distinct from the areas where he is critical of the generally liberal, he also responds directly to Proudhon as a representative of anarchism: “’Man is destined to live without religion, but the moral law is eternal and absolute. Who would dare today to attack morality?’”

(Proudhon, quoted in Stirner 46). Proudhon’s faith in the moral grounds of humanity is indicative of his position as an anarchist specifically and a liberal humanist generally. The cause of morality is, for Proudhon, different from the servitude to religion, as man is “destined” to live without one and not the other; religion is unnecessary, morality is ‘eternal.’ This is the ontology

of liberal humanism; ‘man’ cannot exist without morality. For Stirner, to serve religious piety or

humanistic morality amounts to essentially the same thing – a separation of the individual into

two selves and a deference to the imaginary. Stirner says this amounts to nothing more than to

“…assail the supreme essence in favor of another supreme essence” (46). This swapping of

essences is the shift from religious “piety” (46) to morality.

Stirner address Proudhon once more, invoking his famous epithet “property is theft”

(Proudhon, quoted in Stirner 72). Proudhon’s declaration evokes the anarchist idea that everyone

should have access to goods and services – a critique stemming from the idea that capitalism

specifically sequesters goods in the hands of an elite social class to the detriment of everyone Pr’Out 62 else. In a collectivist and decentralized society like anarchism, the private ownership of goods would be akin to stealing from collective property.

In the eyes of Stirner, Proudhon’s statement is based on a deference to religious piety under the guise of humanitarian morality:

Even if a crime did not cause the slightest damage either to me or any of those in whom I take an interest, I should nevertheless denounce it. Why? Because I am enthusiastic for morality, filled with the idea of morality; what is hostile to it I everywhere assail. (72)

Stirner here is emphasizing the ‘enthusiasm for morality’ that has played a crucial role in the evolution of religion to liberalism. He speaks of a crime that ‘did not cause the slightest damage’, but should be condemned regardless; we are meant to ‘denounce’, even the very idea of committing a crime, on the grounds of morality. We must condemn the idea of crime because it violates moral (and state) law. And it is this enthusiasm for morality that manifests in Proudhon.

His notion of ‘property is theft’ follows the same – we are meant to assail the idea of crime within Proudhon’s assertion, and be enthusiastic for liberal humanist morality. The crime itself is not the subject of our attention, but the justification behind its condemning. In Stirner’s example, we are to be enthusiastic for the moral law: for Proudhon, we are to be enthusiastic for the moral law of anarchism. Hence the change of masters – crime is still crime in political liberalism as in social liberalism because of the preservation of the religious spirit of morality.

Stirner explains this as being bound to the idea of mankind, and not the individual as they live and breathe. Stirner considers Proudhon a “philanthropist…. (acting out of) friendliness to man, which is usually misunderstood as if it was a love to men, to each individual, while it is nothing but a love of man, the unreal concept, the spook…” (72). Proudhon cares for the idea of people, the idea of the working class, but only as they fit his definition of ‘people’. Are not the bourgeoisie people as well? Are they not individuals with hopes and dreams, fears and doubts? Pr’Out 63

Not for Proudhon, because they are no longer men but criminals whose only contribution is theft.

It may very well be the case that Proudhon is concerned for people on an individual level, but

Proudhon’s notion of a particular freedom also imposes limitations on an individual level.

Though Proudhon himself was not capable of enforcing this notion, there have been acts of violent revolution throughout history where a burning desire for “freedom” was carried out to its murderous conclusion; where the individual was crushed beneath someone else’s definition of morality in their quest for a particular freedom.

The French Revolution is a relatively well-known example (one of many) of a downtrodden people rising up in bloody revolution. But their yearning for freedom resulted in widespread public executions. Were these executions done out of love for ‘mankind’ and a transcendental ‘moral order’? Or were they committed for the sake of a particular morality at the expense of another morality? Were the bourgeoisie not free to keep their heads on their shoulders? According to whom? Is it not immoral to murder another human being? Or can it be justified depending on the flexibility of a particular morality, in pursuit of a particular freedom?

My intention is not to say whether these ideas are right or wrong, or to advocate for a defense of the bourgeois class – my intention is to demonstrate that the ideas that guide revolutions (and other facets of human existence), ‘freedom’, ‘solidarity’, etc. are established on illusory notions of the ‘pure’ idea – ‘pure’ freedom, and so on. An approximation of what we might call ‘true’ freedom can only be realized by acknowledging the misconceptions, shortcomings and contradictions that have surrounded the word and its varied attempts to acquire it. Ultimately, these revolutions can be characterized by their categorization of people according to the abstractions created by revolutionary ideology. The goals of modernism, too, are pursued Pr’Out 64

with a reverence for an objective world with eternal truths. These truths too are abstractions that

fail to capture materiality and particularity.

Stirner’s proposed solution to the alienation of body and soul is the “union of egoists”

(161). Compared to the communists, socialists, and anarchists, Stirner’s vision for this ‘union’ is perhaps the most utopian of all. “…the individual really unites with the individual, while

formerly they were bound together by a tie; son and father before majority, after it they can come

together independently; before it they belonged together as members of the family, after it they

unite as egoists… (122). It is a return to a more natural order of things where people ‘come

together independently’ and respect one another for who they are – it is a vision of confident,

powerful, unique individuals existing independently with the opportunity for mutual cooperation.

Moral, social and familial ties (in this case, father and son) lose their unbreakable bonds, but are

still preserved in mutualism. “…Sonship and fatherhood remain, but son and father no longer pin

themselves down to these” (122). Instead, they are reconstituted as voluntary associations. It is a

vision of a Darwinian society of mutual competition that also leaves room for Kropotkin’s

principle of mutual aid. It rejects the overt spiritualism of religion, and the implied spiritualism

in the deference for ‘humanity’ and replaces them with the respect for the power and the will of

other unique individuals.

Welsh’s Dialectical Egoism and Post-Anarchist Individualism

I find it necessary to address the work of one John F. Welsh. In my mind, he offers the

most thorough analysis of the total person that was Max Stirner. He looks at not only Stirner’s

other biographers, but juxtaposes Stirner with different intellectual sects: the Marxists, the Pr’Out 65 anarchists and the existentialists. He views Stirner as someone with an independent philosophy that is based on his background in Hegelianism.

This philosophy asserted a measurable influence on the philosophy of other thinkers that came after him, especially on the individualist-anarchists in America during the 19th – 20th centuries. In Welsh’s own words:

It [this study] is focused on understanding the direct influence that Stirner had on other writers, much of which is concerned with a critique of the social relations and culture of modernity. (38)

I am less concerned with any direct influences from Stirner’s writing (especially when considering the work Welsh has already done on the matter). My intention is to focus on Stirner from a new lens of post-anarchism. From this vantage point, Stirner’s ideas can be seen as preparatory moves on behalf of modern critical theory that offer a new form of individual self- determination. He does this through his criticism of humanism and abstraction, and his reliance upon ‘ownness’ as an innate mode of being.

Welsh reaches five conclusions from his research around Max Stirner: (1) Stirner’s philosophy is a reflection of his “failures” in life, (2) Stirner is not seen as a critic of modernity,

(3) he is not seen as a Hegelian, (4) he is not just an anarchist, and finally, (5) the analysis of his influences on other theorists is usually fairly shallow (38-39).

Welsh combats many of these claims, and here is where I would like to distinguish my work from his. I aim to demonstrate how Stirner deploys a critical effort that is rooted in

Hegelianism, and employs critiques that would later be more fully developed in post- structuralism and postmodernism. I’ve attempted to connect Stirner’s development of the egoist with Hegel’s dialectic in Chapter 1. In Chapter 2, my reading of Stirner through post-anarchism manifests in two phases: the first phase is an exploration of Stirner within the context of classical Pr’Out 66

anarchism. The second phase situates Stirner into a realm closer to post-structuralism and postmodernism; here, he breaks from anarchism using critiques that pre-date the post-structural/ post-modern critiques of power and knowledge into a form of social organization distinct from anarchism. Chapter 3 focuses more on those particular critiques and the similarities they bare with his contemporaries – specifically, Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault. Some key concepts are: the exploration of Stirner’s ‘ownness’ as a Foucauldian power-play, the narrative development of liberalism from Protestantism, and Derrida’s hauntology. Pr’Out 67

Chapter 3

May 1968 and Its Impact

What I would like to focus on are the connections between the anarchist foundations of

the May 1968 protest movements and their links to the formation of post-structuralism,

specifically. Generally, and of more importance, these protest movements are the beginning of a

rise in contemporary critical theory that supports this same spirit of anarchism. In doing so, I

hope to create a wider context for the situating of my reading of Stirner as a post-anarchist. If I have achieved what I have set out to do, then it should be clear that a re-reading of Stirner from

post-anarchism depicts Stirner as a figurehead of a post-anarchic individualism that utilizes a

critique of stability generally, on the one hand, and a new type of individualism on the other:

‘ownness’.

The 1960s were marked by years of civil unrest – one date in particular, May 1968, holds

significance for many thinkers, including the ‘post-structuralists.’ The following is taken from

Richard Wolin’s book The Wind From the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution,

and the Legacy of the 1960s (2010). The specific chapter “May 1968: The Triumph of Libidinal

Politics,” relates the reasoning and the importance of the student protests during that time.

Spurred on by the anarchist principles of some of their peers, as well as the radical politics of the

Marxist ‘Situationist International,’ the protests were in opposition to a reactionary and aged

school system that limited the freedom and independence of its students. On several occasions,

the student protestors were compelled to defend themselves from an overwhelming police

presence that led to chaos in the streets – the most notable of these events was to occur in May of Pr’Out 68

1968. It was these very protests that spurred some of the most notable post-structuralists into the political realm.18

In France, a group of radical leftists calling themselves the Situationist International,

founded by the Marxist Guy Debord, were trying to revitalize what they believed to be a critical

function of the arts: the ability to capture and to display the obscene and the contradictory. Wolin

writes:

They were reflecting on the fact that modern art, especially surrealism, had patently lost its capacity to shock. Instead it had become something familiar and nonthreatening. The once-provocative avant-garde had found a respectable niche within the canon of twentieth-century culture. (74)

And so, through several attempts reminiscent of the street performances and poetry readings in

early 20th century Europe, they attempted once more to shock and awe their audience. It was

only after these attempts had failed that they changed their tactics to “…exploring the historical

and philosophical bases of radical politics” (75). After dabbling into the political, these ideas

would manifest in the Antony campus of the University of Paris in the early 1960s. There, the

students were treated more like children than independent adults, which led to a variety of

protests (78). The relatively conservative administration was unyielding, calling for riot police on

two occasions that led to arrests and expulsions, and only further disgruntled their already

frustrated student populations. As Wolin notes, “Antony was merely a microcosm of the

problems confronting the French university system in general. The protests there were an

uncanny harbinger of the May 1968 events” (78). Where these events would take shape would be

the Nanterre campus of the University of Paris beginning in the Fall of 1967, when the

administration made several fumbling attempts to appease its already disgruntled student

18 Foucault was radicalized by these protests, but Derrida wouldn’t publicly enter into the political sphere until he was invited to speak at a conference in the United States, entitled “Whither Marxism?” which happened in 1993. Specters of Marx was published that same year. Pr’Out 69

population. These attempts were more of a hindrance, and revealed the disconnect between

students and the administration (80).

After a gesture of goodwill from the administration that resulted in the creation of a new

swimming pool, there emerged an infamous altercation between a student named Cohn-Bendit

and the Minister for Youth and Sport. Complementing many of the Situationist’s own political

views of radical politics, Cohn-Bendit became something of an icon at the campus. He reportedly

challenged the Minister as he was leaving the unveiling ceremony for the pool (80). Wolin writes

on Cohn-Bendit, that “…the challenge was not to repair a university that had lost its direction

and fallen into disarray, but to mend the society that had engendered the university and its

intractable array of problems” (83). Much like the Situationist perspective, Cohn-Bendit seemed

to believe that the issues facing students on French university campuses was but a symptom of a

larger social ill that had infected all of French society. Just as art had lost its counter-culture

roots, the French academy had lost its pursuit of knowledge in exchange for what Cohn-Bendit

believed to be closer to churning out mediocre bourgeois intellectuals (82-83).

Much of Cohn-Bendit’s politics came from a critique of left and right-wing politics.

Wolin writes:

Cohn-Bendit fully understood that Bolshevik rule – from Lenin to Stalin to Brezhnev – had been an unbroken history of repression. Moreover, this repression was not just confined to enemies on the Right – which may have been bad enough – but was also mercilessly directed against perceived enemies on the Left. (82)

Cohn-Bendit thus possessed the knowledge of the political dimensions of communism as they had come to fruition in early 20th century Russia, as well as boasting, at the very least, an awareness of the fascist politics of Nazi Germany19. Cohn-Bendit made such a stir at Nanterre

19 In his exchange with the Minister for Youth and Sport, he is quoted as asking “And what about our sexual problems?” to which the Minister replies, “If you have sexual problems, go jump in the pool!” Cohn-Bendit responds: “That’s what the Hitler Youth Used to say!” (quoted in Wolin 80). Pr’Out 70 campus because his opposition to government itself, an anarchist sentiment, found a kindred spirit within the disgruntled student body that greatly desired a degree of autonomy.

Protests continued, and were consistently met with a stern police presence. Arrests followed, and Cohn-Bendit led what would be called the March 22 Movement in demonstration.

Named after the date of a particular set of arrests, the March 22 Movement was a tipping point for the conflict between students and the administration. Roughly one week later, student participation for these demonstrations exploded from 140 on March 22, to over 1,100 on April 2

(83). Several faculty members had joined their ranks.

In April, a right-wing assassin had targeted the leader of the Socialist German Student

League (84). These actions disgruntled not only the Nanterre campus, but Europe as a whole.

That same month, Cohn-Bendit and others were forced to the Latin Quarter after the Dean had closed the campus in anticipation of further subversive activity (85). The former University of

Paris, the Sorbonne, would later become the site for their continued demonstrations.

On May 3 Prime Minister Pompidou had left the country on official business, and the authorities acting in his place grossly overreacted to a student gathering at the Sorbonne. Arrest orders came swiftly, and the police were thorough. The hundreds of arrests prompted some bystanders into action, throwing debris at the police transports in an act of pure defiance.

Unfortunate bystanders were drawn into the conflict and beaten or arrested at random. The students improved defensive fortifications, and the conflict lasted weeks.

The number of demonstrators swelled as the brutal police response shook the people from their lethargy. Another protest was arranged, which was led by Cohn-Bendit and others. Among their demands was the freedom on those arrested on May 2. Their fury was contagious, and protests in support of the students spread through France. On May 10, 1968, occurred the “Night Pr’Out 71 of the Barricades” (88). Though numbering in the hundreds of thousands, students faced the dispiriting reality that the police were indeed in control of the situation. Their route through Paris was blocked by police, as they were funneled from detour to detour. Finally corralled nearer to the Latin quarter, the students erected barricades once more. The police charged shortly after, and one unfortunate enough to be present offers his account:

[It is] 2 a.m. It is now obvious that police are preparing a powerful attack. Radio announces we are surrounded and that government has ordered police to attack. . . . In front of us we turn over cars to prevent police from charging with their buses and tanks (Radio said tanks were coming, but we never saw any). . . . I must insist again that the general mood was defensive, not offensive; we just wanted to hold the place like an entrenched sit-down strike. . . . Their tactics are simple: at 100 yards’ distance they launch gas grenades by rifle which blind, suffocate, and knock us out. This gas is MACE (Vietnam and Detroit Mace). Also explosive grenades. One student near us picked up one to throw it back; it tore his whole hand off. . . . But then police attack at three points simultaneously: at two extremities of [rue] Gay-Lussac, at our barricade, and at the rue d’Ulm. . . . Finally, we are forced back. Our barricade burns. At this point all I can remember is that I faint from lack of air.20

Chaos spread throughout the district, engulfing not only the demonstrators, but civilians as well, and the government faced backlash from seemingly every direction. On May 13, communist groups lent their support, and together they marched through the streets. Wolin compares the incidents in May to another leftist movement that embraced decentralization as its mode of operation, finally concluding that “… the student revolutionaries harked back to the subterranean political tradition of anarchism” (94). May 1968 was the last of a series of violent protests that laid a foundation for the post-structural movements in France until the end of the 20th century21.

20 Quoted in “May 1968: The Triumph of Libidinal Politics.” Princeton University Press, 2010, pg. 90. 21 See Sureyyya Evren’s “Introduction: How New Anarchism Changed the World (of Opposition) after Seattle and Gave Birth to Post-Anarchism”, in Post-Anarchism: A Reader, edited by Evren and Duane Rousselle, p. 5-7. He draws on the work of Jason Adams, credited as the originator of the phrase “post-anarchism,” as well as the critical commentary on May 1968 from Douglas Kellner and Julian Bourg. Pr’Out 72

It was a foundation laid in the spirit of anarchism that manifested in de-centralized, student organized protests that condemned a reactionary state apparatus. And it was this same spirit that animated the critical theoretical movements of the later 20th century.

Post-Structuralism: The First Steps into Post-Anarchism

The tradition of post-structuralism is a recent one. But its (relatively) youthful exterior should not belie its striking impact on 21st century thought. Indeed, those that we consider post- structuralist thinkers have suggested some of the most radical ideas in recent memory. In my interpretation of post-structuralism, I have drawn upon a multiplicity of intelligentsia to define and ‘structure’ these theorists in their mutual relations. First I will introduce the theorists themselves and then, with some help, situate them within the tradition known as ‘post- structuralism.’ Their anarchic tendencies manifest in the very nature of their thought: each theorist, in their own way, espouses a philosophy of decentralization and a critique of the legitimations of philosophy, of science, of broader society.

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) is largely considered a post-structuralist, if not the post- structuralist. Yet he himself thought he was merely continuing the tradition of structuralism from the early 20th century; he did not believe he was ‘post’ anything. Nevertheless, he is most well- known for the tradition of ‘deconstruction’, a word which is nearly synonymous with post- structuralism itself. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism defines ‘deconstruction’ as that “…which makes use of – and at the same time puts in question (at once uses, puts ‘under erasure,’ and does not erase) – the toolbox of classical Western philosophy” (1680). A

‘deconstructive’ reading of a text thus brings to bear the entirety of the Western philosophical Pr’Out 73

tradition against it – but also, and perhaps more importantly, to show where the text is

contradictory or unclear within its own language.

The questioning of the Western philosophical tradition stems from one of Derrida’s earlier works, Of Grammatology (1976), in which he accuses this particular tradition of

“logocentrism” (3), or the privileging of “…the origin of truth in general to the logos” (3).

Derrida, who draws on this classical philosophy, aims to demonstrate the futility of chasing after this transcendental ideal much like Nietzsche or Stirner before him. Later, Derrida’s Writing and

Difference (1978) will contain one his most important essays: “Structure, Sign and Play in the

Discourse of the Human Sciences”. He writes, “The history of metaphysics, like the history of the West, is the history of the metaphors and metonymies. Its matrix… is the determination of

Being as presence” (279). “Metaphor” and “metonymy” are literary devices that use substitution and comparison to render theoretical ideas into more digestible forms – they are commonplace in everyday parlance as well. To ‘take someone’s hand in marriage’, to work a low-level job as a means to ‘get your foot in the door’, and so on. These expressions function as a way to understand how we exist, much like the goal of Western metaphysics. However, this poses a problem for Derrida. This tradition has attempted to understand what is through a method of what it is not (a significant other is not just ‘a hand’, I desire a better job, not just ‘my foot’, etc.).

And so, what Being “is” is constantly being substituted for what it “isn’t” (280). For Derrida, the

conclusion is that: “…it was necessary to begin thinking that there was no center… that the

center had no natural site, that it was not a fixed locus but a function, a sort of nonlocus in which

an infinite number of sign-substitutions came into play” (280). Derrida’s critique of Western

metaphysics stems from the central idea that “there is no center”, that the reliance upon Being,

Truth, etc. are not end-points that must be reached, but “functions” of the pursuit of Truth – not Pr’Out 74

Truth itself. Derrida rejects the teleology of this metaphysic and posits its end as not as a finite,

knowable goal. For Derrida, it is not an end at all, but a singularity. It is also at this moment that

Derrida sees the inclusion of “..language” in the “…universal problematic” (280).

The questioning of language follows from the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude

Levi-Strauss, and others. Together, they form what is known as the structuralist school of the

early 20th century. The structuralists were notable for many things, but what was of supreme

importance to the post-structuralists, especially Derrida, was the structuralist formulation of the

linguistic sign. In Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics (1986), he defines the linguistic sign

as such: “A sound, itself a complex auditory-articulatory unit, in turns combines with an idea to

form another complex unit, both physiologically and psychologically…” (my italics, 9). This

other “complex unit” is the linguistic sign: it is the combination of sound and idea – or, what

Saussure later re-labels as the combination of signal and signification respectively (67).

Chapter Two of Saussure’s work is of particular importance here. Entitled “Invariability and Variability of the Sign” (71), Saussure discusses the nature of change, or the lack thereof, in language systems. The resistance to change is the result of historical pre-conditions that have already established a language in one way and not another; it’s established structure is already an intimate part of the community that uses it (72). Additionally, the arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign itself secures it against change, because it provides “…no firm ground for discussion” (73). There is nothing to argue for or against, because there is no reason for one particular relation between one particular signifier and one particular signified. Saussure asserts,

“A language is a system which is intrinsically defenceless against the factors which constantly

tend to shift relationships between signal and signification” (76). This continual shift in

relationships is indicative of the arbitrary nature of the sign; this dual nature secures its Pr’Out 75

invariability by making the nature of language systems complex and idiosyncratic. It secures its

variability, in part, by the eternally shifting relationships between signifier and signified.

Returning to Derrida, his idea of a missing central, transcendental signified also plays a role in these fluctuating “…sign-substitutions” (Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the

Human Sciences 280). The key difference is the eternal absence of Being, Truth, etc. presents

“…a system in which the central signified, the original or transcendental signified, is never

absolutely present outside a system of differences” (280). Language is a system that only defers

meaning between concepts that are distinguished from it. This is also the meaning behind

Derrida’s idea of ‘differànce’. Thus “The absence of the transcendental signified extends the

domain and the play of signification infinitely” (280). Because there is no concrete end-point of

language, neither Being nor Truth, the play of signifiers can never arrive at a concrete, assured meaning. Language can never arrive at what truly “is” because, as we have seen before, the pursuit of these transcendental ideals is always the pursuit of what “is not”.

Michel Foucault (1926-1984) in one of his earliest works, Madness and Civilization

(1988), originally published in France in 1961 as Histoire de la Folie, is an attempt to elucidate the discursive formations of madness. This means uncovering the manifestations of the idea of madness in their appropriate historical settings as a means to establish the prevalence of disjunction in historical analyses – an idea Foucault later speaks of in the Archaeology of

Knowledge.

The Archaeology of Knowledge (2010), originally published as L’Archeologie du Savoir in 1969, attempts to explore the history of the unseen. For example, to ask: what is ‘madness’,

‘book’, ‘science’ or ‘literature’? And to answer those questions from “…the field of the facts of discourse on the basis of which those facts are built up” (26). Foucault attempts to question the Pr’Out 76

processes behind the development of discursive facts; to ask and to find answers to questions like

‘why this, and not that’? Though the techniques may be ‘structural’ in nature, he asserts they

were used with other intentions (15); that is, not to constitute a structure, but to ask why one

structure exists and not another. If we look back on Madness and Civilization, we can see how

Foucault builds a plurality of madness out of the discursive facts of its evolution from “…the

merciless language of non-madness” (ix). For Foucault, it is the language of the sane that distinguishes itself from what it considers insane.

Power/Knowledge (1980), originally published in 1972, is a collection of interviews and essays. The editor, Colin Gordon, expresses a desired outcome with accumulating these particular desiderata:

…to construct a sort of non-didactic primer made up of texts in which the author himself explains in straightforward and informal terms some stages and facets of his work and the preoccupations that traverse it. (vii).

Indeed these common threads, these particular “preoccupations”, are those discussions of power and knowledge. Chapter 3 focuses on a particular discussion of power within the physical body of persons (55) which I use as a way to interpret Stirner’s notion of ‘ownness’.

Jean-Francois Lyotard (1925-1998) is the black sheep of the philosophical triptych I have constructed. Arguably his most important work, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on

Knowledge (1984), can be called the manifesto of postmodernism. However, postmodernism is known as entirely separate from post-structuralism. The former is closer to the avant-garde movement of the earlier 20th century. The latter is a largely philosophical reappraisal of universal

values. Though they are not mutually exclusive and share many similarities as well as

differences, they are different enough to warrant separation. My justification for including him is

simple: he is considered, like the rest of the theorists I am speaking of, many things. He can be Pr’Out 77

easily called a ‘postmodernist’, because of his writing on the subject, but post-anarchists like

Saul Newman and Andrew Koch consider him a post-structuralist. This is because he approaches

modernist epistemology with the same polemical grace that characterizes the post-structuralists approach to philosophy, history and society.

As I said before, I would be including three distinct theorists under the umbrella of ‘post-

structuralism’. The umbrella is a mere convenience. What is of importance is showing the

commonalities between these theorists while still preserving their individual projects as much as

possible. This is perhaps most important for Lyotard. I do not wish to shoehorn him into my

project without at least a consideration, like the rest, of his overall project. With that being said, I

do believe there are important connections between these three theorists that warrant exploration.

And not just exploration: certain threads that link these theorists do indeed form a vast network

of anarchic ideology that has undergirded the life of modern critical theory since the 1960s.

These threads have been developed as the’ discipline’ of post-anarchism, inasmuch as anarchism

can be considered disciplinary. I merely intend to build upon this.

Returning to Lyotard: though his project can be considered of a different nature entirely,

Lyotard existed in the same philosophical space as Derrida and Foucault, although is more recent

than the latter two. In the foreword of The Postmodern Condition written by Frederic Jameson,

he calls it “…a kind of crossroads in which a number of different themes - a number of different

books – intersect and problematize each other” (vii). Once again, the theme of plurality; once

again, a thematic of dislocation. Though intertextuality in literature is not so uncommon –

indeed, it can be thought of as necessary – The Postmodern Condition is part of a unique

undertaking in that it attacks the unities of modernism specifically – just like Stirner. Lyotard

defines modernism as such: Pr’Out 78

…any science that legitimates itself with reference to a metadiscourse of this kind making an explicit appeal to some grand narrative, such as the dialectics of spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wealth. (my italics, xxiii)

The similarities between Stirner and Lyotard I have fleshed out more fully later. For now, I only

endeavor to show Lyotard’s work in its context: what it aims to do and why. His work is focused primarily on the annunciation of the “narrative.” For Lyotard, modernism specifically provides a cornucopia of narratives that include liberalism – “the emancipation of the working subject” – and Hegelianism – “the dialectics of spirit”. Lyotard is critical of the epistemological claims that have justified the emergence of these guiding principles of modernity. More specifically, these principles, these ‘narratives’, are in themselves incomplete and temporary unities that rely on a principle of illegitimacy.

Lyotard’s initial moves are to draw attention to the self-justifying nature of knowledge- claims present within some of these narratives. He finds, comparing to Nietzsche, that the

“…process of delegitimation [was] fueled by the demand for legitimacy itself” (39). Because knowledge sought justifications for the world, it inevitably questioned itself as capable of obtaining this knowledge. Eventually, it reached the conclusion that the very criteria it used to seek out justification was, itself, illusory.

Lyotard extrapolates these problems to the level of discourse and the function of the

language game. Within speculative discourse, “Its distinguishing characteristic is that it grounds

the legitimation of science and truth in the autonomy of interlocutors involved in ethical, social,

and political praxis” (39-40). Discursive formations, like the one Foucault speaks of, are based

upon the facts present in their context. They are self-justified because of their value as discourse

between “the autonomy of interlocutors”. But, this is problematic as well because of the

distinction Lyotard draws between denotative and prescriptive statements (40) which posit Pr’Out 79

“..their own rules” (40) independent of each other. And so “the social subject” (40) is then at the

mercy of the “…intersection of at least two of language games, obeying different rules” (40). But

Lyotard does not entirely seem to dismiss the work of Foucault. Indeed both the importance of

power and the usefulness of discourse reach further specificity. Lyotard:

The State and/or company must abandon the idealist and humanist narratives of legitimation in order to justify the new goal: in the discourse of today’s financial backers of research, the only credible goal is power. Scientists, technicians, and instruments are purchased not to find truth, but to augment power. (46)

Discourse does not disappear with Lyotard, but he sees it as a mode transmitting power which

must justify itself outside of the realm of discursive facts. The question then becomes how a

mode of discourse legitimates itself, and to what degree of power (46). The narratives of science

and humanism are temporary solutions at best; at their worst, they are used “to augment power”.

Science can be used to augment power in several ways, including but not limited to

“juridical, ethical, and political” benefits (47). The technological is thus the fundamental axiom

of the postmodern. “By reinforcing technology, one ‘reinforces’ reality, and one’s chances of

being just and right increase accordingly” (47). If one controls ‘technology’, one is then in a

better position to augment their own power through the influence of reality itself. This is not to

say that people can literally manipulate reality – it means, rather, the degree of technological

control is proportional to the ability to assess reality more quickly, in greater quantities, in greater quality.

For my definition of ‘post-structuralism’ that includes all of the theorists I have

mentioned, I have drawn upon the work of Madan Sarup, within her text An Introductory Guide

to Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism (1993). Additionally, the work of the post-anarchists

Todd May, Saul Newman, and Andrew Koch each relegate these same theorists to the post- structuralist camp, which I will return to later. However, these universal epithets pose a danger to Pr’Out 80

the individual work of each theorist; especially regarding post-structuralist theorists. What they are proposing are re-evaluations of entire canons of thought – but not all focus on the same canons in the same way. Thus, their work is highly individualized – Foucault, Derrida, and

Lyotard are each distinct thinkers that, I would argue, go beyond the label of simply ‘post- structuralists’. Having said that, I will be including them as ‘post-structuralists’ merely out of convenience, but will endeavor to try to maintain their context within their individual projects as best as I can. However, there are still common threads between each of these theorists which is of superior importance to their labels as ‘post-structuralists’. These commonalities seem to be the focus of post-anarchism, (in addition to the ‘post-structuralist’ moniker) and so I will proceed accordingly.

Returning to Sarup, she identifies four principles of post-structuralism: the “critique of the human subject” (1), the “critique of historicism” (2), the “critique of meaning” (2), and the

“critique of philosophy” (3). Interestingly, these are also described by Sarup as principles shared by structuralism (1). The ‘true’ differences between structuralism and post-structuralism emerge on page 4, which Sarup contends as emerging in the “…question of the status of science itself, and the possibility of objectivity of any language of description or analysis” (4). There is additionally a “younger generation” of post-structuralists that were influenced by Nietzsche, such as Deleuze, Guattari, and Lyotard (4).

The critiques that Sarup acknowledges I would like to situate among my three chosen theorists: Foucault, Derrida, and Lyotard. Each of these critiques can be found within the writings of each of these theorists, but I would only cite a few examples for each to make my point. Pr’Out 81

Foucault’s ‘critique of historicism’ appears in The Archaeology of Knowledge as a re-

evaluation of “the old questions” (1) of historical analysis. These questions include, but are not

limited to: what links? What continuities? (1-2). Foucault now sees a new mode of historical

analysis that has emerged in the history of the human sciences (4) in the form of “…the

phenomena of rupture, of discontinuity” (my italics, 4). This new phenomena is one that traces the lingering effects of the unspoken, of the unseen, and how these elements constitute a history

on their own. Indeed, “…history, in its traditional form, undertook to ‘memorize’ the monuments

of the past, transform them into documents, and lend speech to those traces which, in themselves,

are often not verbal…” (7). Conversely, “…in our time, history is that which transforms

documents into monuments” (7). Foucault’s allusion to this change can be explained thusly: the

old history aimed to explain the elements left behind, and “lend them speech” so that they may

annunciate their given historical context. They were to act as parts of the whole of their given

history. To piece together these parts was to complete their historical puzzle and gain a complete

picture. Nowadays, these documents are not individual puzzle pieces that must be arranged into a

whole. The pieces are “monuments” themselves; they are complete historical puzzles in their

own right, that existed in a particular time and place according to specific historical

circumstances.

Derrida’s ‘critique of philosophy’ and ‘critique of meaning’ can be seen in his idea of the

absence of the transcendental signified, in a piece I have cited earlier: Structure, Sign and Play in

the Discourse of the Human Sciences. The constant deference of meaning from one signified to

the next is the critique of meaning itself. For whence does this deference stop? When is meaning

‘achieved’? Pr’Out 82

Lyotard’s ‘critique of history’ and ‘critique of meaning’ appears in his critiques of the

‘grand narratives of modernity’ that posit recurrent philosophical precepts such as Truth or Spirit

as eternally true and independently justifiable. Nietzsche has heralded the beginnings of the

‘crisis of legitimation’, Lyotard developed it more fully within critiques of discourse and science.

For these reasons, these theorists are considered as ‘post-structural’, albeit in different

generations of post-structuralist. But again, their label as such is less important than their ideas

that they bring to the re-evaluations of philosophy, history, and language.

Post-Anarchism: A Contemporary Theoretical Model

Where, then, does post-anarchism fit? As we know, anarchism is a method of social and

political reform tangentially comparable to the likes of socialism and communism. Anarchism

was more pronounced on the political stage in the 19th and 20th centuries and has locked horns with Marxism and Communism for at least that long. It emphasizes individualism, free- cooperation, and authority “from the bottom up” – a reverse hierarchy that distributes power equally among the masses, instead of resting upon a centralized government. I stated in my preface on page 9 that post-anarchism can be thought of as a re-evaluation of this traditional (or

‘classical’) anarchism through contemporary theoretical modes of thought – what some consider

to be post-structural in nature.

Todd May is an author of some importance to the canon of post-anarchism. His book

Between Genealogy and Epistemology: Psychology, Politics, and Knowledge in the Thought of

Michel Foucault (1993) is an attempt to rectify the relativist position of Foucault. May seeks to

provide Foucault’s theories with a theoretical grounding that relies upon the evolution of

Foucault’s critique of psychology (10). He has also written The Political Philosophy of Pr’Out 83

Poststructuralist Anarchism (1994) which was an effort to gird post-anarchism in a legitimate

political philosophy that post-structuralism itself was notoriously lacking. He poses a

foundational question, which also serves as the title of one of the earliest conversations between

anarchism and post-structuralism: “Is Post-Structuralist Political Theory Anarchist?”.22 In this

piece, he claims that “Rather than offering a general political theory, the post-structuralists have

instead given us specific analyses of concrete situations of oppression” (41). He uses Foucault

and Lyotard as examples, who offer analyses of institutions and systems, but who do not offer

“…a unified account of what politics is or how it should be conducted in the contemporary

world” (41). May’s analysis is not meant to be seen as portraying post-structuralism negatively;

it is meant to show what post-structuralism offers and how (and why) anarchism can improve it.

The lack of a unified political theory among post-structural thinkers is not a detriment to the

theory as a whole, but it does provide a niche that is open to fulfillment.

Opponents of post-structuralism cite the lack of this “general political theory” as

indicative of a “self-defeating normative relativism” and/or “nihilism” (41). This critical

perspective contends that post-structuralism, because it focuses so heavily on the micro-level, leaves a more objective realm for a realm of idiosyncrasy and particularity. Because post-

structuralism is concerned with tiny instances of resistance, it cannot claim a broad system of

value as a basis because it would be in danger of undermining its own system; everything would

need to be valuable, which means that nothing would be valuable. Or, nothing would be

valuable, so everything would be valuable. May then counters this assertion through the

usefulness of anarchism – that anarchism offers just such a value system (41). Because post-

22 May, Todd. “Is Post-Structuralist Political Theory Anarchist?” Post-Anarchism: A Reader, ed. Duane Rousselle and Sureyyya Evren. Pluto Press, 2011, pp. 41-45. Pr’Out 84

structuralism relies on specific contextual instances of oppression, it doesn’t need a general

political theory – instead, it needs one that is sensitive to its specificities.

So, if post-structuralism is concerned with these specific instances, it would then have to

reject humanist modes of thought that rely on the general abstract categorizations of people; it therefore rejects traditional anarchism. May suggests that by subverting traditional humanism, and therefore subverting a key component of ‘classical anarchism,’ post-structuralism is closer to a pure anarchism. Much like Stirner, May asserts that post-structuralism is critical of the categorization of people into general theoretical concepts. Anarchism, devoid of its abstract humanism, offers that missing political dimension of post-structuralism. May is insinuating the advent of a post-anarchism – a theory that merges what he considers to be post-structuralist thought with a political dimension of anarchism that is devoid of its abstract humanism.

The benefits of post-structuralism is not that it offers a general political theory (because it doesn’t), but that it offers the means to reach self-liberation. May asserts that “Post-structuralism leaves the decision of how the oppressed are to determine themselves to the oppressed; it merely provides them with the intellectual tools that they may find helpful along the way” (44). By focusing on micropolitics and the critique of an abstract humanism, post-structuralism avoids the pitfalls of classical anarchism and instead offers a mode of positing ones existence that is self- determining (45). It’s interest is ‘theoretical,’ but only so that it may maintain its universality for use in specific circumstances. Ultimately, “…post-structuralist theory is indeed anarchist. It is in fact more consistently anarchist than traditional anarchist theory has proved to be” (44). May reaches this conclusion based on post-structuralist tendencies that are critical of abstract humanism, as well as critical of a history of mistaken or incomplete scientific and historical Pr’Out 85

assumptions; post-structuralism is anarchic in the sense that it is critical of all constructions that

aim to control or dominate the will of individual persons.

Other contemporary post-anarchist thinkers include Andrew M. Koch and Saul Newman.

Koch, in his piece, “Post-Structuralism and the Epistemological Basis of Anarchism”23 asserts that the post-structuralists reduce discussions of politics to discussions of power relations (34).

To question the nature of justice is really to question where centers of power gather in force or in weakness in acting their will. The question he asks, “Is there any type of politics that can be defended?” is answered by the knowledge-production of anarchism (34). Like post-structuralism, anarchism, in part, is only concerned with the larger question of ‘politics’ so it can better formulate a position for smaller, localized centers of resistance: a conclusion reached by May as well.

Additionally, the post-structuralist position is one that is critical of a stable center in general. Because of this fact and the distribution of power at different intervals and at different levels, “The true character of the society is revealed as anarchy” (35). Koch contends that beneath the surface of power relations is the reality of an anarchic dimension (35). Society and its localizations of power are direct attempts to quell this natural anarchic state.

However, Koch is unique in that he conceives of a post-structuralist method that suggests the creation of an individualism that is not based on abstraction or categorization, but is instead created through acts of discourse. He writes “Discourse requires a sender a receiver. Each participant reflects, as discourse, the unique experience of that being. The value of discourse is all that must be assumed” (38). Thus, the facts of discursive formation provide the legitimation necessary for individualism that is not based on romantic ideas of individuality. In the same way,

23 Koch, Andrew M. “Post-Structuralism and the Epistemological Basis of Anarchism” Post-Anarchism: A Reader. Ed. By Duane Rousselle and Sureyyya Evren, Pluto Press, 2011, pp. 23-39. Pr’Out 86

Koch claims that there is no metaphysical assertion behind this individuality either. Instead, “The

only assertion is empirical, not ontological. Individuals are biologically separated” (38). This

“empirical” conclusion follows much of the more ‘grounded’ approaches that post-anarchism uses. Meaning, post-anarchism focuses on the materially contingent aspects of real people in the constructions of their varied identities.

Finally, Koch’s own conclusion directly addresses the work of Stirner himself, but he is careful to separate him from the post-structuralists when the need arises. For example, “The post-

structuralists would deny that any concept of self can be independent of language” (39), and thus

Stirner’s concepts are equally dependent on language as any other. This then creates a problem –

a disjunction between Stirner and the post-structuralists. Stirner posits “…the ego” (38) as the

primary concept. A post-structuralist interpretation sees the ego as a “…metalanguage…as a

force alien and opposed to the multitextual nature of discourse” (39). Hence, Stirner’s concept of

‘the ego’ acts as a metalanguage that makes concrete what was once capable of change.

However, Koch mistakenly takes “the ego” as Stirner’s defining principle, without the

consideration of why the ego is of such importance. The ego was only ever a descriptor for the

physical, ‘empirical’ person of Stirner himself. My reading of Stirner takes this into

consideration: Stirner does not suggest a new ‘metalanguage’ in the form of ego, the unique, or

ownness (though he does lapse into his own representations of people at certain points). Instead, from the vantage point of post-anarchism, he posits an anti-determinate individualism that is a primordial form of contemporary cultural and social theory.

Saul Newman is a widely published author on the topics of post-structuralism and anarchism. Some of his work includes, but is not limited to, Unstable Universalities:

Poststructuralism and Radical Politics (2007), From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism Pr’Out 87

and the Dislocation of Power (2001). In his essay “Post-Anarchism and Radical Politics Today”,

Newman asserts that the revolutionary gaps left in the wake of Marxism allow “…for a certain

revitalization of anarchist theory and politics” (47). Newman asserts that in contemporary

discussions of political power and state sovereignty, the emphasis of micropolitics in post-

structuralism can be used for a re-formulation of the idea of subjectivity (62). Additionally, the

moniker of ‘post-anarchism’ for Newman (and myself) does not designate:

…a distinct model of anarchist politics, but rather to a certain field of inquiry and ongoing problematization in which the conceptual categories of anarchism are rethought in light of such post-structuralist interventions. (62-63)

Thus the post-anarchists are scarcely more than anarchists themselves. They have moved beyond the classical model of anarchism from the days of Bakunin or Kropotkin and instead re-evaluated anarchism based on contemporary discussions of the socio-political. These discussions, ironically, also move within the tradition of anarchism itself.

All of this work on post-anarchism is meant to build a lens through which we may be able to re-interpret the work of Max Stirner. Stirner’s work pre-dates not only post-anarchism, but existentialism, and post-structuralism. There is an ongoing debate about the degree of

Stirner’s influence on Nietzsche, though it generally believed to be minimal.24 His insistence on egoism, his condemnation of the state as such, and his wariness about abstraction are key facets of not only post-structuralism, but find themselves more fully at home within post-anarchism.

Classical anarchism is based on abstract representations that do not allow for true expressions of individuality. If post-structuralism is critical of representation and emphasizes individuality, then it may be argued that it is a ‘truer’ anarchism than classical anarchism; we may recall Proudhon’s

24 Welsh comments upon this debate in Chapter 7, “Two Who Made an Insurrection: Stirner, Nietzsche, and the Revolt against Modernity” (229). The consensus is that Nietzsche was aware of Stirner, but both theorists ultimately move in very different ways. Pr’Out 88 words, “no gods, no masters”. If that indeed is the mantra of anarchism, then a deference to the abstract must also be rejected. Similarly, post-anarchism is a re-thinking of classical anarchism through a post-structuralist lens. What I have argued is that Stirner can be read through post- anarchism which then raises new plateaus in his thought in two areas. First, he anticipates the slipperiness of language and shifting paradigms of history due to his Hegelian roots. Second, his egoism is characterized by an embodied dynamism that pre-dates critiques of representation à la post-structuralism. Therefore, what follows will be a demonstration of my contribution to thinking of Stirner as a post-anarchic individualist. In this way, Stirner can be read as a thinker who has articulated points of disconnect and rupture in Western morality – before Nietzsche made it popular and modern theory made it canonical. History is more than the new replacing the old; it is as much the struggle between competing forms of the new. Stirner’s attunement to this notion allowed him to espy the variations within competing ideologies during his lifetime. To escape the contradiction and abstractions of liberalism, socialism, communism, religion and anarchism, he concluded that true freedom means to know yourself and to be responsible for yourself – to be an owner and creator that exists independent of and opposed to the categorizations of modernity. That social organization should be conducted between unique individuals with the same thought and attentiveness. My work is by no means is meant to supplant or replace Welsh’s work on Stirner as a dialectical egoist; indeed, it is meant to complement Welsh’s understanding and to expand upon the lineage of Stirner from his Hegelian roots, to a newly emerging historical epoch – post-anarchism – that seems too fitting to not be explored. What follows is my reading of Stirner through the lens of those modern critical theories that will, hopefully, shed new light on Stirner’s ideas.

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Narrative and The Critique of Modernity

In my re-evaluation of Stirner’s ideas, I believe it would be helpful to begin with Stirner’s

work on the transition from religion to liberalism. This I have already touched on in chapter one

as evidence for Stirner’s use of Hegel’s dialectic. Retrospectively, it can be argued that Stirner

approaches religion and liberalism as narratives in the unfolding process of modernity; they are

dialectical elements sublated into a new age of thought, but Stirner also distinguishes them as

epistemic and ontological narratives (though not in so many words). My assertion is that

Lyotard’s epistemology can be found in its infancy within Stirner’s genealogy of liberalism, and

that Lyotard can be used to reach a deeper understanding of Stirner’s critiques. In The

Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Lyotard writes of the Hegelian dialectic as a

philosophical system that “links the sciences together as moments in the becoming of spirit…

which links them in a rational narration, or rather metanarration” (33). The ideas of ‘rational

narration’ and ‘metanarration’ appear in prototypical from in Stirner’s critique of the

development of modern liberalism. Stirner is not saying the development of liberalism is

dependent on ‘narratives’ per se, but his critique of liberalism is utterly dependent on the links

Stirner sees between it (liberalism) and religion; Stirner’s critiques of modern liberalism in the

19th century are prototypical of Lyotard’s critiques. Stirner sees the transition from religion to

liberalism as the pinnacle of modernism which results in the new narrative of ‘humanism.’

Lyotard begins by specifying the metadiscourse of spirit as a mode of legitimization that claims knowledge based on its ability to know itself. He writes:

German idealism has recourse to a metaprinciple that simultaneously grounds the development of learning, of society, and of the State in the realization of the ‘life’ of a Subject, called ‘divine life’ by Fichte and ‘life of the spirit’ by Hegel. In this perspective, knowledge first finds legitimacy within itself, and it is knowledge that is entitled to say what the State and what Society is. (34)

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Hegel and Fichte each subscribe to this “metaprinciple” in the formulation of their discourse.

This “spirit” is the ultimate form of legitimation because its movements are found “within itself”;

it needs no justification or further explanation; it simply is. Because it is spirit that is occupied with itself, and posits itself as the very movement history and human progress, it “is entitled” to prescribe definitions of both “State” and “Society”. Because those ideas are merely elements in

the total unfolding of Spirit, how this Spirit unfolds dictates how state and society manifest.

Conversely, how the state and society manifest is how Spirit intended them to be. Spirit is

everything. This metadiscourse is what Lyotard calls “speculative” (35) and is credited to

Nietzsche’s critique of modernity.

Lyotard matches Nietzsche almost move-for-move. Lyotard concludes that the

postmodern perspective is grounded in, but not rooted to, “ …a process of delegitimation fueled

by the demand for legitimation itself… an internal erosion of the legitimacy principle of

knowledge” (39). The Nietzschean critique of modernity is rooted in the idea that philosophy had

sealed its own doom through its pursuit of truth. In it’s tireless pursuit, it turned upon itself,

questioned itself, as something that could even be capable of apprehending “Truth” as such.

Philosophy chased the question of “legitimacy,” and found itself back on its own doorstep.

The point that I wish to draw attention to is that Lyotard’s critique of legitimacy is rooted

within shifting paradigms of discourse and knowledge. These shifts are historically contingent,

and Stirner was intimately entwined within that shifting matrix as it was unfolding. His

criticisms of the Hegelian dialectic garnered him an outside perspective on these shifts of

narrative and meta-narration, which he notes throughout his text. The transitions in philosophy

between the Sophists and Socrates, to the Reformation and the liberal spirit, are reflections of

changing narratives. Reflecting on liberalism, he writes that it: Pr’Out 91

…simply brought other concepts on the carpet; human instead of divine, political instead of ecclesiastical, ‘scientific’ instead of doctrinal, or, more generally, real concepts and eternal laws instead of ‘crude dogmas’ and precepts. (88)

Stirner is noting the shifts between value-systems as these narratives move from one to the other.

Specifically, he is critical of the shift into humanism, which is also a defining element within postmodernism and post-structuralism. He is also noting the shift into the “scientific” instead of the “doctrinal”, which alludes to Hegel’s natural philosophy. Moreover, amongst a myriad of factors, Stirner was in a unique situation in history, living in a transitory period of ideologies that fought over a general guiding course for humanity. He noted all of these ideologies (and their shortcomings) in great detail, hence his inevitable ostracism from the circle of radical humanists that included Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, and the early Karl Marx.

The modern narrative of spirit is also responsible for the creation of ‘Man’ – the paternal abstraction that, for Stirner, is the ultimate one. It is this defining characteristic of modernity that

Stirner combats throughout his work. “Man is the last evil spirit or spook, the most deceptive or most intimate, the craftiest liar with honest mien, the father of lies” (165). “Man” as Stirner speaks of it is not a unifying ideology that seeks to link all people as one. Indeed, he speaks of its dual nature – it is “deceptive” and “intimate,” a “liar with honest mien”. Stirner’s entire thought project has hinged upon the idea that the abstractions of modernity remove himself from himself; he is cleft in two, compelled to always seek the higher essence above himself. He must unify himself with ‘man’ in order to reach wholeness. Thus he can never be himself. He must occupy himself with this pursuit, rather than accept the way he is. The idea of “man” is deceptive because it removes individual humanity and posits it as something beyond them, that they are too lowly to possess outright. Thus they must strive to be human, rather than simply being human.

Stirner was the summation of Hegelianism that enabled him to spy these shifting Pr’Out 92

paradigms and chart the course for a critique of narrative and the legitimacy of knowledge.

It was not until recently that the idea of Stirner as a dialectician of egoism was promulgated.

Extrapolated by Nietzsche, and defined more thoroughly by Lyotard, it was Stirner’s critique of

Hegelianism and modernity as a whole that helped set the stage for modern critical theory and

the critique of representation.

‘Ownness,’ Power, and The Material

My intention was to show the antedated moves made by Stirner that found themselves more fully developed within Lyotard’s writing. Foucault provides a similar example; in my thinking of

Stirner as a post-anarchist, I will situate his concept of ownness as a post-structural powerplay that predicts the philosophical and political movements of Michel Foucault within a collection of interviews, entitled Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972 – 1977

(1980). First, I will chart Stirner’s definition of “ownness” and how it relates to his dialectical struggle against modernity. Second, I will compare the idea of “ownness” to the struggle for power within Foucault’s thinking. My comparison between Foucault and Stirner will highlight their similarities, but also have a unique function in my thinking of Stirner as a post-anarchist.

“Ownness” not only relates to power games played by Foucault, but also serves as the foundation to a new brand of individualism: a post-anarchist individualism that combines the criticisms of post-structuralism with Stirner’s idiosyncratic egoism.

First, “ownness” is the unending refrain of Stirner’s egoism. He speaks of it in terms of

its materiality as well as its abstract usefulness. Of it’s corporeity, he writes:

What do you want to be free from, then? From your hardtack and your straw bed? Then throw them away! - But that seems not to serve you: you want rather to have the freedom to enjoy delicious foods and downy beds. How, therefore, do you mean to come to the Pr’Out 93

enjoyment of those foods and beds? Evidently not otherwise than in making them your property! (141)

Ownness, then, is something that manifests itself as physical, in actually making these material

objects, “food and beds,” your own. You have these physical objects, and are available for your

use. The idea of freedom for Stirner is shown to highlight this notion. The liberal ideology of

‘The Free’ pines for “freedom”, and it is this freedom that Stirner criticizes. For Stirner, being

“free” doesn’t equate to having ownership of physical things.

Ownership is not restricted to the exclusively physical, however. Stirner writes of the

owner as the owner of the abstract as well; it is multi-dimensional. Stirner asks:

Where does unselfishness begin? Right where an end ceases to be our end and our property, which we, as owners, can dispose of at pleasure; where it becomes a fixed end or a – fixed idea;… where it passes into our stubbornness and becomes our – master. (58)

This “fixed idea” is equivalent to morality, spirit, etc. Elsewhere, Stirner criticizes the concept of

“man” as the new fixed idea, as the indomitable ghost that lurks in every corner. We are not fixed, “master”-less, when we are “owners; but if we allow the spirit free reign, to become the object of our fixation, we become servants to that spirit. Hence, we must maintain ownership of our minds. This may be more clearly explained as reflective critical thought in general.

Again we conjure the specter of Marx as a voice that is wholly opposed to “Saint Max”.

Returning once more to the The German Ideology (1998), Marx criticizes Stirner for offering nothing more than abstractions, instead of concrete modes of resistance (131). The egoist, Marx believes, is the ghost of all ghosts.

I briefly mentioned this before in my chapter on Stirner as Fichtean. Stirner is restricted to the confines of language; only his ‘I’ survives within the pages of his book, and it is this ‘I’

that gathers its ghosts. Stirner’s ‘I’ is spectral, but no more than an ‘I’ can be corporeal; Marx can only attack this ghost because both he and Stirner are restricted by language. The egoist as Pr’Out 94

such is spectral, indeed it must be spectral if it is to fulfill its role as something unique to

everyone. It becomes concrete only in the domain of action; when one ceases to say “I am an

egoist” and instead becomes an egoist; when ‘egoism’, the word, is destroyed in the acting of

persons. Stirner, as he lived his real, material life, determined his egoism. Marx can only wrestle with the ghost that he left behind. Is this a foolproof endeavor that invalidates all of Marx’s criticisms? I don’t think so. But what this does show is the disconnect between language and reality as it is. I believe, if one were to follow in Stirner’s footsteps, they would have the same choices to make, and the same ghosts (Marx’s) to contend with. The “egological body” (Specters of Marx 161) is spectral because it is not “bodies” as they are in the world; it is a house for ghosts, but only because it represents Stirner’s solution to modernity. “The egoist” is an abstraction that must submit to the whims of its owner. In other words, it cannot be actual unless it is determined by an actual person. It is determined by me, you, or whoever else – if we wish it to be.

Thus, the body becomes a center of power – ownership is an exercise in control. As

Foucault writes, “Mastery and awareness of one’s own body can be acquired only through the effect of an investment of power in the body” (Power/Knowledge 56). The physical body is actualized only through an “investment of power,” literally in movements that result, in one way or another, in an embodied surge of life. This “investment of power” is akin to Stirner’s notion of ownness. Ownness is the embodied function of power; it is an ontological postulate that actualizes the real human being.

Through this ownership, you become an independent, embodied subject. Stirner emphasizes the flailing of limbs, the engagement of the vocal chords – in other words an

embodied subjectivity: Pr’Out 95

A jerk does me the service of the most anxious thinking, a stretching of the limbs shakes off the torments of thoughts, a leap upward hurls from my breast the nightmare of the religious world, a jubilant whoop throws off year-long burdens. But the monstrous significance of unthinking jubilation could not be recognized in the long night of thinking and believing. (133)

Much can be said about this passage. Is not this book, what he referred to as his magnum opus

(The Ego and Its Own xii), an exercise in thought about thought? Does this mean that Stirner is as critical of his own ideas as he is of liberalism, the spirit, morality, and so on? Derrida reaches an approximation of an answer. By pursuing the trail of spirits through Marx’s The German

Ideology (1998), Derrida arrives at what he calls a “paradoxical hunt” (175), and a:

…specular circle: one chases after in order to chase away, one pursues, sets off in pursuit of someone to make him flee, but one makes him flee, distances him, expulses him so as to go after him again and remain in pursuit. (175)

Derrida is speaking of Marx and Stirner as two who are attempting to “chase away” by

“pursuing”. In order to conjure away their particular ghosts, the ideologies they wish to confront, they must, “paradoxically” conjure them forth – so as to have something to conjure away. Thus

Stirner conjures the thoughts that he chases away – he conjures the ghosts of religion and liberalism in order dismiss them. In “the long night of thinking,” Stirner’s only recourse is to

conjure modernism through language, so that it may be conjured away in the same breath.

Returning to Stirner’s ownership as an embodied experience, it is physical action that

creates power, literally in the form of “whoops” or “jerks”. This action, all action, is dictated

through ownness. And, once again, it is post-structuralism that has created a space for self-

determination. Ownness offers the same solution; it allows us to determine ourselves through the

conscious knowledge of our own egoism, that we are, in a word, ‘unique’. But it is only through

this return to the self that we become aware of our actions; only by the destruction of the abstract

through embodied experience can we determine ourselves. As Foucault writes, “…nothing is Pr’Out 96 more material, physical, corporal than the exercise of power” (57-58). Indeed, even the destruction of egoism is necessary; it’s just a word after all.

An essential tool that I have incorporated in my re-thinking of Stirner is Foucault’s notion of “…the events of discourse” (The Archaeology of Knowledge 27). As I have said, Foucault is thorough in his questioning of the organizational methodologies of the human sciences. The means through which specialists in certain fields organize and configure their evaluations of historical periods, or bodies of literature “…are always themselves reflexive categories, principles of classification, normative rules, institutionalized types: they, in turn, are facts of discourse that deserve to be analyzed beside others” (22). The very categories we use to analyze are, in themselves, subject to analysis and interpretation. Those categories not only organize the objects under study, but they create the objects under study by separating them from what is or is not relevant. With this in mind, the organizational principles themselves become vulnerable to a second-level analysis that asks ‘why this and not that?’

Foucault questions one unity in particular: that of the ‘book’ itself. He asserts that

“…beyond its internal configuration and its autonomous form, it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network” (23).

Throughout this thesis, I have attempted to show just that: that Der Einzige und Sein Eigentum was a text published in the middle of the 19th century, within the maelstrom of Hegelianism,

Marxism, anarchism, and liberal humanism. That Stirner’s work is a response to, was indeed caused by, those ‘facts of discourse’ allows for a re-appraisal and re-contextualization of his thought. With this in mind, I have attempted a “…description of the events of discourse” (27) that has shaped this infamous and underappreciated philosophical work. More importantly, this description of events was meant to show the connection between the discursive and the material Pr’Out 97

in Stirner’s thought specifically – it was an attempt to show how Stirner’s ideas, how his

language, functioned in a particular place and time, and how it can be re-assessed for use in

modern critical theory. It is my argument, then, that Stirner’s notion of ‘ownness’ served a

particular purpose for the person of Stirner himself, and that ownness, in the context of post-

anarchism, can be seen in the context of its discourse as an anti-determinate individualism.

I would like to draw attention to a recent current in contemporary theory that takes the

notion of embodiment further: material feminism. This may not be so jarring of a comparison as

it may first appear. Stirner’s work is no stranger to feminist theory, as evidenced by the writings

Dora Marsden (1882-1960). She was a political radical, directly influenced by Stirner, who was

critical of contemporary feminisms because they failed to acknowledge the individual

dimensions of women (Welsh 192). Like Stirner, she was wholly skeptical of causes or

ideologies, specifically feminism, that claimed to have sole possession of answers to questions of

gender or sexual freedom.

Nor is the comparison between anarchism and feminism a strange one. Indeed, they have complemented each other in their mutual pursuit of freedom, albeit for different social groups and for different reasons. This is not to say that I intend to read Stirner as an anarchist and a

feminist. My intent is to merely add another dimension to Stirner’s materialism in an effort to

explain it further. The efforts of the material feminists see a preclusion in feminism towards language or ideology and so attempt to retain some focus on the body. This is comparable to

Stirner’s writings which likewise emphasize the material over the spiritual and metaphysical.

Indeed, the material feminists serve to lend further voice to Stirner himself – though their intent

is ultimately feminist first, and materialist second, their conceptions of materialism focus on the

same problems of embodiment as Stirner. Pr’Out 98

Material Feminisms (2008) outlines some of the concerns that contemporary feminism

faces on a theoretical battlefield commanded by post-structuralism and postmodernism. In its

introduction, “Emerging Models of Materiality in Feminist Theory”, the two editors, Alaimo and

Hekman, contend that postmodern feminism relies so heavily upon language that it ignores the

material reality of the body. They believe (and rightly so) that “Focusing exclusively on

representations, ideology, and discourse excludes lived experience, corporeal practice, and

biological substance from consideration” (4). Indeed, the overemphasis of the impact of

discourse limits the very discussion of discourse itself, which is based partially on material

processes (4). Their project emerges into further specificity within several areas: material feminism itself, material ethics, material politics and the agency of nature. While material ethics rejects the metaphysical dimension of ethics as such, and might be useful for a wider discussion of post-anarchism generally, only material feminism itself offers items of direct relevance to my re-appraisal of Stirner as a post-anarchist.

To return to material feminism itself, it is concerned with the impact of discourse on the formation of the individual self. One of the more interesting aspects appears thusly: “Feminist theorists of the body want definitions of human corporeality that can account for how the discursive and the material interact in the constitution of bodies” (7). I believe this specifically is an element that can be explored within Stirner’s notion of ‘ownness’ as a discursive move that posits himself as a unique individual. Though he contends it is merely a description of himself, the word ‘ownness’ has continued to exist long after Stirner himself. Indeed, it still carries with it the connotations of a man who sought his corporeality in a world that he perceived as obsessed with the fictitious. Within ‘ownness’, within the context of its discourse, there exists a mode of self-determination that Stirner has left behind for the rest of us. We are “corporeal” and real Pr’Out 99 when we are ‘owners’ of ourselves – captains of our own ship; for Stirner, it is our ownness that describes us. In the absence of Stirner, ownness continues to operate in its “discursive” space that can be used in current explorations of subjectivity. Ownness is thus both discursive and material because of the symbiotic relationship between its use in history and that use being bound to a material existence of one highly eccentric individual.

I am not trying to say that ‘ownness’ is any sort of answer to the questions raised by material feminism. Though it may read like one, a consideration of those implications is beyond my scope here. The reason I am including discussions of material feminism is due to the fact that those within that discipline consider questions of the body to have taken a backseat to the social constructions of language, culture, and so on. Post-anarchism is a re-evaluation of classical anarchism including a critique of representation. By re-evaluating Stirner through the lens of post-anarchism, we can gain a contemporary understanding of his thought as it developed alongside classical anarchism, Hegelianism, and Marxism. The use of certain French intellectuals is important to this re-evaluation as they provide the tools necessary for a re-evaluation to happen in the first place – not just supplied for this specific instance, but for post-anarchism generally. Material feminism is a branch of feminism that has taken special consideration of

Foucault’s discourse that allows for further specificity in Stirner’s ‘ownness’.

In Susan Hekman’s article, “Constructing the Ballast: An Ontology for Feminism”, she notes the growing discontent among social constructionist theorists who call for a return to materiality:

We have learned much about the social construction of ‘woman’ and ‘reality.’ But the loss of the material is too high a price to pay for that gain. What we need now is not a return to a modernist conception of reality as an objective given, but rather an understanding of reality informed by all we have learned in the linguistic turn. (88)

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The all-consuming preoccupation with language characterizes the turn into postmodernism; as language constructs our reality, it has provided some clarity to that which is constructed by language, namely “women” and “reality”. But, like Odin relinquishing one of his eyes for knowledge, we too have lost something of importance in exchange for this clarity: the material.

The solution for Hekman is not “a return to (modernism)”, and consequently an objective world

which minimizes the impact of language, but instead a turn to a middle ground – “an

understanding of reality informed by all we have learned in the linguistic turn”.

This new way of approaching the world that still rejects the assertions of modernism

while maintaining the ground that feminism has gained through explorations of discourse can be

found within a re-visitation of Foucault. She writes:

A sympathetic reading of Foucault yields a perspective that does not privilege either side, that articulates the complex interaction between the elements of the dichotomy. Rereading Foucault can and does produce an understanding of the way in which the material and the discursive participate in defining a particular social reality. (101)

This assertion is remarkably similar to my own re-reading of Stirner that also uses Foucault’s

discourse in much the same way. By taking into consideration the forces that produce facts of

discourse as historically contingent, we are able to, like Foucault, transform small bits of history

into their own microcosms of information. We are able to see the interactions between “the

material and the discursive”. This union comes about by taking into consideration the facts of discursive formation as well as the material dimensions these facts present – language constitutes reality to the extent that language emerges from our given social realities and our material conditions of existence.

These interactions of the material and the discursive are noted by Foucault as well. But, in Hekman’s work, she calls these interactions “agential realism”: Pr’Out 101

The traditional realism of modernism privileges matter, presupposing an independent reality about which we have knowledge. Discursive theories privilege language and deny the materiality of matter. Agential realism, in contrast, proposes the ‘intra-action’ of matter and discourse—the inseparability of objects and agencies of observation. (104)

“Agential realism” proposes the unity between the material and the discursive – the unity

between “matter and discourse”. In the case of Max Stirner, his notion of ‘ownness’ fulfills a

very specific function within his thinking and can be read in many different ways. But, by

considering its facts of discourse, we can see how ‘ownness’ emerges in the thought (or at least

in the book) of Stirner as directly opposed to his historical situation; the theoretical concerns of

modernism. It is not to read Stirner as proposing a theoretical model, because Stirner’s thought

was directly opposed to such a thing; but we can look back on his ideas, and read them in light of

the life and history of its composer. This is due to the intimately material dimension of Stirner’s

thought which was preoccupied with the physical body of Stirner himself as a vessel for self-

determination. In light of his historical situation, and the position from which I am approaching

him, this allows me to revisit Stirner through a post-anarchism, and ultimately assert something

new: that I see Stirner as laying the foundation for an anti-determinate individualism based on a prototype critique of representation.

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A Revenant Returns

In the pages of Derrida’s Specters of Marx (2006), Marx reproaches Stirner as one who

replaces abstraction with abstraction. Derrida sees Marx and Stirner as two sides of the same

coin, and whose thought-projects produce similar outcomes; both leave behind naught more than

ghosts25.

It might be said that Stirner “haunts” us. Those of us in academia who draw on the

influences of post-structuralism and postmodernism are undoubtedly channeling the subversive

energies of early 20th century protest movements. “Activist pedagogy” is commonplace within

the liberal humanities. Art, prose, poetry… though some undoubtedly focus on the aesthetics of

form and color, or the structure and style of Shakespeare, it is equally as common, if not moreso,

to see a Marxist reading of Shakespeare or an analysis of gender within The Great Gatsby. If my

assertion of Stirner as a post-anarchist can be believed, then we are channeling the critiques of a

philosopher who is almost entirely unrecognized in contemporary society, yet who has also made

a sizeable contribution to 20th and 21st century thought. We exist with, beside, in tandem, in

concert, with his ghost.

In response to emerging humanist doctrines, Stirner solidifies himself as a critic of those

doctrines and all others that seek to control how we live, think, and act. By highlighting the

missteps and shortcomings of what were perceived to be distinct moral and communal

boundaries, Stirner “deconstructs” the ethical and metaphysical structures that constitute society

in an effort to show not only where these principles contradict themselves, but where they

become outright harmful. However, this was not obvious from the outset. Much like the critiques

25 This can be found within the chapter “Apparition of the Inapparent,” Specters of Marx, translated by Peggy Kamuf, published by Routledge in 2006, pp. 156-221. Pr’Out 103

leveled at Derrida and other post-structuralists, Stirner was criticized for attempting to do away

with some of the most ubiquitous elements of the human condition necessary for people to

simply interact humanely. He was considered a failure, personally and philosophically. What I

have attempted to show is that he has his place in history, and his ideas of egoism are not

alienating or immoral (though perhaps they are in the sense that we have come to understand

these words). Stirner offers a unique philosophical perspective that emphasizes an honest

relationship between individuals as they are, not as who they could be. His critique of

representation, modernity, and so on, leaves room for only the truest expression of the individual

– unrestrained by contradictory notions of morality, or repressive government. I believe Stirner

says it best himself:

To be a man is not to realize the ideal of man, but to present oneself, the individual. It is not how I realize the generally human that needs to be my task, but how I satisfy myself. I am my species, am without norm, without law, without model, and the like. It is possible that I can make very little out of myself; but this little is everything, and is better than what I allow to be made out of me by the might of others… (163)

Through an egoism that is critical of abstraction, Stirner sewed the seeds for post-structuralism,

and answers some key questions for post-anarchism. I believe Stirner says to look with a discerning eye on everything that seeks our unyielding devotion, to question everything that says it is greater than we, and to scrutinize everything that seeks to compartmentalize and categorize our existence. Stirner’s egoism is an individualism that operates on a critique of the abstract; it is a brining together of the post-structuralist critiques of representation and the importance of self- actualization. It is anarchic, in that it does not bow before government or society. It is a post- anarchism that uses ‘ownness’ as a unique anti-deterministic expression of individualism in defiance of pervasive ideological constructs.

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Bibliography Bakunin, Mikhail. Statism and Anarchy. Edited and translated by Marshall Shatz. Cambridge University

Press. 1990.

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