Stirner, on the other hand, runs after his own contradictions, his own limits, his own negation. Not for any apocalyptic end or final judgment, but rather to reveal the weakness of the dialectic from which he and others draw their strength. Does this confirm his power or expose his vulnerability? May the dialectic collapse so that I may live, he seems to say. Stirner thus uses dialectic for life, and when its use is worn out, he discards it. The practice of dissolution and consumption may help clarify this. Stirner seeks to dissolve and consume all fixed ideas, but in order to do so, he must use the language of fixed ideas in the process. In one of his pseudonymous replies to critics, Stirner described this problem in the following way: “Stirner himself has described his book as, in part, a clumsy expression of what he wanted to say. It is the arduous work of the best years of his life, and yet he calls it, in part, ‘clumsy’. That is how hard he struggled with a language that was ruined by philosophers, abused by state-, religious- and other believers, and enabled a boundless confusion of ideas.”41 In the process of consuming and dissolving the fixed ideas of philosophy, politics, and religion, Stirner himself has been consumed by his own language, which has already been corrupted by those same fixed ideas he is attempting to dissolve.
If language is the “abode of being,” as Heidegger once said, then it is a miserable place to live. But how could one ever escape it? Is not that the ultimate idealist fantasy, to ignore empirical constraints and live beyond the realm of language in the space of pure thought, pure consciousness? By rejecting speculative philosophy and evading the stickiness of language, Stirner can easily be charged with mysticism, a philosophy of private experience and the ineffable. Although he often speaks of the “unutterable” and “unspeakable” nature of his task, he nevertheless still names it, and carries through.42
In naming his objects, Stirner does not endorse “fixity” or a “principle of stability”;43 he does not produce a “phantomalization”, as Derrida writes, or some metaphysical identity.44 Stirner is not a nominalist, rather he is trying to think through the non-identical, as Adorno might say, the punctum of subjectivity that refuses an objective synthesis, the bare I that breaks with its own mediation. For this is the name of an operation without an operator, a vector of action over a gulf of meaning which we can only properly understand as “nothing” or I. The nothingness of that which acts is only retroactively understood to be something. For in its self-activity, the I knows itself only in its currentness as its properties and capacities, memories and desires, thoughts and sensations. To find “meaning” in our own fleeting lives is to accept the nothingness out of which we come and into which we go: the current of time, the nothing that dissolves all fixed ideas, egos, and relations.45
This nothingness is not to be taken “in the sense of emptiness,”46 Stirner remarks in his preface, but rather as that from which and into which creation creates. The non-empty nothingness thus names a kind of presentation, manifestation, or appearance. “I should show myself, that I should appear,” Stirner says. That is all that it can do, show itself, appear—phainesthai. Beyond that, it is nothing. “I, this nothing, shall put forth my creations from myself.”47 The name of the void from which our subjectivity emerges is called I [Ich]—badly translated as ego. Stirner’s I does not name the identity of consciousness with itself as self-consciousness, but rather it describes an operation that traverses an abyss. What justifies fixing this activity into a concept at all?
Stirner is struggling here to grasp at a truth that he was not yet able to fully develop: the uniqueness of the nothing, its singularity. As the nothingness into which all else can be consumed and dissolved, the I stands apart in its negativity. Hegel describes the I as “pure negativity”, as the “tremendous power of the negative; it is the energy of thought, of the pure ‘I’.”48 As Badiou says of the void, it is different in its indifference.49 The naming of this nothing is justified philosophically due to its unique ontological status, a uniqueness which is “indomitable” and wrecks all attempts of subsumption.50 So why call this uniqueness Ich, I?
First of all, Stirner does not call it the I, but always my I. This is what separates him from Fichte, who posits “the I” as the absolute principle which grounds the entire science of knowledge. Stirner criticizes his Fichte thusly: “When Fichte says, ‘the I is all,’ this seems to harmonize perfectly with my thesis. But it is not that the I is all, but the I destroys all, and only the self-dissolving I, the never-being I, the—finite I is really I. Fichte speaks of the ‘absolute’ I, but I speak of me, the transitory I.”51 Stirner’s I is always in activity, transitory, never a principle of justification or axiom of a system; it is not one, but only grasped as one due to its uniqueness, or difference from all things. It is both incomplete (“never-being”) and excessive (“destroys all”), subtracted from and added to “all” that exists. If the “all” is equivalent to all that can be accounted for by ontology, then Stirner’s I is not ontological in any sense. It is the black hole of ontology, the void that blocks the full accounting of things.
Second, “I” functions as a name for this nothing since it is as “I” that one experiences the world. Not as some generic or absolute I, not as a principle like humanity or spirit, but as this I which incessantly consumes—takes in, ingests, swallows—experiences, dissolving their multiplicity into the singularity which only “I” can hold together. Stirner’s “I” somewhat resembles Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception, the “I think” attached to all my experiences as the condition of possibility for their coherence and unity. Yet, whereas Kant’s I unifies experience, Stirner’s I dissolves it. This “I” weaves through the manifold of experiences as the process of their dissolution. “I”, however, does not name the process, but this one, mine.
By qualifying Stirner’s use of the word “I” like this, its purely functional character becomes apparent. For if the word “I” named a generic process or an absolute principle, then its use would be justified in itself. But its use here describes something unique, or better put, a unique nothing, ungraspable beyond its singularity. The name “I” fills in a gap in our ability to reason, functionally satisfying our need to reflect on our own annihilating subjectivity. Yet this term—I, Ich, ego—is stuffed with unnecessary psychological baggage that has no place in Stirner’s universe. Since it is purely functional, why retain it at all? In other words, to avoid psychologism, we might as well just call the “I” the unique one [der Einzige].
This is, of course, exactly what Stirner does. This is not only the title of the book, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, but its entire unfolding. It is the fault of the English-language translators to conflate “unique” and “ego”, and it is Stirner’s fault to suggest this error by repeatedly using terms like “egoism” and “egoist” to describe his philosophy. One must decide whether or not Stirner is justified in using those terms. Why not use another term, another filler or placemat for the unspeakable? As will be shown, even the “ego” must consume itself, for it too is an abstraction to be dissolved. At certain points in the text, this is more apparent than others. Near the end of his book, for instance, Stirner declares that the idea of an “egoist” is itself an illusion: “The egoist, before whom the humanists shudder, is as much a spook as is the devil: he exists only as a spectre and phantasm in their brain.”52 Is this the same egoist that Stirner lauds so strongly throughout the first half of his text? If so, then why praise the egoist only to slander it later? If it is not, then how does the “real” egoist relate to the fantastical image of the egoist? The problem is that Stirner’s Einzige or Ich is not identical with the concept of “egoist” and yet, from the outside, it necessarily appears that way. Stirner makes use of this conceptual double exposure in order to provoke his readers and enemies into questioning their own self-assumptions and political beliefs.
The fundamental ambiguity around which Stirner’s text revolves is the self-relation of the I. At different points, the I posits itself, dissolves itself, consumes
itself, creates itself, destroys itself, enjoys itself, swallows itself, empowers itself, reveals itself, uses itself, abuses itself, owns itself. For instance, while mocking Bruno Bauer, Stirner writes the following about his own presuppositions:
I, for my part, start from a presupposition in presupposing myself, but my presupposition does not struggle for perfection like ‘man struggling for perfection,’ but only serves me to enjoy and consume it. I alone consume my presupposition, and exist only in consuming it. But that presupposition is therefore not one at all: since I am the unique, I know nothing of the duality of a presupposing and presupposed I (an ‘incomplete’ and ‘complete’ I or human being); but that I consume myself, means only that I am. I do not presuppose myself, because at any moment I just am positing or creating myself in the first place, and only because of this am I, not presupposed but posited, and, again posited only in the moment when I posit myself; that is, I am creator and creature in one.53
Stirner’s non-dualist account of the self as a practical force of negation shines through here. But what does it mean to “consume my presupposition”? How can I consume or own myself? To grasp the concept of consumption in Stirner, one must go beyond its economic meaning as the “use of a resource.” Consumption rather names the process by which I dissolve the separation between myself and my expressions. To consume is to annihilate the fixity and externality of ideas and things that are products of myself yet stand above me. To “consume myself” is thus to continually negate and recycle my own self-expressions of who I take myself to be. In consuming myself, I change who I am and who others take me to be; I block myself from becoming fixed in an identity. By dissolving the independence of my thoughts and relations, I return them back to my power for free play. This cycle of consumption and production of oneself expresses the logic of use and abuse that Stirner calls property [Eigentum].
Is there any reason to name this activity egoist? In fact, this is Stirner’s most fundamental mistake or ambivalence, the identification of das Ich and der Einzige with der Egoist. He might as well have said Anarchist, for that would at least correspond to the anarchic, groundlessness of the I. “Anarchist” describes a kind of activity without arche or principle, irreducible to a higher concept or generality. Furthermore, it lacks the philosophical confusion of the word “egoist”. The problem with the term “anarchist”, however, comes from its political vagueness, its self-sacrificing idealism to another cause. Perhaps it is better that Stirner stayed away from this disreputable word after all, along with all other labels. For who needs an identity when one has nothing left to identify?
Notes
1. This view is best articulated by Lawrence Stepelevich. See his “Max Stirner as Hegelian” (1985). Along with Stepelevich’s essential articles on Stirner, see also McLellan (1969), Moggach (2006), and Tomba (2013). For German research on Stirner, see Essbach (1982), Laska (2000), Kast (2016), and the journal of the Max-Stirner-Gesellschaft in Leipzig, archived at http://www.max-stirner-archiv-leipzig.de. For a recent, sympathetic interpretation of Max Stirner as a “dialectical egoist”, see Welsh (2010).
2. For more on Stirner’s life and background, see the classic biography of Stirner by John Mackay (2005), and the chapter by Leopold in Newman (2011).
3. Derrida, Specters of Marx (1994)
4. Derrida, 121
5. The other main text being Friedrich Lange’s incredibly famous The History of Materialism (1865), from which John Henry Mackay learned of Stirner. It was Mackay who “rediscovered” Stirner in the late 19th century, republishing all his work, writing the only existing biography, and tying him to the anarchist tradition. It was possibly Lange’s book—or Hartmann’s—from which Nietzsche learned of Stirner as well. See Stepelevich’s “The Revival of Max Stirner” (1974) for more details.
6. Jensen (2006), 52
7. See Buber (2002).
8. Deleuze, 161
9. Deleuze, 160
10. Deleuze, 160
11. Deleuze, 161
12. Andrew Koch made this claim in his article “Max Stirner: The Last Hegelian or the First Poststructuralist?” (1997) in the UK journal Anarchist Studies, and Saul Newman developed it greatly in From Bakunin to Lacan (2001). These theorists see Stirner in the same philosophical family as Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, and Deleuze––a “family” which nonetheless has more differences between them, than similarities. Saul Newman above all has developed this interpretation of Max Stirner into a sophisticated political theory of “postanarchism,” for instance, in The Politics of Postanarchism (2010) and Postanarchism (2016). Newman has also been central in reigniting academic interest in Max Stirner within the English-speaking world. See his fantastic edited collection Max Stirner (2011), published by Palgrave Macmillan.
13. Arvon (1954)
14. Mackay (2005), Tucker (2005), Clark (1976)
15. Heider (1994)
16. Helms (1966)
17. Carroll (1974)
18. EO, 35
19. EO, 301
20. EO, 7
21. EO, 159. See also: 112, 121, 124, 125, 130–1, 159, 161, 219, 239, 256, 296, 309, 318.
22. G. Edward [Max Stirner], “The Philosophical Reactionaries” (1847), translated by W. De Ridder in: Max Stirner, ed. Newman (2011), 103
23. Ibid.
24. On the problem of non-identity, see Adorno, Negative Dialectics (1973).
25. EO, 302
26. EO, 289
27. EO, 279. I will come back to this neologism of Stirner.
28. EO, 252
29. EO, 58. In Stirner’s framework, the strongest enemy of something is also the owner of it. For only as enemy of that which I own can I preempt any other enemies of mine.
30. Arnold Ruge, letter to his mother, December 17, 1844. Cited in EO, Leopold’s intro, xiii.
31. See Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (1988).
32. See Foucault’s 1981–1982 Lectures at the College de France published in 2005 in English as The Hermeneutics of the Subject. The reference to Stirner is on page 251.
33. EO, 146
34. “All things are Stirner to me”. More literally: I have set my affair on Stirner.
35. The standard French and Spanish translations, for instance, are much closer to the German original. The choice to translate “Einzige” (unique one) as Ego was made by Benjamin R. Tucker, the American individualist anarchist who funded and published the English translation of Stirner by Steven T. Byington.
36. Stirner’s Critics (2012), 55, translated by Wolfi Landstreicher. See also the fantastically partisan introduction by Jason McQuinn. For the German, see Parerga, Kritiken, Repliken (1986) edited by Laska. Stirner’s replies to his critics are essential reading for anyone interested in Stirner. They clear up mountains of confusion, especially concerning his views on “egoism”, the “unique”, and the “un-man.”
37. See Wittgenstein (1965).
38. EO, 312. But see also, 263–265, 303–315.
39. For background on The Free, see Mackay (2005), McLellan (1969), and Stepelevich (1983).
40. For background, see Eric Luft’s essay “Edgar Bauer and the Origins of the Theory of Terrorism” in The New Hegelians, ed. Moggach (2006).
41. G. Edward [Max Stirner], “The Philosophical Reactionaries” in: Max Stirner, ed. Newman (2011), 114
42. “Only thoughtlessness really saves me from thoughts. It is not thinking, but my thoughtlessness, or I the unthinkable, incomprehensible, that frees me from possession.” EO, 133
43. EO 271 on “fixity”, EO 298 on “principle of stability.” The Hegelian influence on this critique of “fixity” will be explored later.
44. “The history of the ghost remains a history of phantomalization…” Derrida, 123
45. “It is different if you do not chase after an ideal as your ‘destiny’ but dissolve yourself as time dissolves everything. The dissolution is not your destiny because it is current [Gegenwart].” EO, 294
46. EO, 7
4
7. EO, 209
48. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (1977), §22 and §32. See also §37: “That is why some of the ancients conceived the void as the principle of motion, for they rightly saw the moving principle as the negative, though they did not as yet grasp that the negative is the self.”
49. See Badiou, Being and Event (2006), Meditations 4 and 5, where this point is developed.
50. “Exertions to ‘form’ all men into moral, rational, pious, human, ‘beings’ (that is, training), have been in vogue from time immemorial. They are wrecked against the indomitable quality of I, against own nature, against egoism.” EO, 294
51. EO, 163
52. EO, 317
53. EO, 135
Part II: Stirner’s World
The structure of Der Einzige und sein Eigentum looks like this:
All Things are Nothing to Me1 [Ich hab’ Mein’ Sach’ auf Nichts gestellt]
First Part: Man [Der Mensch]
I. A Human Life [Ein Menschenleben]
II. Men of Ancient and Modern Times [Menschen der alten und neuen Zeit]
1. The Ancients [Die Alten]
2. The Moderns [Die Neuen]
§1. The Spirit [Der Geist]
§2. The Possessed [Die Besessenen]
§3. The Hierarchy [Die Hierarchie]
3. The Free [Die Freien]
§1. Political Liberalism [Der politische Liberalismus]
§2. Social Liberalism [Der soziale Liberalismus]
§3. Humane Liberalism [Der humane Liberalismus]
Second Part: I [Ich]
I. Ownness [Die Eigenheit]
II. The Owner [Der Eigner]
1. My Power [Meine Macht]
2. My Intercourse [Mein Verkehr]
3. My Self-Enjoyment [Mein Selbstgenuss]
III. The Unique One [Der Einzige]
Stirner is clearly targeting Feuerbach in the very division of parts one and two. Whereas Feuerbach’s 1841 bombshell, The Essence of Christianity, splits into God and Man, Stirner’s work divides into Man and I. Feuerbach’s secularization of Hegel ends up elevating the category of Man; Stirner’s demystification of Man elevates only I. The formal similarity masks significant qualitative differences. The idea of God, for Feuerbach, turns out to be only the projection and absolutization of the essence of man, which is grasped through the unity of reason, love and will; theology, in other words, becomes anthropology. But Man or Humanity for Stirner has nothing to do with the essence of I. Whether theological or anthropological, any positing of an “essence” as such is doomed, “wrecked against the indomitable quality of I.”2 Man is not the alienated expression of the essence of I, but the alienation of only one of its properties. Such properties can never exhaust me, their owner, and no matter how necessary, contingent, broad or narrow they may be, they are all qualitatively the same in relation to my I: they are my property, and hence, disposable.
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