{"id":1074,"date":"2016-08-07T23:49:46","date_gmt":"2016-08-08T06:49:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/modernslavery.calpress.org\/?p=1074"},"modified":"2021-07-16T16:26:50","modified_gmt":"2021-07-16T23:26:50","slug":"max-stirner-mixed-bag-with-a-pomo-twist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernslavery.calpress.org\/?p=1074","title":{"rendered":"Max Stirner: mixed bag with a pomo twist"},"content":{"rendered":"

A\"Max<\/a> review by Jason McQuinn<\/h4>\n

Max Stirner<\/em> edited by Saul Newman (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2011) 223 pages, $90.00 hardcover.<\/p>\n

One more sign of the ongoing revival of interest in the still-generally-ignored seminal writings of Max Stirner is the appearance of the first collection of essays to be published in the English language on the subject of his life and work. You can bet it won\u2019t be the last. The title itself, simply Max Stirner<\/em>, gives little indication of the specific intent or content of the collection. But the publisher is Palgrave Macmillan, an academic imprint for Macmillan Publishers in the UK and St. Martin\u2019s Press in the US, indicating that the aim here is an academic \u2013 rather than explicitly partisan, polemical or critical \u2013 work. It has been published as the first text of a series of \u201cCritical Explorations In Contemporary Political Thought,\u201d whose \u201caim…is to provide authoritative guides to the work of contemporary political thinkers, or thinkers with a strong resonance in the present, in the form of an edited collection of scholarly essays.\u201d Given this ingenuous series description, it has to be pointed out that it is absurd to present the book as an \u201cauthoritative guide\u201d to the writings of a man who would likely more than anyone else refuse the very possibility. This is, unfortunately, only the first of many indications of the uneven nature and quality of this collection. By now, rather than empty \u201cauthoritative\u201d pretensions, it should be clear that any serious Stirner scholarship requires a large amount of humility in the face of all the historical incomprehension and mystification Stirner\u2019s work has already received from the academy.<\/p>\n

The editor of the collection is Saul Newman, an academic known in libertarian circles mostly for his advocacy of what he calls \u201cpost-anarchism\u201d (sometimes considered short for \u201cpost-structuralist anarchism\u201d). Post-anarchism in practice entails a mishmash of often awkward attempts at a philosophical synthesis of post-structuralist or post-modernist theories \u2013 especially Foucault\u2019s \u2013 with schematic, heavily theoretical and largely leftist versions of anarchism. Most often in these syntheses, post-structuralist currents end up in the dominant position, in charge of reforming a post-modernist anarchism from a heavily caricatured essentialist, modernist past. Somewhat incongruously, some of Max Stirner\u2019s ideas also often figure in the \u201cpost-anarchist\u201d stews, especially in Saul Newman\u2019s variation. However, Newman\u2019s own post-anarchist position (in which Stirner is elsewhere touted as a \u201cproto-poststructuralist thinker\u201d) does not appear to be consistently shared by other contributors to the volume reviewed, thus occasionally leaving rather large leaps in commitments and theoretical positions between any one essay and the next. On the whole this seems to be a positive point for the book, allowing those neither interested in nor convinced by post-anarchist perspectives to share other perspectives on Stirner in this eclectic academic mix. Given the variety of perspectives expressed in the texts that make up this volume, it makes sense to separate them out in order to give each author, however briefly, his and her due, beginning with the editor\u2019s introduction.<\/p>\n

\u201cRe-encountering Stirner\u2019s Ghosts\u201d by Saul Newman<\/h4>\n

Apparently in deference to Derrida\u2019s dominant (though somewhat incoherent) trope in Specters of Marx<\/em>, the title of Newman\u2019s introduction, \u201cRe-encountering Stirner\u2019s Ghosts,\u201d seems at least in part intended (among other contradictory intentions) to imply that the \u201cghosts\u201d Stirner exposes in Der Einzige und sein Eigentum<\/em> (which I will translate here as The Unique and Its Own<\/em>\u00b9) also haunt and\/or obsess Stirner personally\u00b2 (rather than haunting and obsessing instead only the great mass of deluded individuals who themselves take these \u201cghosts\u201d for real, external powers instead of imagined constructions of their own self-alienated powers.) Or that even Stirner himself somehow \u201chaunts\u201d readers! However useful and accurate it might be to portray Karl Marx as still haunted by such \u201cspecters,\u201d it doesn\u2019t make any real sense in the case of Stirner, as any careful reading of The Unique and Its Own<\/em> will reveal. And, beyond this, when Newman later (p. 3) suggests: \u201cStirner has never ceased to be a ghost,\u201d we would do better to read: \u201cStirner has never ceased being reduced to a ghost\u201d by idealists and religious rationalists of all types \u2013 including post-structuralists. It is otherwise clear from Stirner\u2019s own words that he personally has no cares nor worries from all the ghosts that the vast masses of people are always so busy constructing to haunt themselves. In fact, as Stirner announces, his concerns are completely beyond and outside of any ghostly or spiritual concerns. They are purely his own concerns. Nor does it make much sense to cast Stirner himself as a metaphorical ghost for his readers just because we know so few details of his life or because most of his readers show little or no understanding of his texts. Or even because Stirner\u2019s critiques are not so easily dismissed as most of his critics at first seem to believe, often returning to trouble even their most careful philosophical, religious or moral calculations. These poorly-aimed hauntological\u00b3 rhetorical moves by Newman will most likely just lead more people into even more confusion that could instead be relieved with a bit more serious, observant \u2013 and logical \u2013 research and analysis. At the least, it should be realized by commentators that the haphazard blending of Stirner\u2019s careful critique of spirits\/ghosts\/the uncanny with Derrida\u2019s intentionally vague and capricious trope will never be likely to lead to an increased understanding of Stirner when there are already so many mystifications of Stirner\u2019s arguments that readers must sort through without having any more added.<\/p>\n

However, despite the questionable preconceptions and rhetorical conceits involved in Newman\u2019s post-structuralist, post-anarchist perspective, he does manage to provide \u2013 for one very brief stretch \u2013 what could have been the beginning of an exemplary introduction to the volume when he argues:<\/p>\n

\u201c… In marking a break with all established categories and traditions of thought \u2013 Hegelianism, humanism, rationalism \u2013 and in demolishing our most deeply entrenched notions of morality, subjectivity, humanity and society, Stirner takes a wrecking ball to the philosophical architecture of our Western tradition, leaving only ruins in his path. All our beliefs are dismissed by Stirner as so many ideological abstractions, \u2018spooks,\u2019 \u2018fixed ideas\u2019: our faith in rationality is shown to be no less superstitious than faith in the most obfuscating of religions. Man is simply God reinvented; secular institutions and discourses are alive with specters of Christianity; universalism is spoken from a particular position of power. Stirner tears up the paving stones of our world, revealing the abyss of nothingness that lies beneath.\u201d (p. 1)<\/p>\n

Newman is at his best at moments like this when obfuscatory post-structuralist terminology is left behind for plain old English, and when his cloudy references to obscure (for non-academic readers) French theorists like Lacan, Foucault and Derrida evaporate, momentarily leaving us with relatively transparent prose under clear blue skies. Newman\u2019s remarks above make it hard for anyone familiar with Stirner to object. Stirner clearly breaks with any and \u201call established categories and traditions of thought.\u201d He certainly demolishes every \u201centrenched notion.\u201d Stirner even \u201ctakes a wrecking ball to the philosophical architecture of our Western tradition\u201d \u2013 Newman here interestingly echoes (Stirner-influenced) Feral Faun\u2019s old essay title: \u201cRadical Theory: A Wrecking Ball for Ivory Towers.\u201d (4) (Though Newman also seems oblivious to the implications his own position as one of the minor \u201cphilosophers\u201d of that very architecture \u2013 himself inhabiting one of the lesser \u201cIvory Towers.\u201d) Newman\u2019s perspective on Stirner\u2019s \u201cwrecking ball\u201d may also seem somewhat limited if confined to \u201cour Western tradition,\u201d when there should be no reason to regard its effects as being confined to a single tradition, especially since Stirner\u2019s work is not unknown among Eastern philosophers (see, for example, works by members of the Japanese Kyoto School like Nishida Kitaro and Kieji Nishitani), nor was Eastern thought unknown to Stirner.<\/p>\n

The otherwise promising opening of Newman\u2019s introduction is unfortunately ruined when he concludes his first paragraph with the standard howler of Stirner (pseudo-) scholarship.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll that is left standing after this frenzy of destruction is the Ego \u2013 the only reality \u2013 smiling at us enigmatically, like Stirner himself, across the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to our present day.\u201d (p.1)<\/p>\n

Because this howler is so often repeated in so much of the heretofore persistently incompetent \u201cscholarship\u201d on Stirner it requires a fair bit of unavoidable explanation. (5)<\/p>\n

This statement might make some sense if Stirner had actually written anything in his masterwork suggesting that a concept of \u201cthe Ego\u201d could ever be \u201cthe only reality.\u201d But he didn\u2019t. Nor does he ever suggest that such a concept would be \u201cleft standing\u201d after his destruction of \u2013 and exit from \u2013 philosophy. In The Unique and Its Own<\/em>, Stirner neither speaks of any generic concept of \u201cthe Ego\u201d in those words, nor even of \u201cthe I\u201d at all in any positive, uncritical way. Nor, for that matter, did Stirner ever suggest that \u201cthe only reality\u201d could ever possibly lie in any generic or universal conception at all. Stirner is, on the contrary, quite clear that it is only I, \u201cthe Unique,\u201d who am both \u201call and nothing.\u201d That is, it is myself only as indefinable, nonconceptual, actually-lived I who am all. And there can be no possible concept (thought), even the completely and transparently nominal (and thus \u201cempty\u201d) concept of \u201cthe Unique\u201d that actually has any real, independent, living existence for me. In order for academic scholarship on Stirner to finally exit its self-prolonged dark age, it will have to at the very least begin from this minimal understanding instead of perpetually recapitulating the unfounded confusion between I, \u201cthe Unique\u201d (Stirner\u2019s name suggesting his entire nonconceptual life-process, including his entire world as it is lived) and \u201cthe I\u201d or \u201cthe Ego\u201d (as generic, determinate concepts, however they may be defined). Currently we have entered well within the second half of the second century of pseudo-scholarly mystification on this point, extending from Stirner\u2019s earliest critics all the way to contemporary liberal, Marxist, and now post-structuralist critics. Can\u2019t we all at last drop these mystifying references to \u201cthe ego\u201d that Stirner never advocated \u2013 at least in essays and books claiming to explore Stirner\u2019s writings?[pullquote]In The Unique and Its Own<\/em>, Stirner neither speaks of any generic concept of \u201cthe Ego\u201d in those words, nor even of \u201cthe I\u201d at all in any positive, uncritical way. Nor, for that matter, did Stirner ever suggest that \u201cthe only reality\u201d could ever possibly lie in any generic or universal conception at all. Stirner is, on the contrary, quite clear that it is only I, \u201cthe Unique,\u201d who am both \u201call and nothing.\u201d That is, it is myself only as indefinable, nonconceptual, actually-lived I who am all. And there can be no possible concept (thought), even the completely and transparently nominal (and thus \u201cempty\u201d) concept of \u201cthe Unique\u201d that actually has any real, independent, living existence for me. In order for academic scholarship on Stirner to finally exit its self-prolonged dark age, it will have to at the very least begin from this minimal understanding instead of perpetually recapitulating the unfounded confusion between I, \u201cthe Unique\u201d and \u201cthe I\u201d or \u201cthe Ego\u201d.<\/strong>[\/pullquote]<\/p>\n

Newman goes on to correctly stress that \u201cStirner is a thinker who defies easy categorization\u201d (p. 2) and that he has had a profound impact \u2013 an \u201coften shattering impact \u2013 on the trajectory of social and political theory.\u201d (p. 2) But just as Newman opens an opportunity to expose not just Karl Marx\u2019s squirming attempt in The German Ideology<\/em> \u201cto exorcise the spectre of idealism from his own thought by claiming to find it in Stirner\u2019s\u201d (p. 2), but more importantly Marx\u2019s ultimate failure in this attempt, he stops short. Newman shows no understanding that although Marx might have attempted to escape from his humanism and idealism due to his \u201cencounter with Stirner,\u201d he in fact failed to escape, succeeding only in masking his humanism and idealism in a more obscure and mystifying manner. Given the inclusion of Paul Thomas\u2019 expectedly pro-Marxist and anti-Stirner interpretation of the Stirner-Marx encounter in this anthology, it isn\u2019t clear how much Newman\u2019s subtle whitewashing of Marx is just being politic with a contributor, or how much Newman himself remains in thrall to (ultimately idealist) Marxist categories of philosophical or dialectical materialism. As is so often the case with commentators on Stirner, Marx escapes any but the most toothless of criticisms when any half-way consistent application of Stirner\u2019s critique to Marxist categories would easily expose their pious nature.<\/p>\n

Newman states that he \u201c…prefer(s) to see Stirner as a tool to be used, as a means of forcing apart the tectonic plates of our world and destabilizing the institutions and identities that rest upon them.\u201d (p. 4) And this is a perfectly good use of Stirner\u2019s work. Yet, Newman also makes it clear over and over again in his introduction that he will not allow himself to understand Stirner (or use this \u201ctool\u201d) outside of the categories of post-structuralist philosophy. The (minor) \u201ctectonic plates\u201d of post-structuralism and post-modernism must not themselves be destabilized. Stirner can and will be used by Newman as a tool in their service, but never as a source for potentially autonomous criticism outside of \u2013 and far more radical than \u2013 the philosophical and religious preconceptions and limits of post-structuralist and post-modernist ideologues like Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze. Newman will \u201c…conjure up Stirner\u2019s ghost,\u201d but not allow that such conjuring is a recuperation and mystification of Stirner\u2019s exit from every category of religion, philosophy and ideology, not just from the range of categories that Newman himself is currently ready to leave behind.<\/p>\n

\u201cA Solitary Life\u201d by David Leopold<\/h4>\n

To whatever extent David Leopold\u2019s condescending \u2013 and at times bizarre \u2013 biographical sketch of Max Stirner\u2019s life is actually meant to provide a \u201cHistorical Context\u201d (p. 19) for understanding Stirner and his texts, as the book\u2019s section title would appear to indicate, it certainly fails in reaching beyond fairly immediate circumstances. What can be said about a biography \u2013 of a widely misunderstood, occasionally celebrated though often denounced or reviled, but incredibly creative, controversial and powerful figure in the history of ideas and their criticism \u2013 that ignores just about every avenue for exploring the relation of the historical context of Stirner\u2019s writing to the meanings and understanding of his texts besides those few already well-traveled? Leopold could have at least attempted to give readers a brief picture of the social, economic, political, or at least the philosophical and cultural context of post-revolutionary Europe, Vorm\u00e4rz Germany, and especially Berlin in which Stirner lived and wrote. Instead, Leopold is content to merely summarize the standard biographical details easily available from John Henry Mackay\u2019s works on Stirner\u2019s life, along with emphasizing a few relatively salacious tidbits of unsubstantiated gossip and rumor about the author\u2019s marriages, sex life, occasional penury, and even the location of his skull! In addition, he occasionally adds a few of his own speculations along with the extraneous comments of others concerning side questions whose relevance to an account of Stirner\u2019s life and writings might better have been left for footnotes. Any broad consideration of the intellectual context of the times is especially absent. Although Leopold could hardly have avoided mention of contemporary Hegelians and post-Hegelians with whom Stirner associated, there is not\u00a0a single mention of the German Romantics; of important German philosophers like Immanuel Kant, Johann Fichte or Schelling; or even of such an epochal event as the French Revolution in this account. Leopold uses more space to recount and speculate about the life and bitter comments of Stirner\u2019s ex-wife (made more than 50 years after their separation!) than he does to recount the history and content of all of Stirner\u2019s sixty articles published immediately prior to The Unique and Its Own<\/em>! Leopold seems somewhat uncertain here whether he\u2019s writing for a scholarly tome or the tabloid press, and thus succeeds at neither. Readers hoping for more light to be shed on Stirner through an examination of the \u201chistorical context\u201d of his life and works will be left wondering what Leopold was thinking when he wrote this essay. We can only hope that the next person to take up the challenge will approach it more seriously.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Mirror of Anarchy: The Egoism of John Henry Mackay & Dora Marsden\u201d by Ruth Kinna<\/h4>\n

Ruth Kinna examines the real-existing \u201cegoism\u201d of John Henry Mackay and Dora Marsden within and at the margins of the libertarian milieu at the turn of the 19th to the 20th centuries. She further situates her examination within terms of recent differences between Alan Antliff and Saul Newman regarding the relation of anarchism to post-structuralism. Although both Mackay and Marsden are interesting figures with genuine achievements, they are also both marginalized \u2013 when not completely ignored \u2013 within ideologically leftist, including left anarchist, accounts of libertarian history and thought. Despite Kinna\u2019s seeming enthusiasm for Newman\u2019s narrowly post-structuralist reading of Stirner, she shows a welcome openness to the lives and texts of Mackay and Marsden that allows them to speak for themselves rather than as puppets of post-structuralism or of the \u201cStirnerism\u201d that they represent for her. Kinna, citing Antliff\u2019s critique of Newman, takes a step towards exposing the importance of the wide-ranging and broadly multiplicitous forms and expressions anarchism has taken throughout its existence. But, though these examinations of Mackay and Marsden are genuinely interesting and a pleasure to read, they actually shine little light on the understanding of Stirner\u2019s writings. Kinna indicates this herself when she ventures: \u201cHow far either Mackay or Marsden faithfully interpreted Stirner is a moot point.\u201d This can also be a warning for those not already alert to the fact that egoism is not a settled, agreed phenomenon and not all self-appointed or alleged \u201cegoists\u201d share anything like the same perspective. But even non-Stirnerian egoists can hold a \u201cmirror to anarchy\u201d and provide worthwhile, sometimes life-changing, insights.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Multiplicity of Nothingness: A Contribution to a Non-reductionist Reading of Stirner\u201d by Riccardo Baldissone<\/h4>\n

One of the two most interesting contributions \u2013 one of the two real reasons for picking up this book \u2013 is Riccardo Baldissone\u2019s \u201cnon-reductionist reading\u201d of Stirner. Even though it\u2019s actually not a \u201cnon-reductionist\u201d reading except through a strange and playful bit of pomo logic. It\u2019s actually an anachronistic reading of Stirner according to more common logic and word usage. But I won\u2019t quibble too much here, since the result is a sophisticated, sometimes insightful, and most often enjoyable romp through history making connections in both directions \u2013 forwards and back \u2013 between Stirner and later forebears or his earlier successors. Precisely because of its explicit playfulness, Baldissone can get away with revealing revealing connections that may not technically exist in our usual reality, but still can exist just the same by his and our making them. However, just as Kinna\u2019s examinations of Mackay and Marsden (while interesting for unraveling a few of the complex relations of egoism and anarchism) don\u2019t add much to our understanding of Stirner\u2019s writings themselves, Baldissone\u2019s anarchronistic connections are read loosely enough that what they reveal doesn\u2019t always add that much either. Except that Baldissone already begins his reading from a more profound understanding of Stirner\u2019s Einzige (\u201cUnique\u201d) that allows him to focus on far more interesting aspects of these connections than we would otherwise expect! Especially worthwhile here, are his discussions of the nonconceptual nature, the radical openness, and the \u201cmultiple monstrosity\u201d of Stirner\u2019s\u00a0egoist critique, which most often demand that he be at least fundamentally misunderstood, when not outright ignored, ridiculed or demonized by all those complicit in the culture of modern slavery. Among other authors, Baldissone covers \u2013 sometimes all too briefly \u2013 connections between Stirner and Gilles Deleuze, Ivan Illich, Michel Foucault, Carl Schmitt, Derrida, Wittgenstein, Marx, Sorel, Hegel (here mentioning Lawrence Stepelevich\u2019s \u201ctruly remarkable essay \u2018Max Stirner as Hegelian\u2019\u201d), Kant, and the \u201cwestern Church Fathers.\u201d In passing Baldissone argues that \u201cStirner\u2019s implacable indictment of ideas cannot be brought back under the umbrella of critique,\u201d though in doing so he ignores that Stirner does make a distinction between ideological (\u201cservile\u201d) criticism \u2013 which always involves substituting one fixed idea or presupposition for another \u2013 and \u201cown criticism.\u201d But in the main Baldissone has launched a nicely provocative attack on (the generally sub-) standard Stirner scholarship in a very encouraging manner!<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Philosophical Reactionaries\u201d translated and introduced by Widukind De Ridder<\/h4>\n

The other major reason to pick up this book is the inclusion of two contributions from Widukind De Ridder \u2013 the first an introduction to and translation of Stirner\u2019s response to his critic Kuno Fischer, and the second a longer commentary on \u201cThe End of Philosophy and Political Subjectivity\u201d a bit later in the collection. De Ridder\u2019s introduction, by giving no opinion, is much too easy on skepticism about Stirner\u2019s authorship of \u201cThe Philosophical Reactionaries,\u201d (which was originally attributed to \u201cG. Edward\u201d). Given that the essay was published by the same person (Otto Wigand) who published Stirner\u2019s Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum<\/em> itself, his publisher could hardly have been unaware of the identity of the \u201cG. Edward\u201d responding to Stirner\u2019s critics, yet never gave (nor did Stirner himself give) any indication it wasn\u2019t Stirner. But De Ridder shows the most insight into the intentions and implications of Stirner\u2019s writings of all contributors to this volume. So it is only fitting that he has provided the first full English translation of \u201cThe Philosophical Reactionaries\u201d here, a very valuable and essential text giving a final response to a critic, following the original \u201cStirner\u2019s Critics\u201d reply to Feuerbach, Moses Hess and Szeliga. As De Ridder indicates, the timing of this response offers \u201ca unique insight into Stirner\u2019s own appraisal of [his] book in the wake of the ultimate demise of Young Hegelianism.\u201d (p. 89) An appraisal that allowed Stirner \u201cto emphasize how [his] criticism of humanism was eventually a criticism of philosophy itself.\u201d (p. 92) Stirner makes short work of the young Fischer in the text, with slashing wit that leaves Fischer and all of philosophy abandoned in the dust.<\/p>\n

\u201cMax Stirner and Karl Marx: An Overlooked Contretemps\u201d by Paul Thomas<\/h4>\n

[pullquote]\u201cStirner\u2019s work has always been a special target for Marxist damnation, given its overt challenge to every form of ideology, including all Marxist ideologies. But ever since Karl Marx\u2019s German Ideology was published the clash between Stirner and Marx has taken on ever more importance.\u201d<\/strong>[\/pullquote]Stirner\u2019s work has always been a special target for Marxist damnation, given its overt challenge to every form of ideology, including all Marxist ideologies. But ever since Karl Marx\u2019s failed materialist attack on Stirner in The German Ideology<\/em> was finally published in 1932 the clash between Stirner and Marx has taken on ever more importance for defenders of Marxism. As a result we have seen a continuing stream of (usually off-hand and well off-base) Marxist critiques of Stirner appear, most of which borrow heavily from Marx\u2019s own early misinterpretations of Stirner\u2019s work. Paul Thomas\u2019 critique of Stirner is little different \u2013 though a little more intelligent than most \u2013 in this\u00a0respect. Thomas has at least a small ability to occasionally give Stirner some token credit for a few of his critical contributions. In general, though, Thomas insists on agressively following Marx\u2019s lead in reducing Stirner\u2019s work to an idealistic caricature constructed from dialectical materialist categories. Rather than ever allow Stirner to make points on his own, Thomas slavishly interprets Stirner\u2019s every move in terms of an original Marxist incomprehension that defies logic, but serves the purpose of protecting Marxist ideological clich\u00e9s from Stirner\u2019s actual criticisms. There\u2019s really no excuse for including this completely out-of-place text in this collection.<\/p>\n

\u201cMax Stirner: The End of Philosophy and Political Subjectivity\u201d by Widukind De Ridder<\/h4>\n

The second of Widukind De Ridder\u2019s valuable contributions to this volume makes the hard-to-avoid argument that Stirner\u2019s critique inevitably leads to a refusal of philosophy. Although this refusal was mostly implicit in Stirner\u2019s The Unique and Its Own<\/em>, Stirner made it impossible to ignore in \u201cThe Philosophical Reactionaries.\u201d This means that it is at least problematic to include Stirner as one of the \u201cYoung Hegelians,\u201d as though he shared an essentially similar relation to Hegelian philosophy as the others so classified, like Ludwig Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer. And it certainly means, as De Ridder argues, that Stirner\u2019s \u201cideas cannot be reduced to a traditional philosophy of the subject (existentialism),\u201d and that his writings \u201cnot only question the revolutionary subject in a strictly Marxist sense, but eventually any form of (political) subjectivity.\u201d (p. 143) De Ridder further notes that \u201cFor Stirner the crisis of the estate order [in Vorm\u00e4rz Prussia] calls neither for a new synthesis nor a new philosophy of the self, but necessitates new ways of transcending the political and societal horizon as a whole.\u201d (p. 145) And Stirner does this by \u201cdissolv[ing] existing philosophical categories by contrasting them with concepts that lay explicitly beyond philosophy.\u201d (p. 145) These latter \u201cconcepts\u201d outside philosophy include the \u201cUnique,\u201d \u201cownness\u201d and \u201cegoism.\u201d The bulk of De Ridder\u2019s arguments cover the conflict between the development of Bruno Bauer\u2019s immanent philosophical critique of Hegel and Stirner\u2019s \u201cparody of the Young Hegelian quest to identify a modern political subject.\u201d This makes fascinating reading, especially since Bauer himself has been so rarely translated and studied in English-language scholarship, despite his great importance for post-Hegelian critiques. De Ridder concludes that Stirner\u2019s Unique \u201cis fundamentally extra-conceptual. Stirner\u2019s radical nominalism places the concept of [the \u201cUnique\u201d] outside of philosophy and destroys the subject-object dichotomy.\u201d (p. 157)<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy Anarchists need Stirner\u201d by Kathy E. Ferguson<\/h4>\n

Kathy Ferguson uses Schmidt and van der Walt\u2019s ill-conceived Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism<\/em> (already notorious for its extremely narrow and ideological syndicalism) as a foil for arguments in favor of a Stirnerian theoretical and practical autonomy. But she works at this, rather peculiarly (for an anarchist), through use of analyses of the somewhat popular (in leftist circles) post-Stalinist Slavoj \u017di\u017eek. Thus, while the initial impulse seems worthwhile, the value of \u201cWhy anarchists need Stirner\u201d is somewhat mitigated for those who know Stirner well, because Ferguson both undercuts the premise with widely misplaced praise for the \u201cotherwise excellent book on global anarchism and syndicalism, Black Flame<\/em>,\u201d at the same time that she insists on using an anti-anarchist, pro-Leninist critic (\u017di\u017eek) to help explain a Stirner with whom he is completely at odds. Still, despite these problems, the essay is largely successful despite itself. But this is probably because (except when Stirner is successfully misrepresented) anti-Stirner arguments are almost guaranteed to fail when directed at anarchists who value their theoretical and practical autonomy. Ideologists like Schmidt and van der Walt, and all the others whose leftism far outweighs any commitment to libertarian values, might as well give up their crusade. Until they can fully detach practical autonomy from anarchism \u2013 an impossible feat, without destroying the anarchist impulse itself \u2013 they are doomed to a self-delusionally revisionist battle against any and every actually-existing anarchist.<\/p>\n

\u201cStirner\u2019s Ethics of Voluntary Inservitude\u201d by Saul Newman<\/h4>\n

Saul Newman saves his own most valuable work for the final contribution to this volume, in which he compares Max Stirner\u2019s arguments for insurrectionary insubordination to \u00c9tienne de la Bo\u00ebtie\u2019s earlier critique of \u201cvoluntary servitude,\u201d although, unfortunately, Newman once again misrepresents Stirner by focusing on \u201cthe singularity of the individual ego\u201d instead of on Stirner\u2019s nonconceptual \u201cUnique.\u201d Despite the clear exposition of Stirner\u2019s critique of philosophy raised by Widukind de Ridder in his two contributions to this book, Newman still insists on describing \u201cStirner\u2019s philosophical project … as one of clearing the ontological ground of all essential foundations.\u201d (p. 204) But he clearly has no \u201cphilosophical project.\u201d As he tirelessly repeats, his is not a project of the individual or the ego, but of his own! Newman is at least correct, though, that one of Stirner\u2019s big contributions \u201cis to point out the futility of founding political action on metphysical ideas of human nature, science, historical laws and assumptions about a shared rationality and morality.\u201d (p. 206)<\/p>\n

Notes<\/h4>\n

1. This is the title for a current CAL Press project-in-process to publish a revised (corrected) edition of the Steven Byington translation of Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum<\/em> that dispenses with the disastrous confusion between Stirner\u2019s \u201cEinzige\u201d and \u201cthe Ego\u201d that Benjamin Tucker\u2019s title and Byingon\u2019s text have introduced and reinforced. Also underway is Wolfi Landstreicher\u2019s completely new translation, which should also help immensely to clear up this confusion, slated to appear under the more literal title as The Unique and Its Property.<\/em><\/p>\n

2. Newman comments, \u201c…just as we think we have [Stirner] pinned down, he slips away again like one of his own spectres.\u201d (p. 2, my emphasis) Elsewhere Newman asks, \u201cWhy, then, resurrect Max Stirner, the thinker who was obsessed with ghosts, \u201cspooks,\u201d and ideological apparitions….\u201d in \u201cSpectres of Freedom: Stirner and Foucault\u201d (Postmodern Culture<\/em> Vol.14, #3, May 2004).<\/p>\n

3. \u201cHauntology\u201d is one of those pomo jokes you couldn\u2019t make up without feeling deeply embarrassed for yourself, but seem to be taken seriously by (too) many academics. The source is Derrida\u2019s relatively incoherent Spectres of Marx<\/em>.<\/p>\n

4. This essay was originally published in Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed<\/em> #38, Fall 1993 (C.A.L. Press).<\/p>\n

5. See my \u201cJohn Clark\u2019s Stirner,\u201d published in Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed<\/em> #68\/69 (undated) as \u201cJohn Clark\u2019s Spook,\u201d and my introduction to Wolfi Landstreicher\u2019s translation of Max Stirner\u2019s Stirner\u2019s Critics<\/em> (LBC Books \/ CAL Press, 2012), \u201cClarifying the Unique and Its Self-Creation.\u201d (Landstreicher\u2019s translations in Stirner\u2019s Critics<\/em> include both the first full English translation of \u201cStirner\u2019s Critics,\u201d as well as a second English translation of \u201cThe Philosophical Reactionaries,\u201d which appears to have been completed not long after \u2013and unaware of \u2013 De Ridder\u2019s translation.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A review by Jason McQuinn Max Stirner edited by Saul Newman (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2011) 223 pages, $90.00 hardcover. One more sign of the ongoing revival of interest in the still-generally-ignored seminal writings of Max Stirner is the appearance…<\/p>\n

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