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The Revival of Max StirnerAuthor(s): Lawrence S. StepelevichSource: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1974), pp. 323-328Published by: University of Pennsylvania PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2708766 .

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THE REVIVAL OF MAX STIRNERBY LAWRENCE S. STEPELEVICH

In November 1844, Engels wrote his second letter to Marx.1He reportedfirston a visit to Moses Hess in Cologne, and then went on to note that Hess hadgiven him a press copy of a new book by Max Stirner, Der Einzige und SeinEigenthum.2Johann Caspar Schmidt (1806-56), who wrote and was known asMax Stirner, had been a close friend of Engels during the year Engels spent inBerlin. However, both had arrivedtoo late to meet Karl Marx. Engels must havebeen impressed by Stirner, who was his senior by a numberof years, for Engelswas able to render a pencil sketch of Stirner fifty years later, and recalled thatthey were "great friends [Duzbrider]."In his letter to Marx, Engels promised that he would send a copy of DerEinzige to him, for it certainly deserved their attention, as Stirner "had ob-viously, among the 'Free Ones,' the most talent, independenceand diligence."The "Free Ones," in this case, referredto that group of radical Berlin publicists,poets and philosopherswho gathered daily in Hippel's Weinstubeto prepareforthe coming revolution. In effect they were the last remnants of Bruno Bauer's"Doktorklub," the same club which had once numbered Marx as a prominentmember.Shortly after having met Stirner in the Fall of 1842, Engels, in a crude inksketch, gave a visual impression of what it must have been like during a typicalevening among the "Free Ones."3 The radical Hegelians, Koppen, Ruge, Ru-tenburg, and others, are seen in varying degrees of drunkenness and argu-mentation. In the confusion of the cafe, only the figure of Stirner is silent andwithdrawn.This sketch of Engels has well capturedthe characterof Stirner, for itis not the portrait of a serene spirit, but of a detached and reflective one, notangry but ironic, less bitter than satiric, and it is this same spirit which standsforth in Der Einzige undsein Eigenthum, or as the major English edition wouldhave it, TheEgo andHis Own.4Among the "Free Ones," Stirner was then known as the author of a few arti-cles, and as a failed candidate for the doctorate at the University of Berlin. Theappearance of The Ego and His Own came as a shock, for it immediately es-tablished Stirner among the most formidable opponents of the very people withwhich he had seemed to have so much in common. The communists, the criticalphilosophers, the humanitariansand reformers of every degree were assailed inStirner'sphilosophy, a philosophywhich Engels labeled "Egoism."In the same letter to Marx, Engels was well aware of the extreme nature ofthis philosophy. Engels judged that Stirner had indeed captured "the essence of

'Marx-Engels, Werke,XXVII (Berlin, 1956-68), 9.2DerEinzige undSein Eigenthum (Leipzig, 1845 [1844]).3Werke,XXVII, 400.4M. Stirner, TheEgo andHis Own, trans.Steven T. Byington(New York, 1963).All ci-tations are taken from this edition.323


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324 LAWRENCE S. STEPELEVICHpresent society and present man," and it called for an answer. The answer thatdeveloped was included within The German Ideology. This abusive andexhaustive rebuttalof Stirner'sbook filled more pages than that book itself. Andin the unpublishableGermanIdeology, as Isaiah Berlinhas describedit, Stirner"is pursuedthroughfive hundredpages of heavy-handedmockery andinsult."5Besides Marx and Engels, a number of others hurriedto publish a responseagainst Stirner's thesis. Among the young Hegelians, Bruno Bauer, ArnoldRuge, Moses Hess, and even the famous Feuerbach joined forces in order tocombat Stirner's menacing doctrine of Egoism. But the speculative excitementwas as brief as it was furious, and the political events of 1848 obliterated thetraces of those philosophicalstruggleswhichhad precededthem.And so, although Stirner'swork had not fallen stillborn from the press, it hadcertainly died in its infancy. Stirner himself died, in obscurity and poverty, adozen years after the publication of his singular work. His later writings wereboth few anddisappointing.In 1887,thirty-nineyears after the first appearanceof Der Einzige, a Scottishpoet turned Germanophile, John Henry Mackay, happened to read a brief ci-tation regardingStirner in Lange's History of Materialism. In part it read, "Theman who in German literature has most preached Egoism recklessly and logi-cally-Max Stirner-finds himself in distinct opposition to Feuerbach."Mackay's curiosity was satisfied a year later when he managed to secure a copyof Der Einzige. He immediately became a disciple of Stirner, and almost single-handedly-as he later claimed-sparked what has since been called the "Stirnerrenaissance."By 1900, Stirnerhad become somethingmore than a philosophicalfad, andyet he remained,as ever, much less than a major figure.The Stirner revival was concurrent with the discovery of Nietzsche, withStirnerplaying the role of a proto-Nietzsche. As Karl Lowith has said, "Stirnerhas often been compared with Nietzsche, to the point of asserting that Stirnerwas the 'intellectual arsenal' from which Nietzsche derived his weapons."6Indeed, they have much in common. The public interest over anarchy alsoquickened the Stirner renaissance, for was it not Engels himself who, in 1888,declaredStirner"the prophetof contemporaryanarchism?"7The publicationhistory of TheEgo and His Own attests to the strengthof thefirst Stirner revival. Forty-nine editions appeared between 1900 and 1929. Ofthese, there were fourteenGerman editions, the rest were in translation,with tenRussian editions, seven Japanese editions, and six English editions. Theremaining editions were published in French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, andPolish.8

But once again, as before, interest in Stirner faded, and from the thirties tothe present, he had remainedvirtuallyunnoticed. Even among the few who knewof him, opinion was radicallydivided. Most of these few must have agreed with5I. Berlin,Karl Marx (New York, 1963), 143.6K.Lowith,From Hegel to Nietzsche (New York, 1964), 187.7F. Engels, LudwigFeuerbachand the Outcome of Classical GermanPhilosophy (NewYork, 1941), 17.8Fora complete bibliography:Hans G. Helms, Die Ideology deranonymenGesellschaft

(Cologne, 1966),510-600.


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THE REVIVAL OF MAX STIRNER 325James Joll, who simply declared that "Stirnerwas not a very important thinkernor a very interestingone." But there were a few, duringthat period, who betterunderstood the meaning of Stirner. In 1939, Sidney Hook indicated that theforgotten debate between Marx and Stirner involved "the fundamentalproblemsof any possible system of ethics or public morality,"9and in 1939, Isaiah Berlinnoted that "the theory of the alienation of the proletarianswas enunciated byMax Stirner at least one year before Marx."10 But these voices were in theminorityof a minority.Then, in 1968, a new German edition of Der Einzige, the first since 1929,made its appearance." It had been preceded,two years earlier, by a full study ofStirner's thought and influence,12he first since Henri Avron, in 1954,had linkedStirner and Existentialism.13Professor John Carroll of Cambridgehas edited anew Englishedition,14and Dover Press has reissuedByington'stranslation of TheEgo and His Own.The year 1971 saw the publication of the first comprehensive study ofStirner's philosophy ever to appear in English-R.W.K. Paterson's TheNihilistic Egoist.15The few students of Stirner have also been encouragedby thepublication of William Brazill's work, The Young Hegelians'6 as well as DavidMcLellan's recent work The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx,17both of whichdirect considerable attention to the thought of Max Stirner. Are we witnessingthe beginningof anothercycle of interest in Stirner?As was noted above, the initial publication of Der Einzige und seinEigenthum caused a great deal of excitment, but the excitment was still tightlycontained within the narrow circle of the Young Hegelian school. To be sure, asSidney Hook describedit, the book "explodedlike a bomb-shellamong the ranksof his formercomrades-in-arms."18ts effects, particularlyupon the work of KarlMarx, have yet to be fully assessed. The reappearanceof Stirner's book at theturn of the century caused a more extensive, if less exciting, response. Itsinfluence at that time was more political than philosophical as seen in the recentstudy of Hans G. Helms, Die Ideologie der anonymen Gesellschaft.19Thatinfluence,particularlyamong the new right, or the libertarianmovements, is stillwith us. Presently, the continuing interest in the early writings of Karl Marxmight serve to occasion a reconsiderationof Stirner'srole in philosophichistory.However, although revivalsof interest in Stirner's thought might well be pro-voked by any number of real or imagined connections with whatever or

9S. Hook, From Hegel to Marx (Ann Arbor, 1962;New York, 19361),165.'1KarlMarx, op. cit., 15."Hans G. Helms, ed., Max Stirner: Der Einzige und sein Eigentum und andereSchriften(Munich, 1968).'2Seeabove, note 8.'3H.Avron,AuxSources de l'existentialisme:Max Stirner(Paris, 1954).14J.Carroll,Max Stirner:TheEgo and His Own(London, 1971).'1R.W.K. Paterson, TheNihilistic Egoist (Oxford, 1971).16W.Brazill, The Young Hegelians (New Haven, 1970).'7D.McLellan, The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx (London, 1969).18S. Hook, From Hegel to Marx, 173.'9H.G.Helms, Die Ideologie deranonymenGesellschaft,op. cit.


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326 LAWRENCE S. STEPELEVICHwhomever is of currentconcern, his thought has enduredby reason of its intrinsicmerit. He cannot be totally reducedto the level of a forerunnerof either Marx orNietzsche, anymore than he can be placed, a la Franz Mehring "as the lastoffshoot of Hegelian Philosophy."20Unless, of course,we understandthis to indi-cate more than Mehringintends.R.W.K. Paterson, in his extensive study, proposes that "Stirner'schief claimto our continuing attention arises ... from his unique contribution to thedevelopment and self-understandingof radical atheism."21This is a point welltaken, for the atheism of Stirner forces a critical confrontation with all es-tablished thought, and it is in virtue of his capacity to compel us to look directlyat the consequences of total atheism that Stirner can claim our philosophic at-tention.

During the Springsemesterof 1827,both Feuerbach and Stirnerhad attendedHegel's lectures on Religion, and in the Fall they again enrolled for his lectureson the History of Philosophy. In time, they drewthe same conclusion:Hegel wasa theologian. Feuerbach'sjudgment of 1843, that "speculative philosophy is thetrue, consistent and rational theology,"22 supports the observation of RichardKroner that "Hegel's philosophy is in itself a speculative religion-Christianityspelt by dialectic."23But whereas Feuerbach thought himself advancing by discovering Hegel'sGeist to be God rationalized,and God to be Man alienated,Stirnerdrew anotherconclusion. Rather than advancing, Feuerbach had merely stumbled, and nowlooked up devoutly to another theophany, Man. To Stirner it really made verylittle difference whether the holy be called Geist, God, Man, or State, for thepostureof all believerswas the same. Stirner repliedto Feuerbach:The supreme being is indeed the essence of man, but,just because it is his essenceand not he himself, it remainsquite immaterial whether we see it outside him andview it as "God," or find it in him and call it "Essence of Man" or "Man." I amneitherGod nor Man, neitherthe supremeessence nor my essence, and thereforeit is all one in the main whetherI think of the essence as in me or outside me.24

Stirner'segoism springs from a conscious and total atheism, with this playfulindifference and apathy to any higher essence being the prerequisite for en-countering one's own being, one's uniqueness, Einzigkeit. The pleasures ofunalienatedself-possession rests upon the degree to which the supernatural s re-jected. Conscious impiety, rejection of the holy in any of its forms, irreverence,and amorality provide the key to self-contentment. The supernaturalappearswhenever the thinker disclaims ownership, Eigenthum, of his thoughts, with theresult that these abstract essences are preparedto take upon them an ontologicalrole. As psychologically concrete entities, these abstract essences such as Man,

20F.Mehring,KarlMarx (Ann Arbor, 1962), 104.21R.W.K. Paterson, The Nihilistic Egoist, 206.22L.Feuerbach,Principlesof the Philosophyof the Future(Indianapolis, 1966),6.23R. Kroner's introduction to Hegel's On Christianity:Early Theological Writings,trans. T. M. Knox (Gloucester,Mass., 1970),53.24M.Stirner, TheEgo and His Own, 33.


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THE REVIVAL OF MAX STIRNER 327God, Mankind, State, andTruth, stand over and against the individualthinkerintheir hostile demands to be served and worshipped. In short, they have turnedagainst their creator. Feuerbachunderstoodthis principlewhen he described Godas the alienatedessence of Man, but he failed to pursuethis logic to its final desti-nation and assert that Man was the alienated essence of the individualego. WithFeuerbach,men were liberatedfrom their servitudeunder God only to be pressedinto the service of Man. From God alone, to Christ, the God-as-Man, to Feuer-bach's Man-as-God, nothing had changed except the abode of God. As Stirnerconcluded, "The HUMAN religion is only the last metamorphosis of the Chris-tian religion."When the transcendentGod of Aquinas became incarnate in Hegel and hu-manized in Feuerbach,it was left for Stirner to take the final step and declaretheindividual to be whatever God there need be. If to Aquinas God is the presup-position of finite being, and to Hegel the presupposition is featureless Beingawaiting determination, and to Feuerbach it is Man, to Stirner it becomes theuniqueego, Der Einzige.I on my part start from a presuppositionin presupposingmyself; but my presup-position does not struggle for its perfection like "Man struggling for hisperfection,"but only servesme to enjoy it and consume it. I consume my presup-position, and nothing else, and exist only in consuming it.... I am creator andcreaturein one.25In short, as a good egoist, he serves only himself.At this point one can agree with Mehring's judgment on Stirner-that he was"the last offshoot of Hegelian Philosophy"-but only if it be taken, as it was notintended, to indicate that the egotism of Stirner was both a destined upshot andnegation of Hegel's dialectical inevitability. Karl LSwith'sjudgment is similar toMehring's,but differs in connotation:Stirner's book ... has usually been considered the anarchic product of an ec-centric, but it is in reality an ultimate logical consequence of Hegel's historicalsystem which-allegorically displaced-it reproducedexactly.26Stirner, like Hegel, saw himself as the heir of a spiritual line which could betraced to the origins of conscious history. But whereas Hegel accepted this pat-rimony, becoming a dutiful servant of the Geist, Sterner rejectedit. He chose tobe without presupposition,without past value or vocation. The final paragraphofTheEgo and His Own reads:I am the owner of my might, and I am so when I know myself as unique. In theunique one the owner himself returns in to his creative nothing, of which he isborn. Everyhigheressence above me, be it God, be it man, weakens the feeling ofuniqueness, and pales only before the sun of this consciousness. If I concernmyself for myself, the uniqueone, then my concern rests on its transitory,mortalcreator,who consumes himself, and I may say:All things are nothingto me.27

25Idem, Ego, 150.26K.Lowith, From Hegel to Nietzsche, 102.27Idem,Ego, 336.


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328 LAWRENCE S. STEPELEVICHThis radical denial, the final demonic Nay-saying, can stand as either a beginningor an end. Stirner preparesfor either Nietszche's Yea-saying or the existentialisttermination of the role of reason in history.

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