Max Stirner

Max Stirner (pseudonym for Johann Caspar Schmidt, born October 25, 1806 Bayreuth, † June 25, 1856 in Berlin) was a German philosopher and journalist.

Life

Johann Caspar Schmidt came from middle-class background. His father made ​​woodwind instruments; he died when Johann Caspar was half a year old. His mother remarried two years later, one pharmacist and moved from Bayreuth to Culm / West Prussia. Johann Caspar grew up in Bayreuth with his godparents. After high school he studied from 1826 to 1828 in Berlin Hegel, Schleiermacher, and others. 1828/1829 he was enrolled at the University of Erlangen. After a long break, he studied 1832/1833 two more semesters in Berlin to meet the prerequisite for the exercise of the teaching profession. He graduated in 1835 from, but then did not get any government job and took his first job in 1839 at a private school for young ladies in Berlin. Since 1841 he associated there with the "Free ", a debating circle of opposition ( liberal and socialist ) academics and journalists, which belonged, among others, Bruno Bauer, Edgar Bauer, Karl Friedrich Köppen, Ludwig Buhl, Adolf Friedrich Rutenberg, Hermann Maron and briefly Friedrich Engels. At this time he published articles and newspaper correspondence, both anonymously and under the pseudonym "Max Stirner".

From around 1843 he worked on the manuscript of his work The Ego and Its Own. This was released in October 1844 Release Date 1845 immediately before, he had given up his job. ; The reasons for this are not known.

Stirner was married twice. His first wife died in 1838 in childbirth; the child could not be saved. 1843 married Marie Dähnhardt Stirner, the daughter of a wealthy pharmacist from Gadebusch, in Berlin at the "Free " backwards. Both bride and groom decorated the wedding reception to a shapely satire on church marriage ceremony. Stirner's book The Ego and Its Own, published a year later, bears the dedication "To my darling Marie Dähnhardt ", presumably a bitter and sarcastic allusion to the change in his wife. The couple separated 1846. Marie converted to the Catholic Church and went to England.

Max Stirner translated 1847 Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations into German, continued to write articles and last compiled a compilation history of the reaction ( 1852). He died in 1856 due to an infection caused by an insect bite, and was buried at the Second Sophia Cemetery in Berlin -Mitte in the Dept. V-8 53, G3. His estate must be considered lost. Very few original documents by and about Stirner have been preserved. Also, there are no contemporary portraits, only two sketches of Friedrich Engels, one of 1842, which Stirner as part of a group image of the "free " shows, the other, a head profile that he has made ​​nearly fifty years later from memory. The latter is, according to contemporaries Stirner, however, " not similar " look. The writer and Stirner admirer of John Henry Mackay wrote a biography of Stirner (1898, exp. 1910, ext. 1914), which hardly anything could be added later.

Work

Philosophy

Stirner is the history of philosophy usually associated with the Hegelian left or the Young Hegelians. In The Ego and Its Own, although he criticized Hegel, but primarily the Young Hegelians, including Bruno Bauer and Ludwig Feuerbach. You who thought to justify the atheistic education in Germany after the German idealism, he cried mockingly: "Our atheists are pious people. " (EE, 203) [note 1] What he meant by that, he summarized as follows: " The Hereafter outside us, however, is swept away, and the great enterprise of the Enlightenment accomplished; Only the beyond in Us has become a new heaven and calls us to new sky storms. " ( from the preamble to the 2nd Division of the Sole - EE, 170)

Stirner's philosophy has, in essence, net of any polemic, to practice: after the Enlightenment it was necessary to really create the oft-cited output from the " immaturity " to also eliminate the "hereafter in Us ." The so incurred or beschaffenen people Stirner called the "Owner" (from " everything", including his own ), provocative even the " selfish ". Owner may in principle arise in two ways: either by the speak auto therapeutic act of " rebellion ", understood as the " working out of my out of the established " (EE, 354), or by a kind of education that the child growing up with the owner impeded as little as possible (see section " Education" ).

The Stirner's "Beyond in Us " means roughly what Sigmund Freud called the superego later [note 2] So a psychic agency, which has been largely unconsciously formed during the process of education and later as conscience, as a complex of values ​​and morals, the ( cultural ) identity etc. regulates the behavior of the people. Stirner used to determine that instance the concept of the sacred.

"Against the Saints to lose all sense of power and courage ... And yet nothing is sacred by itself, but by My canonization, by my saying, my judgment, my squats, just by my - conscience. Everything ..., what are your cherishes a respect or reverence, worthy of the name of the saint. (EE, 77) "

Against the Saints to feel no fear, but awe; it is honorable, but we fear it at the same time. , S.

" In the fear alone still remains the attempt to free themselves from the dreaded ... 's contrast is in awe quite different. Here is not only feared, but also honored: what is feared has become an inward power which I can not escape me ... I 'm completely in his power and try the exemption does not once more ... I and the Dreaded are one. (EE, 78) "

There are numerous passages in the only ones in which Stirner, looking for some with other terms such as obsession, Spooky, rafters, peculiarity, even my affiliation, address this subject.

The shape of the owner ( synonym: the egoist, the only ones) is at the center of Stirner's thinking. From here, Stirner criticized both Hegel, Feuerbach and Bauer, but also the anarchist Pierre -Joseph Proudhon, the Communists Wilhelm wide Ling and others. From the standpoint of the owner of Stirner criticized the progressive political trends of his time (the conservative or reactionary stand for him beneath contempt ) under the headings of political, social and humane liberalism; continue sublime ideas such as freedom and humanity, which the owner does not feel obliged, and institutions such as the state, law, marriage, property, etc. The property of the Sole owner or, as it appears prominently in his book title, is not guaranteed by the state and law, but " all":

" As the world has become a property at a material with which I begin what I want, so also the mind as property must sink to the level of a material before I wear no more awe. " (EE, 402) "

The much-quoted dictum Stirner "I'm not about Me " (EE, 5) means just that: the owner does not accept anything " about himself ," nothing sacred; he is free from that produced educational superego, of the more or less " obsessed" with the most recent people (EE, 36, 47, passim ) are. Stirner, therefore, is considered a classic of amorality and the ethical egoism. This aspect of Stirner's philosophy is in some tension to his concept of the "Association " - a blurred designed counterpart to the " state" of the non- owners - the preferable social life and form of cooperation of owners.

Education

Even in his book The false principle of our education (1842 ) stated Stirner, the question of education as " so important, as it can be any one of our social only, yes it is the most important. " (PKR, 75) For he was of the opinion "that a company may not be new, as long as those who they represent and constitute, remain the old ones. " (EE, 231) Stirner sees around him " nothing but submissive people ", and this in all layers: " What are our witty and educated subjects for the most part? Hohnlächelnde slave owners and myself -. Slaves " (PKR, 90f ). His vision is a future "free ", " personal ", " whole ", " true", "reasonable ", " basic " or " self-creative " person. In the only ones (1844 ), he shall be called the owner.

Here Stirner is most evident and most substantial as the antipode of Hegel, who taught that education should primarily " Breeding [ be ], which has the sense to break the self-will of the child ... The rational must appear to him as his most characteristic subjectivity ... The morality must have been planted as a sensation in the child ... " ( Elements of the Philosophy of right, § § 174, 175, Add. ).

Stirner sees exactly is the evil that "the moral influence of the main ingredient of our education " is, (EE, 332) precisely that " false principle ", that would be eliminated. " The moral influence takes as its start where humiliation begins, yes he is nothing more than this humiliation itself, the refraction and diffraction of courage to humility down. " (EE, 88) The evil exists, therefore, is that " our whole education it starts to generate feelings in us, ie they enter us, instead of generating the same to us to decide how they might turn out well. " the latter would " own ", would feelings, their " owner " I am. The former would be me, though initially alien to the nature of its impression soon "holy"; I would not be their owners, but they were, so to speak, the owner of my, I " owned " by them. (EE, 70f )

Stirner developed no theory of education; he is only the opinion of its decisive criterion for such if they really improve the lives of the individual and of society, that is to continue " the great enterprise of the Enlightenment ". He anticipates thus also a criticism of the later historical materialism, which expects the emergence of the new man solely on the basis of historical law: "A [ political ] revolution is certainly the end [ of the old states ] do not induce, if not before an outrage [to " Owner " ] is finished!" (EE, 356)

Effect

Although most representations of the history of philosophy, Stirner mention only in passing, he has not only Karl Marx, but also numerous other thinkers ( often assumed Friedrich Nietzsche) so far affected, as they their teaching (mostly unspoken ) against his " nihilistic " Ideas developed. Marx wrote a comprehensive critique ( Saint Max ), it does not publish and conceal Stirner's role in his conception of historical materialism. "As for Nietzsche ," writes Rüdiger Safranski, " it seems a remarkable concealment [ Stirner ] with him to give. " This secretive effect Stirner have also continued later: Edmund Husserl did indeed once spoke of the " try generic force " Stirner, but it never mentioned in his work, Carl Schmitt was deeply impressed as a student of Stirner, years later, was been in 1947, in his prison cell of his " haunted ", failed to mention him in his work, however. Georg Simmel had contact with this " strange kind of individualism " deliberately prohibited; Nietzsche had even an accusation of plagiarism by Eduard von Hartmann's drawn, of Nietzsche's knowledge of Stirner's ideas thus demonstrated that Nietzsche in his Untimely viewing Second piece of precisely those passages. of Hartmann 's work have criticized, in which it related to an explicit rejection of Stirner's thinking.

Stirner is sometimes referred to as a solipsist, often as a precursor of anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism and existentialism, but this is Stirner's philosophy of consistent individuality only partially meet.

Anarchism as a competing with Marxism doctrine Stirner was in polemical assigned by Friedrich Engels. But Stirner was because the prominent anarchist Bakunin, Proudhon and Kropotkin had been silent to him, anarchists always controversial. Most of them held his ideas with those of anarchism to be incompatible, and very few, such as John Henry Mackay and in the 1970s Kurt Zube, Stirner explicitly designated as its mastermind.

Stirner was after he had been forgotten by one for about half a century, rediscovered twice: 1) around the turn of the 20th century in the wake of Nietzsche enthusiasm; 2) in 1966 when the Marxist author Hans G Helms him in the face " of the dangerous development of the ideological position ", in a 600 -page treatise represented as " most consistent ideologues " of the currently " ruling class in all modern industrial nations ." On the edge of Marx research but was also increasingly clear what role Stirner ' had conception of historical materialism, so that Wolfgang Eßbach 1982 in a careful study of the thesis dared Stirner's " materialism of the self" is ( almost) equally with Marx in Marx " to provide materialism of the circumstances ". After the loss of validity of Marxism two younger authors went even further in the revaluation Stirner. Bernd A. Laska since 1985 in several, mostly reception history work Stirner (next to La Mettrie in the 18th, Wilhelm Reich in the 20th century) as one of three " key players [ before ], with the help of a new perspective on an impasse. guessed education (incl. anarchisms ) can be obtained " Saul Newman sees Stirner also a key figure: he calls him a proto- post-structuralists (see postanarchism ), which anticipated the modern post-structuralists such as Foucault, Lacan, Deleuze, Derrida, among others rudimentary, but at the same time - and that's why he was important today - ordered out about them and, in contrast to this, a starting point for today this "non- essentialist " critique of ideology have found. Den with a 1000 - page work, so far the most elaborate attempt Stirner - to follow up on the helmet, but on a sociological basis - as yet unrecognized ideologues of the "modern individuality " display, put 2010 before Alexander cuff. Modern society have Stirner's figure of the " unique", especially in the decades around 1900, " as many figures gave [ s ] " and " in this diversity so thoroughly incorporated him that his philosophical Creator long forgotten, but he is everywhere. "

Honors

His tomb was entered by the Senate's resolution of 22 March 1994 as an honorary grave of the city of Berlin in the list of the Berlin memorial graves.

In Stirner's birthplace in Bayreuth since 1947, carries the Max Stirner - road its name. There is also a Stirnerstraße in Berlin ( Steglitz district of the borough of Steglitz -Zehlendorf ) and Nuremberg.

Others

The birthplace of Max Stirner in the Maximilian Strasse 31 in Bayreuth was demolished in 1970. The donated by John Henry Mackay memorial plaque was taken to the successor structure.

A Max Stirner - Gesellschaft eV was founded in 2002. She pulled on the end of September 2013 itself.

Works

• The Ego and Its Own, Wigand, Leipzig 1845 ( digitized in the Internet Archive, digitized and full text in German Text Archive )
• History of Reaction, General German publishing house, Berlin 1852 ( unveränd. Reprints: Scientia, Aalen 1967)

Smaller fonts (for details in Mackay ( Eds.) or Laska ( Eds.) )

• About Education Acts, 1834 ( Erstveröff. 1920)
• Christianity and anti- Christianity, 1842
• About B. Bauer 's trombone of Judgement, 1842
• The false principle of our education, 1842
• Art and Religion, 1842
• About the obligation of citizens to any religious denomination
• About " The Mysteries of Paris " ( Eugène Sue ), 1843
• Some Preliminary from the Love State, 1844
• Recensenten Stirner, 1845
• The philosophical reactionaries. The modern Sophists by Kuno Fischer, 1847

Expenditure ( selection)

The Ego and Its Own

• Paul Lauterbach ( Eds.): Max Stirner: The Ego and His Own ( = Loeb Classical Library 3057-3060 ). Reclam, Leipzig 1892 and passim ( digitized in the Google Book Search ).
• Ahlrich Meyer (Ed. ): Max Stirner: The Ego and His Own ( = Loeb Classical Library 3057 ). Reclam, Stuttgart 1972 and passim, ISBN 978-3-15-003057-8.
• Bernd Kast (ed.): Max Stirner: The Ego and Its Own. Fully annotated student edition. Karl Alber, Freiburg / Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-495-48342-8.

Smaller fonts

• John Henry Mackay (ed.): Max Stirner 's Smaller fonts and rebuttals. Schuster & Loeffler, Berlin 1898 ( digitized ); Second, expanded edition, Berlin 1914 ( digitized ) (smaller fonts, articles, notes)
• Bernd A. Laska ( Eds.): Parerga, reviews, replicas. LSR -Verlag, Nuremberg, 1986, ISBN 3-922058-32-9 (smaller fonts)

Translations

• Jean- Baptiste Say: Detailed textbook of practical political economy. German with notes by Max Stirner. 3 volumes. Otto Wigand, Leipzig 1845.
• Adam Smith: investigations into the nature and causes of national wealth. German with notes by Max Stirner. ( = National economists of the French and the English edited by Max Stirner Vol 5-8). Otto Wigand, Leipzig from 1846 to 1847.