Johann Caspar Schmidt (Bayreuth, October 25th 1806 - Berlin, June 26th 1856), more known under the name of max Stirner , is a German philosopher pertaining to the Jeunes hégéliens or hégéliens of left, considered as one of the precursors of the Existentialisme, the Nihilisme of the Anarchisme and particularly of the individualistic Anarchisme, although he always refused itself the qualifier of anarchist. Its philosophy is an indictment against all the higher powers to which one subjects oneself against his interest; it exhorts each one has to be adapted what is in its capacity.

Biography

Johann Caspar Schmidt, known as max Stirner is born on October 25th, 1806 with Bayreuth, in Bavaria. One owes the little which one knows of his life to the considerable work of the thinker and German anarchistic writer of Scottish origin John Henry Mackay. His/her father, Albert Christian Heinrich Schmidt, sculptor of flutes, dies six months after his birth. His/her mother remarie with a pharmacist and they settle with Kulm. Its pseudonym Stirner comes to him from the nickname which gave him his/her classmates in reference to his broad face ( Stirn in German).

After its school course, it begins academic works with Berlin. He studies the Philologie, the Philosophie and the Théologie. He follows the courses of Marheineke, Schleiermacher and especially of Hegel, in philosophy of the religion in particular. Its studies will be complicated by the madness of his/her mother of which it will have to be occupied. Thus, in 1834, after eight years of painful studies (which it could have made twice less time), it obtains only the facultas docendi limited. It is entitled to teach the old languages, German, the history, philosophy and the religious instruction. In 1837, he marries the illegitimate girl midwife who places it, Agnès Butz. This one, basic extraction and little cultivated, die in layers in 1838. October 1st, 1839, it enters an institution of young girls to Berlin. Towards the end of 1841, it starts to attend the freien or " men libres" , group made up around Bruno Bauer, which met in Berlin in establishments of drink, in particular the bar with wine Hippel on Friedrichtraße. Freien criticized the revealed religion, the policy of the time, and discussed all the night highly. Stirner there côtoie Bruno Bauer, Ludwig Buhl, Karl Nauwerck, Arnold Ruge, Otto Wigand, its future editor, and the young person Friedrich Engels. If Karl Marx belonged to this club, it left it before the arrival of Stirner. It seems that, although they knew themselves of reputation, Marx and Stirner never met. On the other hand, Engels and Stirner seem to be well-known: Engels writes that they were " good amis". The only portrait of Stirner is hand of Engels, on a request for J.H Mackay. Stirner is an unobtrusive member of Freien: it takes part little in the exchanges and debates, being often satisfied to observe with distance while smoking a cigar, only luxury of its scanty life. It only takes part in the discussion very late in the night or when it is defied.

It begins its literary career with recensions, works of Bruno Bauer in particular, and in writings of support for the theses of the young people hégéliens. Between 1841 and 1843, it publishes various articles which locate it in the line line of the Jeunes hégéliens, in particular Art and Religion , the false principle of our education , and an article on mysteries of Paris of Eugene Sue.

In 1843, he marries a woman belonging to the " freien" , Marie Dahnhärdt, feminist young person and idealist having inherited his father. Stirner will dedicate its book the Single one and its property to " my very dear Marie Dahnhärdt". The book appears at the end of 1844 with the year 1845. The book is immediately censured, censures raised at the end of two days, the book being regarded as " too much absurd to be dangereux". the Single one and its property had an significant impact on the thought of 1845, it moves the men cultivated while attacking with the idols and the bases by the company; it causes polemical sharp and provides effective arguments against the Communisme and in particular Proudhon as against the philosophy of Feuerbach to which it will be fatal. It falls then little by little into the lapse of memory for one half-century, even if one can consider a clandestine reception of the work.

At the exit of its book, Stirner leaves its post of professor. In 1845, he answers criticisms of his book in an article of the newspaper of Wigand entitled criticisms of Stirner . The same year, he writes a translation of the political Dictionnaire of economy of Jean-Baptiste Say, then in 1846 a translation of the Richesse of the nations of Adam Smith.

In 1845, it tries to open, with the dowry of his wife, a dairy in Berlin, but the company goes bankrupt and it is found covered of debts. At the end of 1846, his wife leaves it. In 1848, it is in Berlin but does not take part in the Révolution of Mars. It will not publish then any more, in 1852, qu ' a compilation of various texts, of Auguste Count in particular, entitled Histoire of the Reaction . Fallen in misery, it is continued by its creditors and will go twice in prison. He dies on June 26th, 1856 in Berlin of a puncture of fly. Only of the Jeunes hégéliens the present one at its burial was Bruno Bauer.

The Single one and its property

the Single one and its property is the principal work of max Stirner. It is published for the first time at the end of 1844 with the year 1845.

In the form, the book is diverting. So with the first access, it seems not to have of plan and to randomly tackle various subjects pages, however, while looking at there well, one finds the same progressively taken again topics book and increasingly thorough.

Stirner uses much the language, in particular to argue and support its assertions. It often has recourse to the homonymy, the etymology, the word games; sometimes it shows that the direction of a word was deteriorated by Christianity (as Nietzsche in the " will do it; Genealogy of morals in particular), sometimes it restores the old direction of a word to support its point of view.

The introduction of the book is entitled " I did not base my Cause on rien". The book is divided into two parts (" The homme" and " Moi"), and it ends in a conclusion called " Unique".

In the first part, it analyzes the various forms of tender which " undergoes; the individu". Stirner proclaims that the religions and the ideologies are based above all on superstitions. Thus, the Nationalism, the state control, the Liberalism, the Socialism, the Communism or the Humanisme are denounced like superstitions, ideas to which one subjects oneself against his interest. Stirner, like says it Camus, " fact places nette" , and Christian God, the Spirit hégelien, the State, the Man of Feuerbach and humanistic are thus denounced like as many phantoms, like ideas without bodies nor life, always distinct from Single, like idols being opposed to the supremacy of the Single one. Stirner is drawn up against all the doctrines, all the dogmas which require the sacrifice of the individual to an alleged cause higher than itself.

The belief as a God, or the Man such as Feuerbach hears it, can be compared with the belief in the phantoms, the spirits. Stirner exploits the word spirit besides and scoffs Hegel which made Christian assertion " God is esprit" a philosophical truth. He enumerates the various culprits of the tender of the man, the first of which he arranges the State, which persecutes the man, even when he claims human rights. The State aims to found a poor, reasonable company. The authority of the State impersonal, hypocritical, is diluted, which makes it even more unbearable imperceptible and. The company institutes, as for it, a dependence between the men, by organizing work: it also, this “new Master”, this “new phantom”, alienates the man. In the same way, Stirner denounces all the religions and the ideologies, which he regards as superstitions. In its polemic, it attacks the " insurrections théologiques" that he sees in the philosophy of the hégeliens of left to which he belongs (Bruno Bauer, Ludwig Feuerbach, Arnold Ruge) like in incipient Communism (Proudhon, Wilhelm Weitling, Moses Hess, Karl Marx), because just as the old ones, by the rites of purification and in Christianity, worked to idealize reality, the modern ones want to carry out the ideal, the incarnation. And modern, laic, after Protestantism had interiorized the morals which was external in the chrisianism (the Church), want to remove God and preserve morals in a form or another, and to thus perpetuate a domination; our atheists, known as Stirner, are really of pious people.

In the second part, Stirner wants to return to the man his freedom and to restore the sovereignty and the autonomy of the Single one. Thus, Stirner preaches total selfishness, while making of all its property, while being placed at the top of all: " for Me, there is nothing above Moi". Let us note that the selfishness, often condemned by morals and in particular the Christianisme, often employed pejoratively, is transformed by Stirner into something of honourable and healthy which one does not have to have shame. In addition, for Stirner, l'" Homme" is still an abstract general information which does not exhaust the individuality of each one, because each one is single, and by there, it is " more than homme". Ego single of Stirner is not a thought, it is inaccessible to the thought, it is inexpressible. One can say that Stirner is addressed directly to each one. Thus, " would not have to be said; Ego is single and indicible" , but " I am single and indicible".

The Single one is sovereign, it does not alienate with any person nor any idea, it considers the whole of the world as its property in the direction where it adapts all that its capacity enables him to adapt; thus, all that is not him, the rest of the world, does not have, for him, which the vocation to be its " aliment". One often saw in the Single one of Stirner an unable individual of any life in society; one will note however that Stirner devotes a long passage on this point, where it tackles the question of the relationship of Single with the others. With the difference in the traditional reports/ratios of the company, reports/ratios forced and placed under the sign of the tender to the law, in the State, Stirner considers a free form of association, to which no one is not held, an association of egoists where the cause is not association but that which in fact part; this association is not, for the Single one, a tender, but a multiplication of its power. Moreover, the association which it considers is transitory, it lasts only as long as those which form part of it find there counts to them.

Importance of work

The philosophy of Stirner inspired by sharp debates under the feathers of Benjamin Tucker, Dora Marsden, Robert Anton Wilson, Karl Marx, Georg Simmel, Rudolph Steiner, Albert Camus, Emile Armand like at the Situationnistes, and will also influence the Dadaïsme and the Surréalisme.

the Single one and its Property , as of its publication in 1844, arouses a great popular and political interest, in particular by the polemic which it engages with the Jeunes hégéliens, the humanism of Feuerbach and Communism (or socialism, at the time the two terms were identical), but also hegelianism and Christianity. The period of success is nevertheless of short duration, and delivers it and the author sink in the lapse of memory for one half-century, until one of serf like theoretical justification of the individualistic anarchism, whose Stirner would be the father (John Henry Mackay, Victor Basch). Since, the text regularly knows renewed interests, often due to divergences of interpretation which can be explained by translations very related to varied political movements.

The book of Stirner shook the German medium intellectual, because Stirner destroys all that oppresses the individual and prevents the deployment of its force, its book attacks the base of any company, such as the religion, morals or the law. Thus Lange, in its History of the materialism , in connection with the book of Stirner, fact allusion to the book " most radical that one connaisse". Paradoxically the wild polemic engaged by Marx against the Single one and its Property makes of it a reading impossible to circumvent for which wants to include/understand the Marxisme. The criticism of Stirner by Karl Marx (that this last calls Saint max ), which constitutes nearly the three quarters of the German Ideology , is indeed regarded as decisive in its detachment of the humanistic philosophy of Feuerbach, of the theses of Proudhon, in its final rupture with the Utopian socialism and in the development of the famous theory of the historical Matérialisme, first base of socialism " scientifique".

Stirner is sometimes regarded as a precursor of the Post-structuralism and in particular of certain designs of Michel Foucault in his book the words and the things , designs concerning the end of the man (Stirner, faithful to its radical nominalism, reduced the man with the simple word).

One can also note that the book of Stirner has a special place in the history of philosophy since it devotes, by its critic of the movement young person-hégélien, the historical decomposition of the Hégélianisme, which was then the quasi-official philosophy of Prussia, and beyond the end of the German Idéalisme. This book even could be regarded as the last book of philosophy, its death certificate to some extent, it is in particular the opinion of Moses Hess in its text " The last philosophes".

Søren Kierkegaard, without never explicitly evoking the name of Stirner or its book, seems to speak about it in an implicit way, in particular in Post-Scriptum with the philosophical Crumbs .

It is very probable that max Stirner had an influence on Friedrich Nietzsche. However this last never mentions him, but he advises with one of his pupils of reading his book which he describes like " the most consequent thing that us ayons". (cf " Memories on Nietzsche" , of Franz Overbeck and " Nietzsche and the philosophie" of Gilles Deleuze)

Generally, one can note a reception important but often clandestine and last under silence of " Unique."

Quotations

Extracts of Art and Religion

• “ If art constitutes the object and the religion lives only by sequence with this object, philosophy is distinguished very clearly from the one and other (...) For the philosopher, god is as indifferent as a stone: he is the atheist more decided. If it deals with God, it is not to venerate it but to reject it . ”

Extracts of the Single one and its property

• “ For Me it has nothing with the top Me there . ”

• “ the Man killed God to only become itself it… only God in the skies . ”
• “ the religion of Humanity is only the last metamorphosis of the Christian religion . ”
• “ the fear of God itself, is for a long time shaken, and a " athéisme" more or less conscious, recognizable outside with a general abandonment of the worship, involuntarily became the dominant note. But one deferred on the Man what one took with God, and the power of Humanity increased by what piety lost in importance: " Homme" is current God, and the fear of the Man replaced the old fear of God. But as the man represents only another supreme being, the supreme being did nothing but metamorphose itself, and the fear of the Man is only another form of the fear of God. Our atheists are pious people. ”
• “ the most recent revolts against God is only theological insurrections . ”
• “ Protestantism properly organized in the man a true service of " occulte" organizes;. The spy, the guettor " Conscience" , each movement of the spirit supervises, and very gesture, very thought is in its eyes a " business of conscience" , i.e. a business of police force. It is this scission of the man in " instincts naturels" and " conscience" (interior rabble and internal order) which makes the Protestant . ”
• “ Any vagrancy displeases to the middle-class man besides, and there exist also vagrants of the spirit, who, choking under the roof which sheltered their fathers, from there will seek themselves with far more air and more space. Instead of remaining with the corner of the family hearth to stir up ashes of a moderated opinion, instead of holding for indisputable truths what comforted and alleviated so many generations before them, they cross the barrier which closes the paternal field and from go away, by the daring ways of criticism, where carries out their untameable curiosity to doubt. ”
• “ the freedom of the people is not My freedom . ”
• “ What gives you the right, it is your force, your power, and anything else . ”
• “ When the proletarian succeeds in founding the " Société" that it keeps in mind, and in which any difference between rich person and the poor must disappear, it will be gueux; but to be gueux will be for him something, and it could make of this word " gueux" a title as honourable as became the title of middle-class man thanks to the Revolution. The gueux one is its ideal, and we all must become gueux . ”
• “ I am the owner of my power, and I am it when I know myself " Unique". In l'" Unique" , the owner turns over to Nothing creative which it left. Any Being higher than me, than it is God, the Man or the History, weakens the feeling of my unicity and does not start to fade in front of the sun of this conscience. If I base my cause on Me, the Single one, it rests then on its transitory and perishable creator who consume itself and I then to say: I based my cause on nothing . ”

Engels on Stirner

Look at Stirner, look at it, the peaceful enemy of very forced
For the moment, it still drinks beer, soon it will drink blood as if it were of water

As soon as the others push their wild cry " With bottom the kings "
Stirner supplements " at once; With bottom also the laws "

And Stirner to proclaim full with dignity;
You bind the will and you dare to be called free
That you are thus accustomed to slavery
With bottom the dogma, bottom the law

Friedrich Engels ( Triumph of the faith , héroïco-comic epopee, 1842)

Random links:

Urbain the Glassmaker | Jagiellonia Białystok | George Pau-Langevin | Own way | Leopoldo Nobili