Max Stirner's Egoism and Nihilism | Larry Alan Schiereck | SA1055

During the early 1970s a ‘revival’ took place of the philosophy of Max Stirner, born Johann Caspar Schmidt (1806-1856), whose book Der Einzige und Sein Eigentum has been called a ‘revolutionary anarchist manual’, a ‘Banker’s Bible’, a ‘structural model of petit-bourgeois self-consciousness’ and other names since its appearance in 1844. The revival produced the most comprehensive study of Stirner in English to that date, R. W. K. Paterson’s 1971 The Nihilistic Egoist: Max Stirner. While Paterson undertook to review Der Einzige as substantive philosophical discourse, paradoxically, and theologically, he would conclude that Stirner was doing metaphysics, to the point of a solipsistic frivolity. This study examines the fascinating but ultimately unsuccessful, if not buffoonish, case against Stirner by Paterson. I conclude that we should rethink Stirner not as metaphysician but as social critic and educator, a “root”, ground-level or primal thinker, more relevant today than ever. And th