A Philosopher for Today?: Max Stirner's Egoistical Nihilism

Abstract

I believe that the underlying philosophy of our culture has become nihilistic. If we pursue the implications of nihilism to their ultimate conclusions, where do we arrive? Very few have dared to do this: Max Stirner, who published a book on this theme in 1845, was one who dared. If we turn back to him we can see that he is the unacknowledged prophet of today’s fashionable culture.The ultimate problems posed by nihilism are examined in a book on this German philosopher, by Dr. R. K. Paterson, The Nihilistic Egoist: Max Stirner, (Hull University Press, 1971). Stirner grew out of the neo-Hegelian movement, and published his one important work in 1945: Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum— ‘The Unique One and His Property’.Stirner belonged to movements which Marx rejected as ‘intellectual nihilists’. Following the nihilist logic to its ultimate implications, he denied God and Christian values, the State’s authority, and all traditional morality.But he went still further, and denied all ethical obligations. In the face of nothingness he embraced nothingness, and he sought no commitment or ultimate responsibility, to man or the universe. ‘What is the commonweal to me?’ All that he was left with was— self. The self and the world were ultimately Nothing—but the Unique One ‘makes Nothing his cause’.