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The Prussian lion circling around the Austrian elephant, illustration by Adolph Menzel, 1846

Austria and Prussia had a long running conflict and rivalry for supremacy in Central Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries, called Deutscher Dualismus (German dualism) in the German language area. While wars were a part of the rivalry, it was also a race for prestige to be seen as the legitimate political force of the German-speaking peoples. The conflict first culminated in the Seven Years' War; however, relations were not always hostile; sometimes, both countries were able to cooperate, such as during the Napoleonic Wars and the Second Schleswig War.

Background[link]

The Margraviate of Brandenburg was officially declared one of the seven electorates of the Holy Roman Empire by the Golden Bull of 1356. It had extended its territory into the eastern Neumark region, and after the War of the Jülich succession by the 1614 Treaty of Xanten also gained the Duchy of Cleves as well as the counties of Mark and Ravensberg located in northwestern Germany. It finally grew out of the Imperial borders when in 1618 the Hohenzollern electors became dukes of Prussia, then a fief of the Polish Crown, and the lands of Brandenburg-Prussia were ruled in personal union. In 1653, the "Great Elector" Frederick William acquired Farther Pomerania and reached full sovereignty in Ducal Prussia by the 1657 Treaty of Wehlau concluded with the Polish king John II Casimir Vasa. In 1701, Frederick William's son and successor Frederick I reached the consent of Emperor Leopold I to proclaim himself a King "in" Prussia at Königsberg, with respect to the fact that he still held the electoral dignity of Brandenburg and the royal title was only valid in the Prussian lands outside the Empire.

The centuries-long rise of the Austrian House of Habsburg had already begun with King Rudolph's victory at the 1278 Battle on the Marchfeld and the final obtainment of the Imperial crown by Emperor Frederick III in 1452. His descendants Maximilian I and Philip the Fair by marriage gained the inheritance of the Burgundian dukes and the Spanish Crown of Castile (tu felix Austria nube), and under Emperor Charles V, the Habsburg realm evolved to a European great power. In 1526 his brother Ferdinand I inherited the Lands of the Bohemian Crown as well as the Kingdom of Hungary outside the borders of the Empire, laying the foundation of the Central European Habsburg Monarchy. From the 15th to the 18th century, all Holy Roman Emperors were Austrian archdukes of the Habsburg dynasty, who also held the Bohemian and Hungarian royal dignity.

After the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Habsburgs had to accept the 1555 Peace of Augsburg and failed to strengthen their Imperial authority in the disastrous Thirty Years' War. Upon the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, Austria had to deal with the rising Brandenburg-Prussian power in the north, that replaced the Electorate of Saxony as the leading Protestant estate. The efforts made by the "Great Elector" and the "Soldier-king" Frederick William I had created a progressive state with a highly effective Prussian Army that, sooner or later, had to collide with the Habsburg claims to power.

History[link]

The rivalry is largely held to have begun when upon the death of the Habsburg Emperor Charles VI in 1740, King Frederick the Great of Prussia launched an invasion of Austrian-controlled Silesia, starting the Silesian Wars against Maria Theresa. Frederick had broke his promise to acknowledge the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 and the indivisibility of the Habsburg territories, whereby he sparked off the pan–European War of the Austrian Succession. He decisively defeated the Austrian troops at the 1742 Battle of Chotusitz, whereafter Maria Theresa, by the Treaties of Breslau and Berlin, had to cede the bulk of the Silesian lands to Prussia.

Frederick receives homage from Silesian estates,
wall painting by Wilhelm Camphausen, 1882

At the time, Austria still claimed the mantle of the Empire and was the chief force of the disunited German states. Until 1745, Maria Theresa was able to regain the Imperial crown from her Wittelsbach rival Charles VII by occupying his Bavarian lands, but, despite her Quadruple Alliance with Great Britain, the Dutch Republic and Saxony failed to recapture Silesia: The Second Silesian War started with Frederick's invasion into Bohemia in 1744 and after the Prussian victory at the 1745 Battle of Kesselsdorf, by the Treaty of Dresden the status quo ante bellum was confirmed: Frederick kept Silesia but finally acknowledged the accession of Maria Theresa's husband, Emperor Francis I. The terms were again confirmed by the final Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748.

Maria Theresa, still chafing under the loss of "the most beautiful gem of my crown", took the opportunity of the breathing space to implement several civil and military reforms within the Austrian lands, like the establishment of the Theresian Military Academy at Wiener Neustadt in 1751. Her capable state chancellor, Prince Wenzel Anton of Kaunitz, succeeded in the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756, allying with the former Habsburg nemesis France under King Louis XV in order to isolate Prussia. Frederick, however, had completed the "stately quadrille" by the conclusion of the Treaty of Westminster with Great Britain. He again took action by a preemptive war, invading Saxony and opening the Seven Years' War.

Nevertheless, the conquest of Prague failed and moreover, the king had to deal with Russian forces attacking East Prussia while Austrian troops entered Silesia. His situation worsened, when Austrian and Russian forces united to inflict a crushing defeat on him at the 1759 Battle of Kunersdorf. Frederick, on the brink, was saved by the discord among the victors in the "Miracle of the House of Brandenburg", when Empress Elizabeth of Russia died on 5 January 1762 and her successor Peter III concluded peace with Prussia. By the 1763 Treaty of Hubertusburg, Austria, for the third time, had to acknowledge the Prussian annexations. The usurper kingdom had prevailed against the European great powers and would play a vital role in the "Concert of Europe".

Austria and Prussia both would fight France in the Napoleonic Wars; after their conclusion, the German states were reorganized into a more unified 37 separate states of the German Confederation. German nationalists began to demand a unified Germany, especially by 1848 but were conflicted over the best nation-state to accomplish this, a question that became known as the German question. The "Little Germany" (Kleindeutschland) solution favored Protestant Prussia, while "Big Germany" (Grossdeutschland) favored Catholic Austria taking control of the separate German states. The Schleswig-Holstein Question also became tied up in the debate; the Second Schleswig War saw Denmark lose to the combined forces of Austria and Prussia, but Prussia would later gain full control of the province after the Austro-Prussian War, thus saw Austria being excluded from Germany. After the Franco-Prussian War, Germany was unified under Prussia to become the German Empire in 1871, and the rivalry is often seen as subsiding after the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Germany had become the superior power to Austria-Hungary.

See also[link]

• German question
• War of the Bavarian Succession
• Fürstenbund
• German confederation
• Erfurt Union
• Punctation of Olmütz
• Kleindeutschland and Großdeutschland
• Austro-Prussian War
• Unification of Germany

Wolfgang Schirmacher (born 1944) is an editor and educator in the field of philosophy and the program director at the European Graduate School. He has edited many journals and written books,^[1] as well as developed curriculum in philosophical disciplines at major universities.

Biography[link]

Schirmacher has taught philosophy at the University of Hamburg, is a former Core Faculty Member of the Media Studies Graduate Program, New School for Social Research, and Director of International Relations, Philosophy and Technology Studies Center, Polytechnic University of New York. He is the editor of the philosophy journals Schopenhauer-Studien and New York Studies in Media Philosophy. He is also an internationally active philosopher of technology with emphasis on media, gene technology, and neuroscience, as well as president of the International Schopenhauer Association, and chair of the Artificial Life Group.^[2]

In Schirmacher's curriculum at the European Graduate School, he gives equal emphasis to theory and practice. Faculty members reflect this cross-disciplinary approach, as they are considered philosophers in their fields as filmmakers, academics, artists and media professionals.

Philosophy[link]

Inspired by a diverse collection of post-Kantian, post-Hegelian philosophers such as Schopenhauer, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Adorno, Merleau-Ponty, Bataille, Arendt, Deleuze, Derrida, and Lyotard, Schirmacher announces the conviction of Modern Technology for first-degree murder of the body. As his mentors do, Schirmacher considers the body as our place of resistance, and its growing influence coincides with the growing threat technological progress seems to make to the bodily sphere.

Homo generator[link]

What Schirmacher calls “homo generator” is a realization of the hope and the angst of the philosophers after Hegel: “a Dasein beyond metaphysics, a human being which needs no Being, no certainty, no truth.” Modern technology is its ambiguous birthplace. Rather than considering homo generator a narrative of progress, technological triumph over nature, or movement to a higher form of living, he describes homo generator as having to face with courage his or her own mortality (complemented by natality) in the climate of ecocide. Homo generator begins to fulfill the artificial existence of humanity, and takes the form of the media artist, as generator of human reality and his/her responsibility for tomorrow's artificial world. Unlike other descriptions of humanity, homo generator addresses our ability to produce new forms of life and determine the biological, as well as the spiritual, future of the earth. Homo generator is in a position to tailor-make evolution, both in gene technology and in media technology.

A phenomenologist at heart, Schirmacher states that homo generator's body politics claims aesthetic perception as the basis of comprehension and interaction. “Homo generator is a concrete beginning, unique but not original, self care without egoism.” He brings attention to our postmodern technology that has abandoned the question of control. The body politics of homo generator states that we are jokes in the universe that will die only with our deaths. “We are the artificial beings among all others, our bodies are artifacts by nature.”

Post-metaphysical ethics[link]

In a paper presented at the International Congress for Phenomenology, Frankfurt, in 1985, and printed in Analecta Husserliana XXII, 1987, titled “The Faces of Compassion: Toward a Post-Metaphysical Ethics,” Schirmacher asks what shape morality will take in the search for an effective ethics for the technological age. He cites Arthur Schopenhauer’s and Albert Schweitzer’s ethics of practical compassion, renewed as a "Humanism of the Other" by what Emmanuel Levinas claims is the "hopeless compassion with all beings" which proves to be moral in the ecological and human crisis. Schirmacher asks in what way compassion shows itself in our life-world and how we can perceive the decisive characteristics of compassion without prior value judgment. “In being the artificial ones we are the open, undetermined ones. Intuitive knowledge knows nothing, and compassion knows no law.” He indicates that “justified individuality,” which practices compassion, is missing in Schopenhauer's model of ethics of compassion, and claims that compassion as a way of living will become tangible for us only when “it has been bent back into an active sensitization…Sensitizing means to develop all senses (the few trained, the numerous untrained [senses]) in a creative process and to do it without fear, without order, without foreknowledge.” He refers to compassion as an intuitive language: faint, yet impossible to ignore.

In a paper presented at the XVIIth World Congress of Philosophy in Montreal 1983, and printed in Social Science Information 23, 3 (1984), titled “The End of Metaphysics – What Does This Mean?” Schirmacher addresses Heidegger’s reduction of the problem of modernity to the notion of the end of metaphysics. He claims that we are the literal proof of this end, or death, seen in the process of the extinction of the human species. It has become clear, he says, that we are far from being what we imagined we were in our metaphysics. He refers to the modern period as the last phase of Western metaphysics, which is today dominant throughout the world in its final form of scientific and technical rationality, and post-modernism as the expression of the expected break with metaphysics at its definitive end, after which there will be no new beginning. The end of metaphysics means that the life-long project of the human species has become, in its historical development, a suicidal enterprise. If we proceed along the way of metaphysics no human beings or objects will survive, leaving only artifacts. Schirmacher claims that a radical change is required for the human species to survive, and if we want to prevent our destruction, we must “learn a "bodily" language which precedes the division into subject and object, and admit the individual to a successful enterprise which needs no planning.”

Schirmacher continues his discussion of the postmodern world by stating that being has become cloning, and that the meaning of cloning has little to do with the scientific-technological act. Humanity protects its virtuality, its principally undefined status, by cloning with media the many ways in which a human being exists. He looks to Lyotard’s Just Gaming to support his position that the postmodern decision is about becoming a player rather than a spectator in the activity of cloning humans in order to allow for a good life. In the spirit of the new name of humanity: homo- generator, with “openness as our existential taste and co-evolutionary power as our design,” what we clone is exactly this attitude of open generating and never a mere copy of anything.

Schirmacher claims that humans are alone and fully responsible for artificial life, which is our only life. By cloning freely with media and designing a life-world in between natality and mortality, we fail to pay attention to the artificial life we generate. His advice is that we must become more experienced in perceiving our imperceptible actions of true humanity. The art of living: enjoying life without knowing why, living happily without expectations and acting without believing in the principles of our action, is rooted in judgment and prudence instead of concepts. Cloning humans with media works to distract our attention from this ethical art of living. In media we simulate humanity to the point of not recognizing ourselves anymore, and this life-consuming activity helps us to stay clear of authentic humanity. In ethical life humanity fulfills itself, of which we are vaguely aware and which we need to forget at once. Schirmacher writes that to work toward this forgetting is media's strongest claim.

Selected bibliography[link]

(editor with Sven Nebelung): German Essays On Psychology. The German Library 62. The Continuum International Publishing Group. New York, London, November 2000, 330 pages, Hardcover, ISBN 0-8264-1237-8.

(editor): German 20th Century Philosophy: The Frankfurt School. The German Library 78. The Continuum International Publishing Group. New York, London, February 2000, 324 pages, Hardcover, ISBN 0-8264-0966-0.

(editor): German Socialist Philosophy: Feuerbach, Marx, Engels. The German Library 40. The Continuum International Publishing Group. New York, London, December 1996, Hardcover, ISBN 0-8264-0748-X.

(editor): German Essays On Science In The 20th Century. The German Library 82. The Continuum International Publishing Group. New York, London, October 1996, 314 pages, Hardcover, ISBN 0-8264-0746-3.

(editor): German Essays On Science In The 19th Century. The German Library 36. The Continuum International Publishing Group. New York, London, September 1996, 330 pages, Hardcover, ISBN 0-8264-0744-7.

(editor): Ethik und Vernunft: Schopenhauer in unserer Zeit. Schopenhauer- Studien 5. Passagen Verlag. Vienna, 1995, 387 pages, Paperback, ISBN 3-85165-023-9.

(editor): Arthur Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer: Philosophical Writings. The German Library 27. The Continuum International Publishing Group. New York, London, July 1994, 300 pages, Paperback, ISBN 0-8264-0729-3.

Schopenhauer, Nietzsche Und Die Kunst. Schopenhauer-Studien 4. Passagen Verlag. Vienna, 1992, 400 pages.

(Editor with Jacques Poulain), Arno Münster (Translation). Penser après Heidegger. La Philosophie en commun. L'Harmattan. Paris, 1992, 360 pages, Paperback (Broché), ISBN 2-7384-1064-2.

Ereignis Technik. Passagen Philosophie 33. Passagen Verlag. Vienna, 1990, 245 pages, Paperback, ISBN 3-900767-36-X.

Schopenhauer In Der Postmoderne. Schopenhauer-Studien 3. Passagen Verlag. Vienna, 1989, 400 pages.

(editor): Zeitkritik Nach Heidegger. Reihe Philosophie 9. Die blaue Eule. Essen, 1988, 240 pages.

Schopenhauer Aktualität: Ein Philosoph wird neu gelesen. Schopenhauer- Studien 1/2. Passagen Verlag. Vienna, 1988, 400 pages.

Schopenhauer. Insel-Almanach 1985. Insel. Frankfurt, 1985, 249 pages, Paperback, ISBN 3-458-14188-X.

Schopenhauer Und Nietzsche. Schopenhauer-Jahrbuch 1984. W.Kramer. Frankfurt, 1984, 326 pages.

Zeit Der Ernte: Studien zum Stand der Schopenhauer-Forschung. Frommann- Holzboog. Stuttgart, 1983, 447 pages.

Technik und Gelassenheit. Zeitkritik nach Heidegger. Fermenta philosophica. Alber Freiburg. München, 1983, 274 pages. Hiroshi Kojima (Partial Translation). Niigata University Press. Niigata, 1986. Ereignis Technik: Heidegger und die Frage nach der Technik. Dissertation. Hamburg, 1980, 310 pages.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Wolfgang Schirmacher Faculty profile at European Graduate School EGS. Biography, bibliography, photos, quotes and video lectures.
• Publications and texts. at European Graduate School
• Wolfgang Schirmacher. Cloning Humans with Media.
• Wolfgang Schirmacher. Media Aesthetics in Europe. In: O-O.

Johann Kaspar Schmidt

Max Stirner, as portrayed by Friedrich Engels
Born	October 25, 1806 Bayreuth, Bavaria
Died	June 26, 1856(1856-06-26) (aged 49) Berlin, Prussia
Era	19th-century philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Precursor to Existentialism, individualist feminism, Nihilism, Individualist anarchism, Post-Modernism, Post-structuralism.
Main interests	Ethics, Politics, Property, Value theory
Notable ideas	Egoist anarchism
Influenced by Hegel,[1] Goethe, Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say
Influenced Frank Brand, Steven T. Byington, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, Saul Newman, Friedrich Nietzsche, Benjamin R. Tucker, John Henry Mackay, Ernst Jünger, Thomas Mann, Rudolf Steiner, Emile Armand, Albert Camus, Hakim Bey, Julius Evola, Carl Schmitt, Renzo Novatore, Adolf Brand, Biófilo Panclasta, Emma Goldman, Bob Black, Miguel Gimenez Igualada, Wolfi Landstreicher, Herbert Read

Johann Kaspar Schmidt (October 25, 1806 – June 26, 1856), better known as Max Stirner (the nom de plume he adopted from a schoolyard nickname he had acquired as a child because of his high brow, in German 'Stirn'), was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the fathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism. Stirner's main work is The Ego and Its Own, also known as The Ego and His Own (Der Einzige und sein Eigentum in German, which translates literally as The Unique One and his Property). This work was first published in 1844 in Leipzig, and has since appeared in numerous editions and translations.

Biography[link]

Max Stirner's birthplace in Bayreuth

Stirner was born in Bayreuth, Bavaria. What little is known of his life is mostly due to the Scottish born German writer John Henry Mackay, who wrote a biography of Stirner (Max Stirner - sein Leben und sein Werk), published in German in 1898 (enlarged 1910, 1914), and translated into English in 2005.

Stirner was the only child of Albert Christian Heinrich Schmidt (1769–1807) and Sophia Elenora Reinlein (1778–1839). His father died of tuberculosis on the April 19, 1807 at the age of 37.^[2] In 1809 his mother remarried to Heinrich Ballerstedt, a pharmacist, and settled in West Prussian Kulm (now Chełmno, Poland).

When Stirner turned 20, he attended the University of Berlin,^[2] where he studied Philology, Philosophy and Theology. He attended the lectures of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who was to become a source of inspiration for his thinking.^[3] While in Berlin in 1841, Stirner participated in discussions with a group of young philosophers called "Die Freien" ("The Free"), and whom historians have subsequently categorized as the Young Hegelians. Some of the best known names in 19th century literature and philosophy were involved with this discussion group, including Bruno Bauer, Karl Marx (albeit briefly), Friedrich Engels, and Arnold Ruge (though only once). Contrary to popular belief, Ludwig Feuerbach was not a member of Die Freien, although he was heavily involved in Young Hegelian discourse. While some of the Young Hegelians were eager subscribers to Hegel's dialectical method, and attempted to apply dialectical approaches to Hegel's conclusions, the left wing members of the group broke with Hegel. Feuerbach and Bauer led this charge.

Stirner worked as a schoolteacher in a school for young girls owned by Madame Gropius ^[6] when he wrote his major work, The Ego and Its Own, which in part is a polemic against the leading Young Hegelians Ludwig Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer, but also against communists such as Wilhelm Weitling and the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. He resigned from his teaching position in anticipation of the controversy arising from his major work's publication in October 1844.

Stirner married twice; his first wife was a household servant, with whom he fell in love at an early age. Soon after their marriage, she died due to complications with pregnancy in 1838. In 1843 he married Marie Dähnhardt, an intellectual associated with Die Freien. They divorced in 1846. The Ego and Its Own was dedicated "to my sweetheart Marie Dähnhardt". Marie later converted to Catholicism and died in 1902 in London.

Stirner planned and financed (with Marie's inheritance) an attempt by some Young Hegelians to own and operate a milk-shop on co-operative principles. This enterprise failed partly because the dairy farmers were suspicious of these well-dressed intellectuals. The milk shop was also so well decorated that most of the potential customers felt too poorly dressed to buy their milk there.^{[citation needed]}

After The Ego and Its Own, Stirner wrote Stirner's Critics and translated Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and Jean-Baptiste Say's Traite d'Economie Politique into German, to little financial gain. He also wrote a compilation of texts titled History of Reaction in 1852. Stirner died in 1856 in Berlin from an infected insect bite; it is said that Bruno Bauer was the only Young Hegelian present at his funeral, which was held at the Friedhof II der Sophiengemeinde Berlin.

Philosophy[link]

Caricature of Max Stirner taken from a sketch by Friedrich Engels (1820 - 1895) of the meetings of "Die Freien".

Stirner's claim that the state is an illegitimate institution has made him an influence upon the anarchist tradition; his thought is often seen as a form of individualist anarchism. Stirner however does not identify himself as an anarchist, and includes anarchists among the parties subject to his criticism.

Stirner mocks revolution in the traditional sense as tacitly statist. David Leopold's conclusion (in his introduction to the Cambridge University Press edition) is that Stirner "...saw humankind as 'fretted in dark superstition' but denied that he sought their enlightenment and welfare" (Ibidem, p. xxxii).

As with the Classical Skeptics, Stirner's method of self-liberation is opposed to faith or belief; he believed that life is free from "dogmatic presuppositions" ^[7] or any "fixed standpoint".^[8] It is not merely Christian dogma but also a variety of European atheist ideologies that he condemned as crypto-Christian for putting ideas in an equivalent role.

What Stirner proposes is not that concepts should rule people, but that people should rule concepts. The denial of absolute truth is rooted in Stirner's the "nothingness" of the self. Stirner presents a detached life of non-dogmatic, open-minded engagement with the world "as it is" (unpolluted by "faith", Christian or humanist), coupled with the awareness that there is no soul, no personal essence of any kind.

Because I cannot grasp the moon, is it therefore sacred to me, an Astarte? If I could only grasp you, I surely would, and, if I could only find a means to get up to you, you shall not frighten me! You inapprehensible one, you shall remain inapprehensible to me only until I have acquired the might for apprehension and call you my own; I do not give myself up before you, but only bide my time. Even if for the present I put up with my inability to touch you, I yet remember it against you.

— Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own

Hegel's possible influence[link]

Scholars such as Karl Löwith and Lawrence Stepelevich have argued that Hegel was a major influence on The Ego and Its Own.^{[citation needed]} Stepelevich argues that while The Ego and its Own evidently has an "un-Hegelian structure and tone to the work as a whole", as well as being fundamentally hostile to Hegel's conclusions about the self and the world, this does not mean that Hegel had no effect on Stirner.

To go beyond and against Hegel in true dialectical fashion is in some way continuing Hegel's project, and Stepelevich argues that this effort of Stirner's is, in fact, a completion of Hegel's project^{[citation needed]}. Stepelevich concludes his argument referring to Jean Hyppolite, who in summing up the intention of Hegel's Phenomenology, stated: "The history of the world is finished; all that is needed is for the specific individual to rediscover it in himself."

However, Widukind De Ridder has argued that scholars who take Stirner's references to Hegel and the Young Hegelians as expressions of his own alleged Hegelianism are highly mistaken. De Ridder argues that The Ego and Its Own is in part a carefully constructed parody of Hegelianism, deliberately exposing its outwornness as a system of thought, and that Stirner's notions of "ownness" and "egoism" were part of his radical criticism of the implicit teleology of Hegelian dialectics.^[9]

Works[link]

[edit] The False Principle of our Education

In 1842 Das unwahre Prinzip unserer Erziehung (The False Principle of our Education) was published in Rheinische Zeitung, which was edited by Marx at the time.^[10] Written as a reaction to Otto Friedrich Theodor Heinsius' treatise Humanism vs. Realism, Stirner explains that education in either the classical humanist method or the practical realist method still lacks true value. Education, therefore, is fulfilled in aiding the individual in becoming an individual.

[edit] Art and Religion

Kunst und Religion (Art and Religion) was also published in Rheinische Zeitung, June 14, 1842. It addresses Bauer and his publication against Hegel called Hegel's doctrine of religion and art judged from the standpoint of faith.

[edit] The Ego and Its Own

Stirner's main work is Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum (according to the contemporary German spelling 'Der Einzige und sein Eigentum'; engl. trans. The Ego and Its Own), which appeared in Leipzig in October 1844, with as year of publication mentioned 1845. In The Ego and Its Own, Stirner launches a radical anti-authoritarian and individualist critique of contemporary Prussian society, and modern western society as such. He offers an approach to human existence which depicts the self as a creative non-entity, beyond language and reality.

The book proclaims that all religions and ideologies rest on empty concepts. The same holds true for society's institutions, that claim authority over the individual, be it the state, legislation, the church, or the systems of education such as Universities.

Stirner's argument explores and extends the limits of criticism, aiming his critique especially at those of his contemporaries, particularly Ludwig Feuerbach, and at popular ideologies, including religion, liberalism and humanism (which he regarded as analogous to religion with the abstract Man or humanity as the supreme being), nationalism, statism, capitalism, and socialism and communism (of the statist/planned variety).

In the time of spirits thoughts grew till they overtopped my head, whose offspring they yet were; they hovered about me and convulsed me like fever-phantasies — an awful power. The thoughts had become corporeal on their own account, were ghosts, e. g. God, Emperor, Pope, Fatherland, etc. If I destroy their corporeity, then I take them back into mine, and say: "I alone am corporeal." And now I take the world as what it is to me, as mine, as my property; I refer all to myself.

— Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, p 15.

[edit] Stirner's Critics

Recensenten Stirners (Stirner's Critics) was published in September 1845 in Wigands Vierteljahrsschrift. It is a response, in which Stirner refers to himself in the third-person, to three critical reviews of The Ego and its Own by Moses Hess in Die letzten Philosophen (The Last Philosophers), by a certain "Szeliga" (alias of an adherent of Bruno Bauer in an article in the journal Norddeutsche Blätter, and by Ludwig Feuerbach anonymously in an article called Über 'Das Wesen des Christentums' in Beziehung auf Stirners 'Der Einzige und sein Eigentum' (On 'The Essence of Christianity' in Relation to Stirner's 'The Ego and its Own' ) in Wigands Vierteljahrsschrift.

[edit] History of Reaction

Geschichte der Reaction (History of Reaction) was published in two volumes in 1851 by Allgemeine Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt and immediately banned in Austria.^[2] It was written in the context of the recent 1848 revolutions in German states and is mainly a collection of the works of others selected and translated by Stirner. The introduction and some additional passages were Stirner's work. Edmund Burke and Auguste Comte are quoted to show two opposing views of revolution.

Critical reception[link]

Stirner's work did not go unnoticed among his contemporaries. Stirner's attacks on ideology — in particular Feuerbach's humanism — forced Feuerbach into print. Moses Hess (at that time close to Marx) and Szeliga (pseudonym of Franz Zychlin von Zychlinski, an adherent of Bruno Bauer) also replied to Stirner. Stirner answered the criticism in a German periodical, in the article Stirner's Critics (org. Recensenten Stirners, September 1845), which clarifies several points of interest to readers of the book—especially in relation to Feuerbach.

While Marx's Sankt Max (large part of Die Deutsche Ideologie/The German Ideology), not published until 1932, so assured The Ego and Its Own a place of curious interest among Marxist readers, Marx's ridicule of Stirner has played a significant role in the subsequent marginalization of Stirner's work, in popular and academic discourse.

Influence[link]

While Der Einzige was a critical success and attracted much reaction from famous philosophers after publication, it was out of print and the notoriety it had provoked had faded many years before Stirner's death.^[11] Stirner had a destructive impact on left-Hegelianism, though his philosophy was a significant influence on Marx and his magnum opus became a founding text of individualist anarchism.^[11] Edmund Husserl once warned a small audience about the "seducing power" of Der Einzige, but never mentioned it in his writing.^[12] As the art critic and Stirner admirer Herbert Read observed, the book has remained "stuck in the gizzard" of Western culture since it first appeared.^[13]

Many thinkers have read, and been affected by The Ego and Its Own in their youth including Rudolf Steiner, Gustav Landauer, Victor Serge,^[14] Carl Schmitt and Jürgen Habermas. Few openly admit any influence on their own thinking.^[15] Ernst Jünger's book Eumeswil, had the character of the "Anarch", based on Stirner's "Einzige." ^[16] Several other authors, philosophers and artists have cited, quoted or otherwise referred to Max Stirner. They include Albert Camus in The Rebel (the section on Stirner is omitted from the majority of English editions including Penguin's), Benjamin Tucker, James Huneker,^[17] Dora Marsden, Renzo Novatore, Emma Goldman,^[18] Georg Brandes, John Cowper Powys,^[19] Martin Buber,^[20] Sidney Hook,^[21] Robert Anton Wilson, Italian individualist anarchist Frank Brand, the notorious antiartist Marcel Duchamp, several writers of the Situationist International, and Max Ernst, who titled a 1925 painting L'unique et sa propriété. Years before rising to power, Benito Mussolini was inspired by Stirner, and made several references to him in his newspaper articles. The similarities in style between The Ego and Its Own and Oscar Wilde's The Soul of Man Under Socialism have caused some historians to speculate that Wilde (who could read German) was familiar with the book.^[22]

Since its appearance in 1844, The Ego and Its Own has seen periodic revivals of popular, political and academic interest, based around widely divergent translations and interpretations — some psychological, others political in their emphasis. Today, many ideas associated with post-left anarchy's criticism of ideology and uncompromising individualism are clearly related to Stirner's. He has also been regarded as pioneering individualist feminism, since his objection to any absolute concept also clearly counts gender roles as "spooks". His ideas were also adopted by post-anarchism, with Saul Newman largely in agreement with many of Stirner's criticisms of classical anarchism, including his rejection of revolution and essentialism.

Marx and Engels[link]

Caricature by Friedrich Engels (1820 - 1895) of the meetings of "Die Freien"

Engels commented on Stirner in poetry at the time of Die Freien:

Look at Stirner, look at him, the peaceful enemy of all constraint.
For the moment, he is still drinking beer,
Soon he will be drinking blood as though it were water.
When others cry savagely "down with the kings"
Stirner immediately supplements "down with the laws also."
Stirner full of dignity proclaims;
You bend your willpower and you dare to call yourselves free.
You become accustomed to slavery
Down with dogmatism, down with law.^[23]

But what is true in his principle, we, too, must accept. And what is true is that before we can be active in any cause we must make it our own, egoistic cause-and that in this sense, quite aside from any material expectations, we are communists in virtue of our egoism, that out of egoism we want to be human beings and not merely individuals."^[24]

Later, Marx and Engels wrote a major criticism of Stirner's work. The number of pages Marx and Engels devote to attacking Stirner in (the unexpurgated text of) The German Ideology, in which they derided him as "Sankt Max" (Saint Max), exceeds the total of Stirner's written works.^[25] As Isaiah Berlin has described it, Stirner "is pursued through five hundred pages of heavy-handed mockery and insult".^[26] The book was written in 1845–1846, but not published until 1932. Marx's lengthy, ferocious polemic against Stirner has since been considered an important turning point in Marx's intellectual development from idealism to materialism. It has been argued that historical materialism was Marx's method of reconciling communism with a Stirnerite rejection of morality.^[27]

Stirner and post-structuralism[link]

The Influential French poststructuralist thinker Jacques Derrida in his book Specters of Marx dealt with Stirner and his relationship with Marx while also analysing Stirner's concept of "specters" or "spooks".^[28] Saul Newman calls Stirner a proto-poststructuralist who on the one hand had essentially anticipated modern post-structuralists such as Foucault, Lacan, Deleuze, and Derrida, but on the other had already transcended them, thus providing what they were unable to: a ground for a non-essentialist critique of present liberal capitalist society. This is particularly evident in Stirner's identification of the self with a "creative nothing", a thing that cannot be bound by ideology (like leftist or marxists ideology of Frenchs postructuralists), inaccessible to representation in language.

Possible influence on Nietzsche[link]

The ideas of Max Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche have often been compared, and many authors have discussed apparent similarities in their writings, sometimes raising the question of influence.^[29] In Germany, during the early years of Nietzsche's emergence as a well-known figure, the only thinker discussed in connection with his ideas more often than Stirner was Schopenhauer.^[30] It is certain that Nietzsche read about Stirner's most important book The Ego and Its Own (Der Einzige und sein Eigentum), which was mentioned in Lange's History of Materialism and Eduard von Hartmann's Philosophy of the Unconscious, both of which Nietzsche knew well.^[31] However, there is no indication that he actually read it, as no mention of Stirner is known to exist anywhere in Nietzsche's publications, papers or correspondence.^[32] In 2002 a biographical discovery made it probable that Nietzsche had encountered Stirner's ideas before he read Hartmann and Lange, in October 1865, when he met with Eduard Mushacke, an old friend of Stirner's during the 1840s.^[33]

And yet as soon as Nietzsche's work began to reach a wider audience the question of whether or not he owed a debt of influence to Stirner was raised. As early as 1891 (while Nietzsche was still alive, though incapacitated by mental illness) Eduard von Hartmann went so far as to suggest that he had plagiarized Stirner.^[34] By the turn of the century the belief that Nietzsche had been influenced by Stirner was so widespread that it became something of a commonplace, at least in Germany, prompting one observer to note in 1907 "Stirner's influence in modern Germany has assumed astonishing proportions, and moves in general parallel with that of Nietzsche. The two thinkers are regarded as exponents of essentially the same philosophy."^[35]

Nevertheless, from the very beginning of what was characterized as "great debate"^[36] regarding Stirner's possible positive influence on Nietzsche, serious problems with the idea were noted.^[37] By the middle of the 20th century, if Stirner was mentioned at all in works on Nietzsche, the idea of influence was often dismissed outright or abandoned as unanswerable.^[38]

But the idea that Nietzsche was influenced in some way by Stirner continues to attract a significant minority, perhaps because it seems necessary to explain in some reasonable fashion the often-noted (though arguably superficial) similarities in their writings.^[39] In any case, the most significant problems with the theory of possible Stirner influence on Nietzsche are not limited to the difficulty in establishing whether the one man knew of or read the other. They also consist in establishing precisely how and why Stirner in particular might have been a meaningful influence on a man as widely read as Nietzsche.^[40]

Rudolf Steiner[link]

The individualist-anarchist orientation of Rudolf Steiner's early philosophy – before he turned to theosophy around 1900 – has strong parallels to, and was admittedly influenced by Stirner's conception of the ego, for which Steiner claimed to have provided a philosophical foundation.^[41]

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v t e

Stirner's philosophy is important in anarchism. Usually Stirner within anarchism is associated with individualist anarchism but he found admiration in mainstream social anarchists such as anarcha-feminists Emma Goldman and Federica Montseny (both also admired Friedrich Nietzsche). In european individualist anarchism he influenced its main proponents after him such as Emile Armand, Han Ryner, Renzo Novatore, John Henry Mackay, Miguel Giménez Igualada and Lev Chernyi.

In American individualist anarchism he found adherence in Benjamin Tucker and his magazine Liberty while these abandoned natural rights positions for egoism.^[42] "Several periodicals were undoubtedly influenced by Liberty's presentation of egoism. They included: I published by C.L. Swartz, edited by W.E. Gordak and J.W. Lloyd (all associates of Liberty); The Ego and The Egoist, both of which were edited by Edward H. Fulton. Among the egoist papers that Tucker followed were the German Der Eigene, edited by Adolf Brand, and The Eagle and The Serpent, issued from London. The latter, the most prominent English-language egoist journal, was published from 1898 to 1900 with the subtitle "A Journal of Egoistic Philosophy and Sociology"".^[42] Other American egoist anarchists around the early 20th century include James L. Walker, George Schumm and John Beverley Robinson, Steven T. Byington and E.H. Fulton.^[42]

In the United Kingdom Herbert Read was influenced by Stirner, and noted the closeness of Stirner's egoism to existentialism (see existentialist anarchism). Later in the 1960s Daniel Guérin in Anarchism: From Theory to Practice says that Stirner "rehabilitated the individual at a time when the philosophical field was dominated by Hegelian anti-individualism and most reformers in the social field had been led by the misdeeds of bourgeois egotism to stress its opposite" and pointed to "the boldness and scope of his thought."^[43] In the seventies an American situationist collective called For Ourselves published a book called The Right To Be Greedy: Theses On The Practical Necessity Of Demanding Everything in which they advocate a "communist egoism" basing themselves on Stirner.^[44]

Later in the USA emerged the tendency of post-left anarchy which was influenced profundly by Stirner in aspects such as the critique of ideology. Jason McQuinn says that "when I (and other anti-ideological anarchists) criticize ideology, it is always from a specifically critical, anarchist perspective rooted in both the skeptical, individualist-anarchist philosophy of Max Stirner.^[45] Also Bob Black and Feral Faun/Wolfi Landstreicher strongly adhere to stirnerist egoism. In the hybrid of post-structuralism and Anarchism called post-anarchism Saul Newman has written on Stirner and his similarities to post-structuralism. Insurrectionary anarchism also has an important relationship with Stirner as can be seen in the work of Wolfi Landstreicher and Alfredo Bonanno who has also written on him in works such as Max Stirner and "Max Stirner und der Anarchismus"^[46]

Free love, homosexuals, and feminists [link]

The German stirnerist Adolf Brand produced the homosexual periodical Der Eigene in 1896. This was the first ongoing homosexual publication in the world,^[47] and ran until 1931. The name was taken from the writings of Stirner, who had greatly influenced the young Brand, and refers to Stirner's concept of "self-ownership" of the individual. Another early homosexual activist influenced by Stirner was John Henry Mackay. Feminists influenced by Stirner include Dora Marsden who edited the journals The Freewoman and The New Freewoman and anarcha-feminist Emma Goldman. Stirner also influenced free love and polyamory propagandist Émile Armand in the context of French individualist anarchism of the early XX century which is known for "The call of nudist naturism, the strong defense of birth control methods, the idea of "unions of egoists" with the sole justification of sexual practices"^[48]

Comments by contemporaries[link]

Stirner went so far in his notorious work, 'Der Einzige und Sein Eigenthum' (1845), as to reject all moral ideas. Everything that in any way, whether it be external force, belief, or mere idea, places itself above the individual and his caprice, Stirner rejects as a hateful limitation of himself. What a pity that to this book — the extremest that we know anywhere — a second positive part was not added. It would have been easier than in the case of Schelling's philosophy; for out of the unlimited Ego I can again beget every kind of Idealism as my will and my idea. Stirner lays so much stress upon the will, in fact, that it appears as the root force of human nature. It may remind us of Schopenhauer.

— History of Materialism, ii. 256 (1865)

Some people think that, in a sense, a "second positive part" was soon to be added, though not by Stirner, but by Friedrich Nietzsche. The relationship between Nietzsche and Stirner seems to be much more complicated.^[49] According to George J. Stack's Lange and Nietzsche,^[50] Nietzsche read Lange's History of Materialism "again and again" and was therefore very familiar with the passage regarding Stirner.

See also[link]

• Philosophy of Max Stirner
• Relationship between Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Stirner
• History of Materialism and Critique of its Present Importance
• Individualist anarchism in Europe

Notes [link]

References[link]

• Stirner, Max: Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (1845 [October 1844]). Stuttgart: Reclam-Verlag, 1972ff; engl. trans. The Ego and Its Own (1907), ed. David Leopold, Cambridge/ New York: CUP 1995
• Stirner, Max: "Recensenten Stirners" (September 1845). In: Parerga, Kritiken, Repliken, Bernd A. Laska, ed., Nürnberg: LSR-Verlag, 1986; engl. trans. Stirner's Critics (abridged), see below

Further reading[link]

• Max Stirners 'Der Einzige und sein Eigentum' im Spiegel der zeitgenössischen deutschen Kritik. Eine Textauswahl (1844–1856). Hg. Kurt W. Fleming. Leipzig: Verlag Max-Stirner-Archiv 2001 (Stirneriana)
• Arvon, Henri, Aux Sources de l'existentialisme, Paris: P.U.F. 1954
• De Ridder, Widukind, "Max Stirner, Hegel and the Young Hegelians: A reassessment". In: History of European Ideas, 2008, 285-297.
• Essbach, Wolfgang, Gegenzüge. Der Materialismus des Selbst. Eine Studie über die Kontroverse zwischen Max Stirner und Karl Marx. Frankfurt: Materialis 1982
• Helms, Hans G, Die Ideologie der anonymen Gesellschaft. Max Stirner 'Einziger' und der Fortschritt des demokratischen Selbstbewusstseins vom Vormärz bis zur Bundesrepublik, Köln: Du Mont Schauberg, 1966
• Koch, Andrew M., "Max Stirner: The Last Hegelian or the First Poststructuralist". In: Anarchist Studies, vol. 5 (1997) pp. 95–108
• Laska, Bernd A., Ein dauerhafter Dissident. Eine Wirkungsgeschichte des Einzigen, Nürnberg: LSR-Verlag 1996 (TOC, index)
• Laska, Bernd A., Ein heimlicher Hit. Editionsgeschichte des "Einzigen". Nürnberg: LSR-Verlag 1994 (abstract)
• Marshall, Peter H. "Max Stirner" in "Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism "(London: HarperCollins, 1992).
• Newman, Saul, Power and Politics in Poststructural Thought. London and New York: Routledge 2005
• Stepelevich, Lawrence S., Max Stirner As Hegelian. In: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 46, nr. 4, pp. 597–614
• Stepelevich, Lawrence S., Ein Menschenleben. Hegel and Stirner". In: Moggach, Douglas (ed.): The New Hegelians. Philosophy and Politics in the Hegelian School. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 166–176
• Paterson, R.W.K., The Nihilistic Egoist: Max Stirner, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1971

External links [link]

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Max Stirner

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Max Stirner

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Max Stirner

General [link]

• Max Stirner entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, an extensive introduction
• Svein Olav Nybergs website on Max Stirner, with extensive links to texts and references
• Max Stirner within the LSR project (English section)
• Max Stirner Project by H. Ibrahim Türkdogan
• Archive of texts on Stirner at the Anarchist Library

Relationship with other philosophers [link]

• Max Stirner, a durable dissident, 'How Marx and Nietzsche suppressed their colleague Max Stirner and why he has intellectually survived them'
• Stirner Delighted in His Construction — "loves miracles, but can only perform a logical miracle", by Karl Marx
• Nietzsche's initial crisis due to an encounter with Stirner's "The Ego", by Bernd A. Laska (2002)
• Max Stirner As Hegelian, By Lawrence S. Stepelevich
• "At the End of the Path of Doubt: Max Stirner", By Lawrence S. Stepelevich (Owl of Minerva 41:1-2 (2009–10) pp. 85–106)

Texts [link]

• Online book Der Einzige und sein Eigentum
• The complete original text in German of Der Einzige und sein Eigentum
• The complete English edition of "The Ego and his Own", in the translation of Steven T. Byington.
• Some of Stirner's illuminating "Shorter Essays", translated into English
• Recensenten Stirners / Stirner's Critics bilingual: full text in German / abridged text in English (trans. Frederick M. Gordon)
• Archive of the 4 works of Stirner translated into English including a 2011 complete translation of Stirner´s Critics (translated by Wolfi Landstreicher) at the Anarchist Library

v t e Max Stirner Works The False Principle of our Education The Ego and Its Own (publication history) Philosophy Stirner's philosophy Relationship with Friedrich Nietzsche Union of egoists Young Hegelians Influence Egoist anarchism Existentialist anarchism Individualist anarchism Post-anarchism Post-left anarchy Insurrectionary anarchism Psychological egoism