Why do you guys like Stirner so much?

>>8446965
It is literally because of the epic smug face he is pulling in the drawings. He is basically another Pepe.

i just bought a max stirner t-shirt :3

did i doo good?

I used to like him, but then I read Kierkegaard.

>>8446965
It's a combination of this and >>8446973.

t. Egoist.
>>8446983
Kierkegaard has one of the few arguments for religion that seem convincing to me...but, not convincing enough to take the leap of faith.

He's just a meme, if you only read here and had no knowledge of academic philosophy you would think he's one of the biggest names when in reality he's pretty niche.

>>8447059
>he thinks popularity = value

>>8446973
He looked nothing like that in real life though

>>8447087
Says one guy.

>>8447087
because he didn't exist

>>8447059
>academic philosophy
i.e. intellectual masturbation
the two most important philosophers who actually had an impact on the real world, Marx and Nietzsche, worked outside of academia

>>8446965
I don't need an excuse to have a contrarian opinion on everything.

>>8447048
whether you agree with that or not, Stirner still gets BTFO'd by the second sphere, ethics, in either/or.

>>8447100
And Marx was a Hegelian, so kill yourself.

>>8447100
>impact on the real world
That has no bearing on the quality of their philosophy. This isn't politics

>>8447155
How can you show off if no one's even heard of your philosophy?

is individualism a spook too? or does it get a pass?

>>8447180
Everything is a spook, stirner admitted to being a spook later on in his life, that's why he's considered a meme

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Rare photograph of Max Stirner, c. 1849

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>>8447059
>He's just a meme

Every philosopher is a meme.

>>8447224
I don't get it.

>>8446965
I don't like Stirner.

>>8447224
This picture is my property.

>>8447094
Spooky

>>8447240
1. Stirn means forehead in German. Max Stirner is a pseudonym derived from his appearance (maximum forehead guy).
2. Tainaka Ritsu is a main character in the seminal anime K-ON! who is often ribbed for her large forehead.

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>>8447277
Nice. I claim your pun as my property.

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>>8446965
Because there were Stirner spook threads on /lit/ for every single goddamn day for the weeks

The same goddamn thread, if I could predict fluctuating prices on his books during these meme episodes, I would have saved myself $25

>>8447180
If you remove all spooks, you get a kind of individualism.

However, yes, individualism can easily be a spook.

>we must fight for the rights of the individual!

But generally speaking, anyone saying "lol but the ego was a spook ever thought of that?" is an idiot who never read the book.

>>8447296
>anyone saying "lol but the ego was a spook ever thought of that?" is an idiot who never read the book.

kek true

>>8447296
>>8447322
haven't read the book but i'm curious, how does the ego survive the spook busting?

>>8447339
The ego is, by definition, that which is not a spook. However, "the ego" can be treated as a spook.

You don't do things for "the ego", you do it for yourself -- the unspooked ego.

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>>8447339
>"I do not presuppose myself, because I am every moment just positing or creating myself, and am I only by being not presupposed but posited, and ... only in the moment when I posit myself; that is, I am creator and creature in one. "

>"He who is infatuated with Man leaves persons out of account so far as that infatuation extends, and floats in an ideal, sacred interest. Man, you see, is not a person, but an ideal, a spook. "

>>8447087
Your point?

>>8446965
For me, Stirner sounds like a perfect antidote from various neuroses, the kind that encompasses you and poisons your life: fears of social interaction, etc. He has no much value beyond that, since 95% of what he writes is fairly obvious.

>>8447393
Literally any philosopher could clear your neuroses

>>8447427
Nope. Kant could create them, since his ethics is much like a neurosis: some arbitrary requirements imposed upon you, failure to meet which is punished by feeling like shit.

>>8447471
>some arbitrary requirements

They aren't arbitrary at all, which you would've known if you actually read his works.

>>8447471
always liked that line of thought that Zizek developed somewhere, where if you analyze pure good and pure evil (as in evil you do just for the sake of it, with nothing to win from it) in Kant they are structurally equivalent

>>8447483
Kant of course thinks they aren't, and even calls them a priori, but provides no proof apart from some autistic rambling

>>8447100
Are you retarded? They weren't some edgelords that came to their philosophies in a vacuum, they had a formal education and their work lies firmly within the tradition of academic philosophy, even if they weren't literal academics. Without Kant and Hegel there would be no Marx and Nietzsche.

>>8447677
Niezsche and Marx literally represent right and left Hegelians respectively.

>>8447717
This better be some term I haven't heard of for sorting Hegelians, and not a reference to the left or right wings.

>>8447722
It is.

>>8447717
in what sense is Nietzsche a right hegelian? he doesn't seem to have any idea about hegel except through Schopenhauer

>>8447726
>The Right Hegelians (German: Rechtshegelianer), Old Hegelians (Althegelianer), or the Hegelian Right (die Hegelsche Rechte), were those followers of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in the early 19th century who took his philosophy in a politically and religiously conservative direction. They are typically contrasted with the Young Hegelians, who interpreted Hegel's political philosophy to support innovations in politics or religion.[1]
Doesn't look like it.

>>8447717
How is Nietzsche a Hegelian? At all? Even a little bit? In the most roundabout circumstantial way?

Marx, sure, yeah, duh, everyone knows that. But what strands of Hegelian thought does Nietzsche adopt?

Do you know what you're talking about?

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>>8447339
Spook=Above yourself

You can't put yourself about yourself--which isn't to say you can't put the idea of yourself about yourself.

So say you are acting in a certain way, if 1) you're acting like that because you're "told to", "supposed to" or "it's the way you do things" you're spooked; if 2) you're acting like that because you "enjoy it" or "it's in your interest", you're not spooked.

Notice that this has nothing to do with the actions themselves. For Stirner everyone is an egoist, some just are aware of it. When someone flip flops on you because this kind of stance can allow for anything, and immediately think of all the harmful things you could do, guess what? That's the spooks talking, as they must immediately assume the spook is vital to mantain order, and without it all hell would break loose--these are also the kind of people most liable to actually let all hell break loose in defence or under the allowance of spooks.

>>8447739
that sounds a bit similar to Althusser's ideology, except in Althusser you are never able to get completely outside ideology

Because he has a prepackaged meme vector face.

>>8447739
Ya but Marx's big critique of Stirner is that liberation is an historical and not a mental act.

For instance, just because you recognize that property relations are arbitrary ("it's a spook!") doesn't mean you're not still compelled to accept them. The life of the individual (whether he's an egoist or not) is conditioned by the relations of production. There's no escaping this except through revolutionary praxis.

Stirner's "check your spook" approach can never accomplish anything, whereas Marx would have you target the institutions that produce spooks, or what he calls ideology. So while Stirner is certainly worth reading, his method is marred by an almost Descartian Idealism that attributes mystical agency to the individual he can never have.

>>8446965
The people on this board don't need an excuse to be contrarian, they are.

>>8447774
>Stirner's "check your spook" approach can never accomplish anything, whereas Marx would have you target the institutions that produce spooks
What do you mean can't accomplish anything. Stirner is about unspooking yourself you can't fault it for not removing the institutions that spook others.

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>>8447774
>his method is marred by an almost Descartian Idealism that attributes mystical agency to the individual he can never have.
Except he doesn't. People not being capable of overcoming their own spooks is something he accounts for; and even if you know something is a spook and can act otherwise, it doesn't mean you will so long as others enforce it with their own might, he accounts for that too. Don't forget for Stirner it's perfectly fine to live among the spooked and act like them, and to lie about what you really believe in if it suits you (after all putting truth about you is being spooked).

Stirner's conscious egoist isn't an übermensch, it's not an achievement and it's not something you will be necessarily better off being--he even says explicitly that it could cause wars and he still wouldn't give a damn about, because he's only interested about *his* ideas (his property) having a place in the world.

>>8446983
I just don't get it. Kierkegaard is like endgame for me. Everything I read doesn't even come close to Kierkegaard for me, I love his ideas.

>>8447809
I mean precisely what I said in my example.

Unspooking yourself doesn't make you free. Yes, okay, the State is a spook, it's an illusion of communal needs, yadda yadda. You'll still pay your taxes, obey its laws, work your 9-to-5, and so on. Merely recognizing arbitrary authority does not loosen the grasp of that authority on your life. This is just where the fun begins.

>>8447833
My response to the other poster should cover this as well. Whether or not anyone can overcome a spook doesn't mean anything so long as the relations of production remain in place.

Stirner has an important place in the Left canon, and his work is like a proto-critique of ideology, but its shortcomings are also Feuerbach's. It only seeks to interpret the world, not to change it. Marx, who was influenced by Stirner, simply provides a more satisfactory analysis of not just spooks but the production of spooks as well.

>>8447774
>doesn't mean you're not still compelled to accept them

Compulsion is a spook unless it is back up by a gun.

Literally everyone on the planet can wake up and decide not to go to work, and it would be the end of the world.

>>8447876
>compulsion is a spook unless it is backed up by a gun

I agree. And so would Marx. The problem is - the authority of the State, which is nothing other than the authority of capital, is indeed backed up by a gun. Several million guns.

The anon who drew a comparison between Stirner and Althusser is relevant here. >>8447767

As Althusser argues in On The Reproduction of Capitalism, while ideology does most of the work in getting the wheels of society going, so to speak, the Repressive State Apparatuses (the police, the military, the courts, etc.) are always prepared to step in when ideology, or spooks, are not enough.

Hence the necessity of going beyond 'unspooking.' Hence the need for revolutionary practice.

>>8447864
>free
>the world
You're putting another king on the throne, as predicted.

>>8447899
Yeah but you're ignoring Stirners argument that every revolution is tacitly statist in itself, and that revolutionaries are simply people who want the same kind of domination over society and it's individuals as the current system does.

And tbqh, he's right, as every revolutionary movement that has won power has shown.

>>8447911
>"What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one's self."

Freedom is the telos of Stiner's philosophy. Please actually address my points if you want to enter the discussion.

I'm not hostile to Stirnerbros. I like Stirner. But it is important to go beyond him.

>>8447920
>every revolution is tacitly statist in itself

Marx largely agrees; for him, though, the communist revolution escapes the trappings of the State by negating the relations of production, something no revolution had ever sought to do.

Lenin improvises this and argues that the true revolution must seize the State and transition to a withering-away-of-the-State. Whether that's possible or not remains to be seen. Certainly the Bolshevik project failed.

But to address your point more directly: by refusing revolutionary practice, you simply allow for the continuation of the power of the state, making Stirnerian quietism a form of statism. A particularly dangerous form of statism, since it postures as anti-statist.

At a point, the people of the world must have the courage to revolt if they truly wish to be free of spooks.

>>8447958
You obviously can't read.

If revolutionary practices creates the same kind of dominating system, then it doesn't matter whether you revolt, or keep the status quo.

But somehow that point completely flew past you.

>>8447977
No need for the hostility. Especially when it's owing to a mistake in your own reading.

>negating the relations of production

Is precisely the opposite of creating

>the same kind of dominating system

I think you might want to brush up on basic Marxist terminology. Let me know if you want me to explain this in more detail. I'll be back later.

>>8447930
>Freedom is the telos of Stiner's philosophy.
No, self-interest is. You can very well disregard your freedom if it suits you, or not disregarding your freedom can put you into danger. You're approaching Stirner like his aim is to bring about a revolution when that not the case at all--you might want it, but there are many (the majority in fact) who don't, because they see no way in which it will be convenient for them.

As for your points, you're doing just that. You're halfly using freedom, the material world and progress as spooks above individual interests--you yourself say it will put millions of guns on our backs, in which case why even fight it?

>>8447987
Please give an example of a revolutionary movement that has successful gained power, and then "negated the relations of production", and not degenerated into more of the same of what they presumably were against.

Because that doesn't exist and has never. So you're essentially arguing by using your own naive idealism as an argument, and it isn't very impressive.

>>8447958
>At a point, the people of the world must have the courage to revolt if they truly wish to be free of spooks.

>People
It is about (you). Consider the stoic approach to the world i.e. what is within your control and what is not; now transpose this to Stirner: What is within your interest and what is not. Now compare this to your post.

>>8447774
wtf i hate stirner now

>>8447958
modern man can't even seize the means of sexual reproduction, why should anyone in power be concerned by communists/anarchists.

>>8446965
I cared very little about everything other than living for, and enjoying, myself, so reading Stirner just affirmed that.

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>>8449852