What will I need to read to build foundation to understand and/or appreciate Stirner?

Feuerbach, Engels, Bruno Bauer, and Marx

Introduce your head to your butt, and then you are truly ready.

Casper the Friendly Ghost

That and she projects her ideology so heavily in her books that its impossible to read atlas shrugged if you disagree with any of her views.

go fuck a whore

Have you read any of Bauers work? ive never seen it brought up or discussed and it doesnt seem to be as online as Stirners work

A whore has more intellectual value than any Ayn Rand book and is much better looking, so I will.

amazon.com/Philosophy-Politics-Bruno-Modern-European/dp/052103924X
The only thing I've read by him.

Why does she wear the hat?

lurk more

she was planning to go undercover in the Smurf's village to see how their communist society worked

Can you tell me your thoughts on his work?

How hard was it to get on its own and has it influneced your views on Stirner or made reading him more enjoyable?

>tfw no qt3.14 objectivist gf

she looks like that sadfrog meme

as I've said in previous threads it's not ayn rand's physique but her character (the one I imagine) that makes my peepee go up.
In my head she's harsh and cynical and selfish but after I've wooed her once or twice she begins to ask herself questions and doubt her theories of objectivism.
To put an end to this she would try to destroy me or convert me to her philosophy but I would fight back and our conversations would allow for more personal moments. One evening, as we debate in the empty university classroom when all other students have left she suddenly realises that she must take the metro alone to go back to her little flat. I gently volunteer to accompany her, and I see in her eyes the mixture of fear and thankfulness, doubt and envy than she feels. We walk along the night time streets and, because of the situation, get to talking about more practical things. She tells me about her mother, her sister and how no one in the university staff really talked to her before. It had to be me, a final year student, who had to come up to her at the end of class. She confesses that she feels alone in the big city.
I know from our conversation just how much her philosophy applies to her daily life and point of view on things, so I know what subjects to approach and what to leave alone. When we get to her building I can tell she is getting more nervous, first because I am a student and she put herself in a weak position towards me, and second because I am a man. We both know there is more than the intellectual to our conversations. She flashes the sweetest, most nervous and non-expert-like smile at me and runs up the steps to her little abode, with a garbled "see you tomorrow".
I chuckle quietly, gaze upward in the dark stairwell for a moment, and go back my own way. In her cramped bathroom, hurriedly, Ayn Rand masturbates to the memory of the smell of my coat and the touch of my hand.

That made me hard.

should I write another episode of the equivalent of two genitals coming within millimeters of each other, brushing past at an amazing pace and then warping away on their separate courses through the universe? I don't feel like adding downright sex into my fantasies, it would ruin them somehow.

please do.

>need

I just want to truly understand stirner posting.

Does anyone have the pic like this but with Evola as well?
Or any other rare Stirners

Stirner was a young Hegelian. Therefore you must first read Hegel. But reading Hegel requires Kant. And reading Kant required Hume and Descartes. And before jumping into modern philosophy you need to start with the Greeks. And before moving on from the Greeks you must also read the Romans and the Medievals.

>theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-stirner-art-and-religion
I'd be lying if I said I understood it.

>Stirner was a young Hegelian. Therefore you must first read Hegel.
Bullshit. Feuerbach, Marx and all the other young Hegelians are perfectly understandable if you're not a moron. It's a much better idea to read backwards towards Hegel by starting with the young Hegelians.

He hung around with them, but he didn't take Hegel in the same way that the others. To Max, Stirner is just the worst of the Protestants.

>It's a much better idea to read backwards towards Hegel by starting with the young Hegelians.
Why?

>To Max, Stirner is just the worst of the Protestants.
Typo?

Why don't you spend less time quibbling over the order one ought to read books in and more time actually reading books? The details don't matter so much as forming a broad picture of things to grasp overarching theory. Once you have a better understanding of the ideas in question, then you can go back and reread to get all the little things you missed, and relate them to the central concepts.

Really grinds my gears, these threads remind me of the endless language-learning threads on /int/ where anons discuss their own conceptions on how to best learn a language while never actually learning anything at all, never testing their own fucking theory.

I try but I have hard time understanding some of it.
I wouldn't want to learn calculus before learning algebra.

Does anybody here think a union of egoists has even the slightest chance for a realization?

Stirner acts as if people were all super-rational and able to be super conscious all the time, without degenerating to radical loons.

How can you tell if you've degenerated to radical loon?

>theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-stirner-art-and-religion
That's a super shit introduction to Stirner. An okay one would be the Untrue Principle of Our Education. It's probably good to read that with The Unique One and Its Property, and also read Stirner's Critics. Those are the three texts which are all you need, really. You don't need to know anything much about Hegel. If you really want to understand more about the context, read a book on the Young Hegelians.

If you want it, you don't have it.
If you don't have it, you don't own it.
If you don't own it, it isn't yours.
If it isn't yours, then it's not a property of yours.
If it's not your property, then it isn't you.
If it isn't you, then why do you care about it?
Close the circle and embrace the void.
Be the empty center.
Go by what is internal, do not compare that which could never be in another's place.
Do not strife for a once or future heaven, but seize what you want in heaven right now.
Even the statist Confucius said: "The rule of virtue can be compared to the Pole Star which commands the homage of the multitude of stars without leaving its place."

supplement your reading with Stirner's Critics. If it's not in there, it's not important for a general understanding of Stirner's point.

Stirner is a meme philosopher, no one would care about him if it wasn't for Nietzsche and Marx.

Realization can only apply to things that presently aren't.

Nietzsche and Marx wouldn't be as they are if it weren't for Stirner.

instead of your fortune cookie obscurantism, how about some Stirner?

Stirner dares to say that Feuerbach, Hess and Szeliga are egoists. Indeed, he is content here with saying nothing more than if he had said Feuerbach does absolutely nothing but the Feuerbachian, Hess does nothing but the Hessian, and Szeliga does nothing but the Szeligan; but he has given them an infamous label.

Does Feuerbach live in a world other than his own? Does he perhaps live in Hess’s world, in Szeliga’s world, in Stirner’s world? Since Feuerbach lives in this world, since it surrounds him, isn’t it the world that is felt, seen, thought by him, i.e., in a Feuerbachian way? He doesn’t just live in the middle of it, but is himself its middle; he is the center of his world. And like Feuerbach, no one lives in any other world than his own, and like Feuerbach, everyone is the center of his own world. World is only what he himself is not, but what belongs to him, is in a relationship with him, exists for him.

Everything turns around you; you are the center of the outer world and of the thought world. Your world extends as far as your capacity, and what you grasp is your own simply because you grasp it. You, the unique, are “the unique” only together with “your property.”

Meanwhile, it doesn’t escape you that what is yours is still itself its own at the same time, i.e., it has its own existence; it is the unique the same as you. At this point you forget yourself in sweet self-forgetfulness.

sites.google.com/site/vagabondtheorist/stirner/stirner-s-critics/stirner-s-critics-1

>instead of your fortune cookie obscurantism, how about some Stirner?
I was counting on you, and you did not disappoint.

>it doesn’t escape you that what is yours is still itself its own at the same time, i.e., it has its own existence; it is the unique the same as you.
Is it still mine? What are the implications of this and last line about self-forgetfulness?

Basically, "your property" is everything you have to power to experience and interact with. Every empirical object / concrete instance (a specific chair rather than the concept of a chair) is unique. What is often translated as "ego" is this unique. He is saying that you are a) unique (and this means not just that you are empirically different from any other human, but also that your existence is sufficient and there is no 'ideal humanity' you need to strive for, nor any ideal masculinity, etc.) and b) an egoist, which means that the entire world (as you know it and will ever know it) exists only in your interaction with the world through perceptions and actions (making it of course important (for you) to focus your strategies in life around yourself).

I read that Stirner used egoism, not sure what in original german, which has/had bad connotation but in his context it was more neutral. True?

It's Egoismus in German, so basically the same. But it's also negative in German. He consciously used it (not only because it fits the point about self and world but also) because he wanted to make clear that he was arguing against morality. So he argued against "human values" and adopted the universally reviled position of the egoist. Of course this led to misunderstanding because he is not against altruistic behaviour, but against any abstract ideal that controls your behaviour (and altruism is commonly used in this manner), but 'altruistic behaviour' is something a Stirnerian Egoist would still engage in if it pleases her (because we're social animals, mirror neurons, etc. pp.).

Ah okay, thanks for the posts. Even a little insight helps.

Is this image ironic because the idea of Stirner is a spook haunting Dexter?

thanks, always glad to help.

Thats how I feel about the ego and its own and why im trying to find good introductory readings.

>Why don't you spend less time quibbling over the order one ought to read books in and more time actually reading books? The details don't matter so much as forming a broad picture of things to grasp overarching theory. Once you have a better understanding of the ideas in question, then you can go back and reread to get all the little things you missed, and relate them to the central concepts.

Two issues at play here obscurity and time constraints. Stirner and those works who deal with him and who he dealt with are obscure in German and even more so in English recommendations in this area are therefore really helpful. Secondly works from this era have a style and a lot of reference to works and ideas of which if you arent familiar with it will at best be dry and obstuse and at worst be incomprehensible. With limited time and energy just diving in can burn you out quickly which is harmful for learning.

If this were one of those "what books do I have to read to understand, Joyce, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky ect" Id agree with you but this is not the case.

>That's a super shit introduction to Stirner.

I think its a decent one for illustrating his style and the problems a new reader will find when reading his other work.

>read a book on the Young Hegelians.
Which have you found to be helpful?

>Realization can only apply to things that presently aren't.
What does this mean? That it's all unions of egoists already?

>I think its a decent one for illustrating his style and the problems a new reader will find when reading his other work.
I think the style in his early work is often a little different and closer to the philosophical style of his contemporaries, which can be hard to penetrate. In Der Einziger und sein Eigentum (and afterwards in Stirner's Critics) he wrote in clear language, apart from a few terms which he used differently from their everyday use (but not in accepted philosophical ways either). I think Untrue Principle is better because its main thrust mirrors that of Der Einzige, unlike Art and Religion (if I recall correctly).

>Which have you found to be helpful?
extremely, yes. Essbach's Junghegelianer is great if you can read German, the English language ones you will find will probably still help you.

If you want it to be.

bumping will respond when I have the time tommorow?

I don't understand how this is a question, but okay.

bump

rebump

yeah, but there is a consistent hegelian influence, just think to the kid-guy-man... thats the fucking hegelian dialectics

Why would going backwards be easier?

Yeah that was a typo.

Regarding this argument from his by religious types

>Stirner says we are all driven purely by the bodily (“the spirit, which is not regarded as the property of the bodily ego but as the proper ego itself, is a ghost”) pain and pleasure. We make idols of ourselves, and do everything in latria to them (idol + latria), however else we try to rationalize it. This actually is the Orthodox perspective. According to the Philokalia, the “knowledge” (used as synonymous with sexual intecourse in Hebrew) of “good and evil” is about carnal good and evil, which are pleasure and pain. These are not bad things per se, but we became enslaved to them. Christians are indeed involuntary egoists, because Christianity is about escaping these things as our masters. Here is Saint Maximos the Confessor, as quoted in the Philokalia: “Since man came into being composed of noetic soul and sentient body, one interpretation could be that the tree of life is the soul’s intellect, which is the seat of wisdom. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil would then be the body’s power of sensation, which is clearly the seat of mindless impulses. Man received the divine commandment not to involve himself actively and experientially with these impulses; but he did not keep the commandment. Both trees in Scripture symbolize the intellect and the senses. Thus the intellect has the power to discriminate between the spiritual and the sensible, between the eternal and the transitory. Or rather, as the soul’s discriminatory power, the intellect persuades the soul to cleave to the first and to transcend the second. The senses have the power to discriminate between pleasure and pain in the body. Or rather, as a power existing in a body endowed with soul and sense-perception, they persuade the body to embrace pleasure and reject pain.” God ordained us as absolute masters of the material (Hebrews 2:8), but we became enslaved by the deceit of hamartia, so that a veil is before our eyes, which can only be lifted by Christ, it can only be washed off by God’s Blood. See A6h of this FAQ for more on the post-fall material world.

Where did Stirner stand on the whole immaterial/material divide especially when it comes to the Ego? Young heglians seem to be materialists yet Stirner kind of blurs this.

Additionally what are the best counterarguments or critical works of Stirner? I know that Marx wrote a lengthy piece however I get the feeling that until I get a thorough understanding of Stirner through his other works and secondary texts I wont be able to work out whether it is valid or not given how easy it is to missunderstand him

Not that poster but probably because they express his ideas and thoughts in a way that is more legible and understandable than his famously obfuscated works.

Well, theoretical atavisms aside, what the Young Hegelians did is more relevant to theory today than what Hegel himself did, and it's often easier to understand, too. If you start reading Hegel first, you might also end up with your 'own reading of Hegel' or one guided by contemporary interpretations (or Kojeve or some shit), which won't necessarily help you understand Marx, Feuerbach and Stirner, because their use of Hegel's thought might be different from what you get out of him (or what people who read Hegel today get out of him, like Zizek).

i must say I'm somewhat out of my depth with those theological issues, but as to materialism/idealism:

Young Hegelians are often divided into two camps, roughly: Feuerbach's materialism (of Das Wesen des Christentums) and Bruno Bauer's idealism (revolving around the term Kritik). Some commentators have claimed that Stirner was in the Bauer camp, but that's clearly wrong. Stirner criticized Feuerbach's thought as still religious, because the individual human was still reduced to an imperfect instance of the human species being, with the individual's calling to realize their human essence, etc.

So Stirner is against idealism, more a materialist than an idealist. The most important thing however is that he prioritized personal experience, which is 'the primary aspect of existence'. Both thought and sensory perception stem from the first person perspective. Stirner is 'materialist' in that he recognizes that thought is a higher abstraction than perception of 'material things'.

Does that quote accurately reflect Stirners views?

That doesn't make sense.
Stirner says that if one of the members of the union fails to be a conscious egoist, then the union breaks. That's my point in asking if it could ever be realized. I couldn't hope for a union of at least 2 to be realized if I can't even assume everyone else is capable of it.

If you subtract the parts about God and trees, it sounds about right. Would be easier to tell if it wasn't about God and trees, though.

This is confusing.

On the one hand, "Freedom" is super important for Hegel and young Hegelians.
And Stirner is about freeing yourself form spooks too.
But Stirner also explicitly and lengthy argues against (some sort of) freedom. Freedom as a spook, I guess.

Guess: Is this where the opaque nothingness-stuff comes in?

Isnt

>Stirner says we are all driven purely by the bodily (“the spirit, which is not regarded as the property of the bodily ego but as the proper ego itself, is a ghost”) pain and pleasure. We make idols of ourselves, and do everything in latria to them (idol + latria), however else we try to rationalize it.

What Stirner mocks as Mongolism?

Stirner is garbage. But I have to thank him for revealing how Dumb Veeky Forums is.

And Stirner is trash why?

"Freedom" as in the political motivation and as in freedom of speech, religion etc.
"freedom of speech" is granted by the State, it is not really yours and is not really freedom. It supposes that the State controls it and allows you to use it as long as it deigns to.
True "freedom" is doing what you wish rather than being permitted to do so by some authority.
You have freedom of speech if you speak freely not because the State says you do.
So Stirner is against the political goal of freedom because it is a spooky idea to grant freedom to people, I think-I'm not too hot on liberalism in his era and the specific politics of the time.
>Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man's lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one's self.

You're dealing in spooks.

So how did Stirner see for people to realize this true freedom in reality for themselves?

dumb spookposter

who's the superman guy with the moustache?

I'm the man standing on the books with the crucifix atm.

samefag, it's Nietzsche right?

Yes nietzsche Übermensch.

bump