Can someone clearly and concisely state his actual philosophy?
To me, it sounds like his writing just amounted to "dude everything is a spook humans are selfish we should just descend into complete and total anarchy where we just kill each other with no regard for human life lmao".
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correct
"If I can take it, it is mine."
Whatever happened to abolishing private property?
Those are actual spooks though.
Anything that doesn't really benefit you or puts something else above you (that you don't choose to have above you) is a spook. Something like society's expectations are a spook because they are most likely impeding you doing what you want to do.
It's a free philosophy. You are as free as you want to be.
The way I see it is that some traits that we possess needs to not be repress by modernity/society. By oppressing the reptilian brain we are making it stronger and more dangerous. When modernity and civility fail we will definitely destroy ourselves because we never allow certain urges to be studied and understood about human's true nature at the first place. Modernity and culture is our greatest enemy because they give us a carte blanche to ignore the most fundamental aspects of the human animalistic experience, which is lurking patiently in the darkness of our subconscious waiting for the day rapture.
The interesting thing about thinking in that sort of self-interested context is that it very much encourages differences in public/private thought. The success of white supremacy directly benefits most white people, so it is the correct choice to be a white supremacist, but expressing those beliefs is usually incorrect, as they are generally socially unacceptable and will lead to negative consequences.
Why is "calle" in every captcha now? Weird.
protip: read the fucking thing. its not that long
however, i have read it this year. german version, as i am german and probably can sum it up:
stirner says, that you shouldn't worship anything unchallenged. don't elevate anything higher than yourself. don't let any narrative or institution trick you into becoming their slave. ultimately the enlightenment can be traced back to protestantism which in turn can ofc be traced back to christianity. however enlightenment doesn't really free your thought, rather you introject christian ideals. in catholisicm your religious experience was mediated by the priest, in protestantism you have a direct connection to god and in enlightenment you are suppesed to get rid of christianity but instead elevate god to be the "true spirit of man" and thereby devide your actual self into one mean and brutish being, which is you, and the being you ought to be, which is The Man.
However The Man is a spook, that doesn't exist. There only exists a multitude of different men, that are all flawless. By idealizing The Man, we lose touch with our fellowmen and inflict guilt upon ourselves.
Nietzsche+Freud+Marx BTFO
>can someone blease spoonfeed me :DD
OP, it's not that difficult to read his works.
>hurr durr i dont know what he believed because people tell me different things
Then find out for yourself, don't be a baby.
Excellent point user. Excellent.
if its spoonfeeding, then you got me, but i just wanna be on the same page as everyone else. and i dont want to read the thing then find out everyone says i misunderstood it, which is very likely to happen. and i find it a little odd that he's posted here so often, has such an effect on board discussion, but no one ever goes into his ideas or challenges him, and those who do are memed off, told to read the thing already, or that they misunderstood it. considering this is a place where we discuss ideas and literature i figured there was no harm in asking, thanks :^)
Well you're wrong, user, there IS harm in asking. I hope you're happy.
youtube.com
This is about as accurate as you're going to get without reading the damn thing.
wtf i hate stirner now more than ever
>its another 'i haven't' actually read the book or even the wikipedia' thread.
Stay pleb faggot
Why would you make a judgment like that on something you know nothing about?
His philosophy is basically that most people make decisions based on 'spooks,' which is just his word for social constructs. People make decisions based on values that were socialized into them as children or whatever, so they aren't really making decisions at all. So you should make a concentrated effort to eliminate spooks from your value system so that you can make authentic decisions.
If your authentic values are 'I only care about myself and murder is great,' then yes he is encouraging you to follow that basic instinct. Only if you value committing murder more than not going to prison though.
But for him specifically it was more like 'I have rid myself of the social pressure to be charitable, so now I can be authentically selfless.'
I hate you so much OP I hope you kill yourself
>going to prison
Why would there be prison in an anarchist society?
>It's a "people are so retarded that they're going to start flinging shit at each other for no good reason the moment there isn't a sword to their necks" post.
Ever thought the reason chaos breaks out the moment the state is down isn't because people are instinctively evil but because they have been brought up in a system that blueballs them from the moment they are born and that the reason they can be so vicious is because they are so desperate that they won't have a second thought if given the chance to grasp even a fraction of all the paradises they have been promised and told to want all of their lives?
Just saying.
be nice to everyone because everyone is actually yours :)
...I don't give a shit WHY they're flinging shit at each other, I just want them to NOT be flinging shit at each other.
He's just a Veeky Forums meme.
stay spooked property, just because he is a Veeky Forums meme doesn't mean he's *just* a Veeky Forums meme.
The most concise explanation of Stirner's philosophy is:
You are completley free to do whatever you want to do. Nothing exists past what you tell yourself exists or what you agree to allow to exist. Any limits on yourself, any limit to your own ego, to your behavior, you have voluntarily placed on yourself. Stirner calls these things "spooks".
Private property? Spook. It's only your property for as long as I decide not to come over there and fucking take it from you.
Duty? Honor? Spook. You decided your ancestors and family and relationships were important. None of that shit actually exists, it's just made up shit to limit you.
Society? Spook. Just a bunch of people who are too scared to be free so they make up shit so people don't hurt their precious feelings.
Everything is a spook except you. And YOU are free.
Related concept: Ayn Rand's "Sanction of the Victim.
Probably Notes from the Underground. Some of it is hilarious, at least to me, but overall it's like a non-satirical version of A Confederacy of Dunces.
Oops. Wrong thread.
Threads are spooks. It's only the wrong thread if you think it's the wrong thread
...
I don't really know, have never read anything by Stirner, and don't intend to do so, but whenever there's something I don't like it, I just call it a spook and move on.
yea this guy actually read the book and has some good points.
I think he supports many of the communist ideas, especially those that help the worker gain self conscious and better conditions, so they can be more "free" as an ego. I means he even wrote:
"Every labour is to have the intent that the man be satisfied. Therefore he must become a master in it too, be able to perform it as a totality. He who in a pin-factory only puts on heads, only draws the wire, works, as it were mechanically, like a machine; he remains half-trained, does not become a master: his labour cannot satisfy him, it can only fatigue him. His labour is nothing by itself, has no object in itself, is nothing complete in itself; he labours only into another's hands, and is used (exploited) by this other."
He essentially thinks that the system of his times was a piece of shit, cause it did not allow the workers to be free, to produces for himself and for the normal man to practice his own "ego".
His main problem arrives when people try to tell him the communist ideals like, "you should believe in other people bruv" .
He quickly shoots down the elevation of workers solidarity, calling it a "spook", claiming the system will not allow the normal workers to practice his own ego under the society as described by Marx/Engels/whatever.
That is essentially a spook, a non-real, metaphysical idea, like Christianity, society or alternative political ideologies(bear in mind this was written in 1844, so they hadn't gotten a lot further then Proudhon calling private property theft and having nothing to lose but their chains.).
But even while critiquing communism i would claim he is still clearly left-wing politically, as he is anti-state, anti-norms of his time, and even wrote one of my personal favorite quotes:
"The poor are to blame for there being rich"
Calling everything you don't like a spook is just a shitty meme, he has actual merit behind his philosophies but there only way you can really learnt them is to read his books.
first post on Veeky Forums please be gentle
also fuck ayn rand
You did good, son.
You gotta accept people have to fling shit at each other from time to time, on some level. Otherwise, by stopping them from violence at all costs you're going to end up making violence the one thing that gets used to relief all other kinds of stresses. It's like the difference between building a dam and irrigating fields. Give people a way in which they can spend their physical and mental energy while developping themselves and they will do it.
Seriously, the big problem with our political administration is that it gives guidelines in a purely restrictive way. It never establishes customs to make people do certain things beyond education. This is like the one thing Fascism did right.
There is no private property. There is only my property.
Seems to me that everything socially constructed or metaphysically thought of is considered a spook because it has no basis in reality perse, it is just stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the world.
I tried to understand but could not quite follow. I assume The Man is a metaphysical concept we have of what constitutes or should constitute Man (perhaps the ideal Man). However, what do you mean with there existing a multitude of different man that are all flawless? And how do we inflict guilt upon ourselves through this process?
>Seems to me that everything socially constructed or metaphysically thought of is considered a spook because it has no basis in reality perse, it is just stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the world.
That would be the simplest way to describe it yes, although you should be careful by just declaring everything "not real" a spook, Stirner talked highly of some very abstract ideas like love.
He wrote in The Ego and Its Own: "because love makes me happy, I love because loving is natural to me, because it pleases me." So in his eyes even some metaphysical/abstract spiritual concepts are not considered spooks if you can feel them, or if they somehow have a direct impact on you as a being.
The question of what meant is still a bit hazy to me. i'm honestly not sure either what he means by "The Man" as i read the book as a work speaking to the reader himself, not humanity as a whole.
Also if you haven't already based Wes Cecil did a great lecture on Stirner, probably the best way to learn about Stirners philosophy besides reading him on your own and try to figure it out yourself.
I listened to this lecture and I felt like he watered down Stirner a bit for his audience by looking at him through an ethical lens, as if egoism is the solution to the world's 'evils', which seems somewhat misguided. Am I wrong?
>I listened to this lecture and I felt like he watered down Stirner a bit for his audience by looking at him through an ethical lens, as if egoism is the solution to the world's 'evils', which seems somewhat misguided. Am I wrong?
Most scholars who try to get people to like Stirner do this. For example Saul Newman, whose Stirner sounds like a hyperliberalist.
It's basically puts meme arrows in front of the rest of philosophy, thereby negating it.
>There only exists a multitude of different men, that are all flawless.
why are they flwless? I do not follow this. men are all shit so far.
>I keep referring to the Paris attacks because this is exactly the type of thing that Stirner would not allow to happen...
>He would say there are no higher ideas worth sacrificing yourself over
>The people who keep the Stirner flame going are Anarchists...
>But Stirner wouldn't have associated with these people because the idea of Anarchism was a spook, and he was a loner
Many times throughout this lecture I felt like something was not quite right in Stirners reasoning, but I watched the whole thing. These are just the ones I can recall offhand. I think the problem people have with him is (1) his ideas are difficult to imagine in practice and (2) his rationale is not very judicious. What I mean by the latter point is his treatment of all the reasons why people form societies, institute governments, contribute to the arts and sciences, educate others, etc., etc. is written off as spooks. Or they are making themselves slaves to abstractions and curbing their freedom. Its been said many times and it will be said some more, I'm sure, but this sounds like the reasoning of a person who does not know or does not care about the value of these abstractions, and therefore is not willing to admit they do have a representational basis in reality. What is a work of art but the ideas of the artist given substance? The same is true for the rest. He also does not seem to exercise good judgement, in my view, because he does not weigh the evils of a world with these abstractions against those of a world which is entirely free of them. Do governments have corruption? Yes! Well then, we need more participation, more scrutiny, more awareness of these ills. Not an abandonment of the entire enterprise and a negation of those very justifications upon which it was founded. This is why some anons dismiss him without reading a word, because what he is proposing is worse than what we have now. I could care less about how he reasoned his way to these conclusions, or whether they are logically consistent with whatever premises he chose to pursue them with.
>le logic is reality meme
>le arguments are reality meme
At least I learned from that lecture that Engels drew the Stirner meme we love so well. I'm not a Marxist, don't call me a Marxist.
you are an unintelligent edgelord faggot
>ego and its own
It's UNIQUE as in INDIVIDUAL
Fucking English can't even translate
What is the best translated version i bought a copy and it pretty meh i feel
Don't get it translated
Do governments have corruption? Yes! Well then, we need more participation, more scrutiny, more awareness of these ills. Not an abandonment of the entire enterprise and a negation of those very justifications upon which it was founded.
are you aware that you negate the intrinsic flaw in all that systems with that positive and sickeningly sweet arguments.?
Scheisse
>he is clearly left-wing, as he is anti-state,anti-norms
you're fukcing retarded
hmmmm really made me think.....
t.Casper
wtf i hate lefts now