Premise #:1

Premise #:1
Although Stirner's philosophy is radically skeptical of moral judgements, it recognises the validity and communicabiliy of value judgements. The basis of Stirner's principles are an esteeming of the individual life governed by rational self-interest.

Premise #2:
Paradoxically, human self-interest is best fulfilled in self-giving, humility, and prioritising other's needs above one's own. This is not necessarily in conflict with the roots of Stirner's philosophy: if one recognises that they find maximal satisfaction in altruistic behaviour and follow it out of rather than being compelled to by delusions or "spooks", that may be perfectly resonant with amoral egoism. (Contrast with Ayn Rand's nonsensical moralistic egoism).

So far, the Catholic morality and Stirner's are not especially dissimilar, except for metaphysical disagreements.

However, here is where the two philosophies come into conflict:
Catholic ethics suggest that one should perform good deeds even when they experience no tangible uplift from it, when they derive no discernible satisfaction from it. It is legitimate to experience self-development, self-realisation and self-satisfaction through altruism, but it is illegitimate to negate others if one thinks they will find more satisfaction in selfishness, isolation and cruelty.

Christianity also assumes a base-level human essence where Stirner decrees there is none. Stirner considers the idea of an intrinsic commonality between men a limiting "spook", and instead considers the "creative nothing" the root principle/premise. Whereas Christianity says that humans have root causes and needs that can only be fulfilled by certain means, Stirner says that such a generalisation is ungrounded and false, and that such ideas may have no relevance to the individual, an entirely separate entity.

THEREFORE:
If the metaphysical bases of Christianity are in fact true, and its assertions about human nature do in fact apply to a universal principle to which all humans do (or can) correspond, then Stirner's value judgements must recede into the Christian system, since the egoist can only find full satisfaction and rational fulfillment of his self-interest in following the path outlined by the Christian ethic. The omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God wishes for the maximal fulfillment of all individual beings, and through submission to God all individuals will find their innermost being most fully, vibrantly and rewardingly expressed.

In other words, God's commandments are not arbitrary and not detrimental to the individual. They belong both to God and to the individual, who belongs to God and is fulfilled in him.

Which is more true to the world as it is? The sciences suggest an inherent human nature defined by DNA expression, biological and psychological needs, do they not? Whether from an essentialist, formalist, Marxist, theistic or purely materialist point of view, is Stirner's existensialist definition of the creative nothing faulty, and in fact damaging, deceptive, self-defeating and undermining to and of the individual? Individualisation is dependent on socialisation.

>Faith sees in Jesus the man in whom - on the biological plane - the next evolutionary leap, as it were, has been accomplished; the man in whom personalization and socialization no longer exclude each other but support each other; the man in whom perfect unity - "The body of Christ" says St. Paul, and even more pointedly in "You are all one in Christ Jesus" - and perfect individuality are one; the man in whom humanity comes into contact with its future and in the highest extent itself becomes its future, because through him it makes contact with God himself, shares in him, and thus realises its most intrinsic potential. From here onward faith in Christ will see the beginning of a movement in which dismembered humanity is gathered together more and more into the being of one single Adam, one single "body" - the man to come. It will see in him the movement to that future of man in which he is completely "socialized", incorporated in one single being, but in such a way that the individual is not extinguished but brought completely to himself.
- Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), Introduction to Christianity

More simply, more domestically and more poetically:
>There are no real personalities apart from God. Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most 'natural' men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerers have been; how gloriously different are the saints.
- C.S. Lewis

>>THEREFORE:
only rationalists use this word

Are you perchance thinking of comparing yourself with the ancients, who saw gods everywhere? Gods, my dear modern, are not spirits; gods do not degrade the world to a semblance, and do not spiritualize it.

You have much profound information to give about God, and have for thousands of years “searched the depths of the Godhead,” and looked into its heart, so that you can doubtless tell us how God himself attends to “God’s cause,” which we are called to serve. And you do not conceal the Lord’s doings, either. Now, what is his cause? Has he, as is demanded of us, made an alien cause, the cause of truth or love, his own? You are shocked by this misunderstanding, and you instruct us that God’s cause is indeed the cause of truth and love, but that this cause cannot be called alien to him, because God is himself truth and love; you are shocked by the assumption that God could be like us poor worms in furthering an alien cause as his own. “Should God take up the cause of truth if he were not himself truth?” He cares only for his cause, but, because he is all in all, therefore all is his cause! But we, we are not all in all, and our cause is altogether little and contemptible; therefore we must “serve a higher cause.” — Now it is clear, God cares only for what is his, busies himself only with himself, thinks only of himself, and has only himself before his eyes; woe to all that is not well-pleasing to him. He serves no higher person, and satisfies only himself. His cause is — a purely egoistic cause.
God and mankind have concerned themselves for nothing, for nothing but themselves. Let me then likewise concern myself for myself, who am equally with God the nothing of all others, who am my all, who am the only one.[Der Einzige]

If God, if mankind, as you affirm, have substance enough in themselves to be all in all to themselves, then I feel that I shall still less lack that, and that I shall have no complaint to make of my “emptiness.” I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.

Away, then, with every concern that is not altogether my concern! You think at least the “good cause” must be my concern? What’s good, what’s bad? Why, I myself am my concern, and I am neither good nor bad. Neither has meaning for me.

The divine is God’s concern; the human, man’s. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine, and it is not a general one, but is — unique,[Einzig] as I am unique.

Nothing is more to me than myself!

I'm familiar with this passage. It asserts a God that is more or less mainly defined by infinite qualitative distinction between himself and us. The main theme of Christianity is the healing of the divide between man and God, the gap bridged by the Incarnation of the God-Man. The God of Christianity has created men in its own image, and man is born and lives with deep, unsatisfied longings that can be fulfilled in nothing but the deification achieved through sainthood, or what the Orthodox refer to as "theosis". Christianity posits that man has an innate need for the divine, and neglects himself as individual and as race and species when he neglects this need. Given man's universal "searching the depths of the Godhead", one might at least grant that Christianity is right in this respect.

More crudely, if one exists as a creation of God, within God's creation, and is destined for sublime, beatific reconciliation with God and rejects it and winds up with Hell, they have pursued an irrational, unfulfilling, self-harming course. In God's universe, the rational egoist must at some point come to terms with the choice between damnation and salvation. One cannot reject both.

Get with the times newfag, all the cool Stirnirites are anarchs now

I can't confidently say whether it is the egoist or the christian who is "metaphysically correct" or what have you however even with that ambiguity the O.P is correct in that the two need not necessarily be in conflict.

Stirner's work does not attempt to create an ideology to be adopted en-masse. He merely lays out his thought process all the while pointing out the supposed flaws in everyone else's ideologies i.e. that they force them to sacrifice their own interests for a spook. Stirner does not advocate they necessarily abandon these goals in their totality, merely that the ideology itself be it nationalism, Christianity, humanism etc is should not be what you are working "for". The ideologies goals should be subjugated to your own interests, better yet cut it out entirely and simply work towards your own interests.

I'm obviously generalising but that's the gist.

Now for the Christian, all their own interests often do not align with their faith, hypothetically they could. More often than not one's faith is treated as an obligation, a series of social mores and expectations they are expected to uphold at the expense of their own cause. In this case Stirner would be correct and they are serving a spook. However if the believer's cause aligns with God's cause than God's cause and their own cause is one in the same.

Now how feasible such an idea is would depend on how we interpret God's cause. IMO anything tied to the explicitly material, i.e. biblical literalism or religion in any organised capacity (Catholicism, Orthodoxy etc) is doomed to fail, or at least fail in the sense of one serving another's cause rather than God's or their own. However a highly individualist, personal and Kierkegaardian conception of Christianity I could see working.

Ignoring the demands of the nation, the state, christendom and public and soley hoping to serve God.

I'm just typing off the top of my head but some kind of blend of Stirner and Kierkegaard would be an interesting read.

Shut up, Pascal.

Kierkeegaard chose God over Regine, he is such a professional meme that he managed to get cucked by a spook and never recovered from that.

>religion in any organised capacity (Catholicism, Orthodoxy etc) is doomed to fail, or at least fail in the sense of one serving another's cause rather than God's or their own. However a highly individualist, personal and Kierkegaardian conception of Christianity I could see working.
Meanwhile they're the only institutions that survived the fall of the Roman Empire while protestards can't stop breaking down into smalller and smaller cults, and Kierkegaardians work so well they can't do nothing but call their butthurt God.

You have ghosts in your head lmao

Interesting post.

Let's assume there is a faith that a real, undiluted communication between God and man, and a real joining of the will of God and man.

What might often happen is that faith is subjugated to the needs of institutions or to base human appetites. People often sin despite not wanting to. Their sin is not a fulfillment of their ego, but a subjugation of it to "appetites". Stirner has the same attitude toward impulses that thwart the will that Christians do.
As St. Paul says:
>"For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I."

Let's suggest the Catholic Church is the real instrument that allows the individual to achieve salvation.

The individual should not defer to the Church for the sake of the Church (as a human institution) alone, but for the sake of God. For God, through the Church, and for God's will, of the Church.

That of course depends on the individual being satisfied that the Church really is the instrument of God, but it's a way in which I can see organised religion working under that paradigm.

However, the individualised view is probably only good as a rational starting point. The Christian conception of God is that of a God who desires his believers to exist as a community as well as individuals.

uhh *wipes brow*