Max Stirner

And historically, whenever you have a culture demanding extreme self-denial, you get extreme reactions.

Thinkers like Max Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche looked at the cultural and religious demand for self-sacrifice.

They saw how it made people weak and resentful, and they reacted violently against it.

But the text argues they made a critical, tragic error in their reaction.

It does not occur to the shallow interpreters of that giant mind that this vision of the Ubermensch also called for a state of society which will not give birth to a race of weaklings and slaves.

It is the same narrow attitude which sees in Max Stirner naught but the apostle of the theory, each for himself, the devil take the hind one.

That Stirner's individualism contains the greatest social possibilities is utterly ignored.

Yet it is nevertheless true that if society is ever to become free, it will be so through liberated individuals whose free efforts make society.

The new powerful means of production were owned by the capitalist class, and the mass of industrial workers, or proletariat, increased in order to build them up.

The Communist Manifesto of 1848, and we'll remember from our episode on Stirner, 1848 is a very important year for revolution, noted that the material achievements of capitalism outstripped in a very short period all those previous civilizations by so many times.

It also pointed out that a world economy had arisen, and with the capitalist countries capable of bombarding all backwards countries with commodities of capitalist production.

But the fundamental message of the manifesto was that the capitalist class had also summoned to life its own gravedigger, the proletariat.

That, that a movement itself at this point is redundant, that insurrection is far more useful than a movement of some kind.

Individual insurrection, that is.

Stirner's form of insurrection, that is.

That is far more useful to encourage that self-sufficiency.

It does not occur to the shallow interpreters of that giant mind that this vision of the Ubermensch also called for a state of society which will not give birth to a race of weaklings and slaves.

It is the same narrow attitude which sees in Max Stirner naught but the apostle of the theory, "Each for himself, the devil take the hind one." That Stirner's individualism contains the greatest social possibilities is utterly ignored.

Yet it is nevertheless true that if society is ever to become free, it will be so through liberated individuals whose free efforts make society.

These examples bring me to the objection that will be raised to minorities versus majorities.

But one comment by someone named Delian Gachev hit like a lightning bolt.

He said, this sounds a lot like the philosophy of German thinker Max Stirner.

In his book, The Unique and His Property, you can find pretty much the same idea.

That one comment was enough to send me spiraling into a whole new rabbit hole.

Max Stirner? How had I missed this guy? I cracked open The Unique and Its Property, and boom.

It was like someone set off dynamite in my brain.

Stirner doesn't just question authority, he obliterates the very concept of it.

This guy takes freedom to a whole new level.

And I think the difference between 1910 and 2010 in this issue is a really extraordinarily profound appreciation of autonomy.

And even though, you know, most of this conversation is not going to be like a radical Max Stirner kind of thing where it's me, you don't leave me all the time.

You know, we do say, well, you know, unless we have a good reason, we're not going to make you do something against your will.

If something makes you profoundly uncomfortable, we're going to take that seriously.

You know? You can't hold science same way you can't hold justice.

You know? Like, I don't know if you read Max Stirner.

He's a really interesting philosopher.

Listen, I'm also Catholic.

...

but I'm talking about science as an abstraction.

If you guys have ever read Max Stirner-

Girl, you believe in gender dysphoria, right?

It does not occur to the shallow interpreters of that giant mind that this vision of the Übermensch also called for a state of society which will not give birth to a race of weaklings and slaves.

It is the same narrow attitude which sees in Max Stirner naught but the apostle of the theory each for himself, the devil take the hind one.

That Stirner's individualism contains the greatest social possibilities is utterly ignored.

Yet it is nevertheless true that if society is ever to become free, it will be so through liberated individuals whose free efforts make society.