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281 13 Max Stirner and the End of Classical German Philosophy Frederick Beiser The Modern Thrasymachus On June 28, 1856, in the Kirchhof der Sophien-Gemeinde (the cemetery of the Sophia parish) in Berlin, there was laid to rest the body of one Johann Caspar Schmidt. Because of Schmidt’s persistent penury, his grave was modest: second-class, costing one Thaler, ten Silbergroschen. On his “last journey” he was accompanied by only two friends, Bruno Bauer and Ludwig Buhl, and one “Madam Weiss,” who had nursed him at his deathbed and served as a witness. The friends’ attempt at a collection for a gravestone failed; the grave was soon overgrown and forgotten. Thus ended in utter obscurity the days of one of the most original, radical, and provocative philosophers of the nineteenth century. Schmidt, otherwise known by his school nickname, Max Stirner, was an apostle of egoism, nihilism, and anarchism. Indeed, there has never been, in the entire modern era, a more daring, outspoken, and extreme spokesman for these doctrines. Stirner’s thought brings together, in one very heady brew, some of the most radical doctrines of modern philosophy: Machiavelli ’s amoralism, Hobbes’s voluntarism and nominalism, Mandeville’s egoism, and Nietzsche’s anti-Christianity. But all these appear without their disclaimers and qualifiers: Stirner is Machiavelli without republicanism , Hobbes without a Leviathan, Mandeville without charity, Nietzsche without Dionysus. Nowhere in modern philosophy was there a more amoral, asocial, and anti-religious vision of life. The only source of value and authority in Stirner’s world is my will. What is right is whatever I have the will and power to do. Stirner did not shirk from the consequences: lying, incest, and even murder, if I have the will and power to do them, are perfectly permissible. Belief in moral laws and commandments, apart from my will, is only superstition, a ghost or spook to frighten us. We find in Stirner’s philosophy all the inspiration for a novel, indeed the 282 F R E D E R I C K B E I S E R prototype of two of Dostoyevsky’s most bizarre characters, Raskolnikov and Kirilov. Stirner enjoyed only a brief moment of notoriety in the 1840s, and then was virtually forgotten for the rest of the century. He was rescued from oblivion by his first biographer, John Henry MacKay, a Scottish anarchist, in the early twentieth century,1 and he eventually became a hero among American anarchist circles. Although Stirner has now become staple fare in histories of Hegelianism and anarchism, his general philosophical significance has not been sufficiently recognized or appreciated , in both the English- and German-speaking worlds. Stirner remains largely unknown to philosophers, and he continues to be overshadowed by Nietzsche, who was less radical and consistent. Stirner, not Nietzsche, is the archetypal nihilist and egoist, the antithesis of all religion and morality . If he were only better known, he would serve as a more effective gadfly of contemporary philosophers. Perhaps the best way to formulate the challenge Stirner poses for modern political philosophy is to see him in the light of his classical model: Thrasymachus. Stirner is the Thrasymachus of modern political thought. All the problems that Thrasymachus once posed for Socrates in the Republic Stirner reposes for the modern moral and political philosopher . Whoever believes that there is some reason to be just has to answer to Stirner, just as Socrates once did to Thrasymachus. Probably deliberately, Stirner defends all the views of his classical hero: that justice is the right of the stronger, that only a fool or weakling acts justly if it is to his disadvantage, and that everyone should strive to get more than their share.2 We should imagine Stirner as a more cool- and clearheaded Thrasymachus, one who needs no Glaucon to speak for him, one ready to counter all the twists and turns of Socrates’ dialectic. But the interest and challenge of Stirner’s thought lies in more than its revival of a classical prototype. For there is also something profoundly modern about Stirner, something that puts him at the cutting edge of even contemporary thought. In defending Thrasymachus, Stirner used all the tools, tricks, and techniques of modern philosophy. Stirner’s philosophy is firmly grounded in the critical tradition of philosophy, the tradition that begins with Kant, continues with Fichte and Hegel, and culminates with Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, and Karl Marx. Stirner took some of the basic themes of Kantian criticism—the demand that...

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