Did Max Stirner exist?

Max Stirner, pseudonym of Johann Kaspar Schmidt, (born October 25, 1806, Bayreuth, Bavaria [Germany]—died June 26, 1856, Berlin, Prussia), German antistatist philosopher in whose writings many anarchists of the late 19th and the 20th centuries found ideological inspiration.

Who is Drew Max Stirner?

The most-often reproduced portrait of Stirner is a cartoon by Engels, drawn forty years later from memory at biographer Mackay’s request.

What type of anarchist was Max Stirner?

Egoist anarchism or anarcho-egoism, often shortened as simply egoism, is a school of anarchist thought that originated in the philosophy of Max Stirner, a 19th-century existentialist philosopher whose “name appears with familiar regularity in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the earliest …

What did Marx say about Stirner?

Marx insists that “for Stirner, right does not arise from the material conditions of people and the resulting antagonism of people against one mother but from their struggle against their own concept which they should ‘get out of their heads”’ without ever touching the world itself.

Did Engels create Max Stirner?

Came across a weird thread on /leftypol/ a while back where a user claimed that Max Stirner/Johann Caspar Schmidt was not a real person. They argued that Max was instead created by Engels as a pseudonym to promote ideas Engels held but did not feel comfortable expressing publicly.

Did Engels create Stirner?

Laska 1996: 45). Stirner was first identified as an anarchist in Friedrich Engels’ Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, a classi- fication that was adopted by the earliest scholarly studies of anarchism, E.V. Zenker’s of 1895, Paul Eltzbacher’s of 1900, and Ettore Zoccoli’s of 1907.

Why did Stirner change his name?

“Stirner” was originally a nickname, resulting from a large forehead, exaggerated by the way he pushed back his hair, and only later — in the form of “Max Stirner” — adopted as a literary pseudonym and his preferred name.

Is Engels Max Stirner?

Was Max Stirner an ethical egoist?

‘ ■ The philosopher Max Stirner developed a unique form of Ethical egoism in his book The Ego and His Own. Stirner initially rejected psychological egoism because he argued that most self-interest is deluded and that the self is always slave to a ‘spook’ unless liberated.

Was Max Stirner a nihilist?

Stirner belonged to movements which Marx rejected as ‘intel- lectual nihilists’. Following the nihilist logic to its ultimate implic- ations, he denied God and Christian values, the State’s authority, and all traditional morality. But he went still further, and denied all ethical obligations.

Why did stirner change his name?

Why is Max Stirner important to anarchism?

Stirner’s philosophy was important in the development of modern anarchist thought, particularly individualist anarchism and egoist anarchism. Although Stirner is usually associated with individualist anarchism, he was influential to many social anarchists such as anarcha-feminists Emma Goldman and Federica Montseny.

Where did Max Stirner live?

Stirner was born in Bayreuth, Bavaria. What little is known of his life is mostly due to the Scottish-born German writer John Henry Mackay, who wrote a biography of Stirner ( Max Stirner – sein Leben und sein Werk ), published in German in 1898 (enlarged 1910, 1914) and translated into English in 2005.

What is a Stirnerite anarchist?

I am happy to be called a Stirnerite anarchist, provided ‘Stirnerite’ means one who agrees with Stirner’s general drift, not one who agrees with Stirner’s every word”.

What is Max Stirner’s philosophy of individualism?

Stirner became a central figure of individualist anarchism through the publication of his seminal work The Ego and Its Own which is considered to be “a founding text in the tradition of individualist anarchism”. The philosophy of Max Stirner supports the individual doing exactly what he pleases, taking no notice of God, state, or moral rules.