Very quickly:
A (thesis) versus B (anti-thesis) equals C (synthesis). Usually the triads don’t always appear in full.
@ Clayton
Why is Stirner’s personal life a cautionary tale?
Seems kind of tragic to me… he marries this woman pretty obviously for her money… then ends up driving her away after spending her fortune, then ends up living off loans from his friends until their patience for him runs out, then pretty much ends up in the gutter. Perhaps he should have thought about how he was treating people and how that would make them feel towards him, rather than just thinking all the time about what he could get out of people. Perhaps I’m misreading his biography but that’s what I see…
Clayton -
That kind of goes with your definition of Epicureanism - hedonism, but in the sense that you actually think about your happiness in the long run rather than just engaging in some kind of stupid activity that may seem fun at the moment but will bring you pain in the end.
His biography is very sketchy, any judgments made on him would be fruitless speculation, one could make the opposite assertions (he took care ofhis mother and 1st dying wife to the end, and was by most accounts a god school teacher, etc.). He dided in poverty, his second wife hated him (and was fairly cryptic as to why), and he never made a lot of friends (though both Bruno and Edgar Bauer attended his funeral - those are some facts, but nothing to great to concern oneself with.
Either way, his life has nothing to do with anything he wrote - anymore than Karl Popper, Mises, or whomever else anyone wants to throw out there.
I’ll be jiggered,
The John Henry Mackay biography exists for free I think:
http://325.nostate.net/?p=5886
The only reason I didnt suggest to start here is because I figured no one would want to spend money on a book - but this is a fine place to start.
And those who are curious about his biography will see there really isnt that much to go on - as this is the most comprehensive and deinitive work of the man’s life that exists, so far as I know.
“I think Stirner took egoism too far”
Indeed, I think his ideas are evil, how much property can you have, well how powerful are you? how long can you keep it, well how big are you? It’s like embracing aggression as the inevitable lowest common denominator and choosing to live as if that were the only way.
Doesn’t Anenome have a point? Doesn’t Stirner’s “might is right” tend to lean towards saying that aggression is the human condition and is the only “right,” that the state has some sort of right over all of us because it owns us due to it’s “might?”
Also, I’m only asking these to further understand Stirner - I’m not saying I fully believe one way or the other.
Well, Stirner is a philosopher, so I don’t think anyone can do him justice in summary form - go read and see what you make of it. The Ego and Its Own is a fairly long read but it’s pretty engaging as far as philosophical material goes…
But I have a hard time seeing anything in Stirner that would make a Prince or a mob boss feel uncomfortable with it which, to me, is a problem. If your views are something that a Prince would be as happy to read as the man on the street, then I think you’re failing to really grapple with the problems of human society and human morality.
Clayton -
I have been reading Ego - and it can easily fly right over your head sometimes, especially with Stirner’s eccentric and flamboyant writing style.
Doesn’t Anenome have a point? Doesn’t Stirner’s “might is right” tend to lean towards saying that aggression is the human condition and is the only “right,” that the state has some sort of right over all of us because it owns us due to it’s “might?”
No more than building a dresser takes carpentry too far.
Look, if you wish to ponder thoughts of morality or how society ought to be, or how you ought behave - you’re barking up the wrong tree reading Stirner. He is (thankfully) not a moralist.