The Egoism of Max Stirner
By Sidney Parker
(The following extracts are taken from my booklet entitled THE EGOISM OF
MAX STIRNER: SOME CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES to be published by the
Mackay Society of New York)
Albert Camus
Camus devotes a section of THE REBEL to Stirner. Despite a fairly accurate
summarization of some of Stirner's ideas he nonetheless consigns him to
dwelling in a desert of isolation and negation "drunk with destruction".
Camus accuses Stirner of going "as far as he can in blasphemy" as if in
some strange way an atheist like Stirner can "blaspheme" against something
he does not believe in. He proclaims that Stirner is "intoxicated" with the
"perspective" of "justifying" crime without mentioning that Stirner
carefully distinguishes between the ordinary criminal and the "criminal" as
violator of the "sacred". He brands Stirner as the direct ancestor of
"terrorist anarchy" when in fact Stirner regards political terrorists as
acting under the possession of a "spook". He furthermore misquotes Stirner
by asserting that he "specifies" in relation to other human beings "kill
them, do not martyr them" when in fact he writes "I can kill them, not
torture them" - and this in relation to the moralist who both kills and
tortures to serve the "concept of the 'good'".
Although throughout his book Camus is concerned to present "the rebel" as a
preferred alternative to "the revolutionary" he nowhere acknowledges that
this distinction is taken from the one that Stirner makes between "the
revolutionary" and "the insurrectionist". That this should occur in a work
whose purpose is a somewhat frantic attempt at rehabilitating "ethics" well
illustrates Stirner's ironic statement that "the hard fist of morality
treats the noble nature of egoism altogether without compassion."
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