Max Stirner: biography of this German thinker.

A summary of the life and work of the individualist philosopher Max Stirner.

Max Stirner was an influential but, at the same time, unknown, or at least anonymous, German philosopher.. He did not claim to be part of a clear philosophical current, nor did he found an ideology during his lifetime, although his training was influenced by the Hegelian left.

He rejected any integration of the individual into political and social life, since he thought that entities such as the State, society and classes were mere abstractions empty of content.

Curious as this is, Stirner is seen as one of the forerunners of such disparate ideologies as nihilism, existentialism, individualistic anarchism, psychoanalytic theory, the extreme right and proto-fascism. Let's take a closer look at his life through a biography of Max Stirnerin abridged format.

Max Stirner's short biography

The life of Max Stirner, pseudonym of Johann Kaspar Schmidt, is that of someone who had his minute of glory to, immediately afterwards, fall into oblivion for practically a century.

Early years

Johann Kaspar Schmidt was born in the German city of Bayreuth, Bavaria, on October 25, 1955.Bavaria on October 25, 1806, then the Confederation of the Rhine. He was the only son of Albert Christian Heinrich Schmidt, a lower middle-class craftsman who made flutes, and Sophia Eleonora Reinlein, both Lutherans.

When Johann Kaspar was six months old, his father died of tuberculosis, so that in 1809 his father died of tuberculosis.In 1809 his mother married again, this time to Heinrich Ballerstedt. Sophia would leave her son temporarily in charge of relatives in Bayreuth, while she went to Kulm, to the west of Prussia.

Most of the childhood of the future Max Stirner is linked to the city of Bayreuth. Later, between 1810 and 1819, he would live with his mother in Kulm, a city he would visit again in 1830.

The socio-political context is important in Max Stirner's life. At the time of his birth, the politics of central Europe were briefly stable.. Sixteen German princes, including that of Bavaria, signed the act of the Rheinbund forming the Confederation of the Rhine, putting an end to their ties with the Holy Roman Empire and allying themselves with France.

With the new European order, important changes took place in the region between 1814 and 1815. The Rhine Confederation was not a state particularly supportive of free thought, as the press and advertising were subject to heavy censorship, universities were controlled and dissident political activity was impossible to carry out.

Adolescence

In 1819, at the age of 12, Johann Kaspar Schmidt returned to his hometown, living with relatives and continuing his schooling at the local school.He returned to live with relatives and continued his schooling at the local school, which had been interrupted when he went to Kulm to live with his mother.

Little is known about this period, but some of the names of his German tutors, such as Kieffer, Kloeter and Gabler, are known.

Youth

After completing his secondary schooling Johann Kaspar Schmidt began studying philology, philosophy and theology at the University of Berlin.. There he would have the opportunity to meet great thinkers of the time, such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Schleiermacher and Philip Marheineke in 1826 when he was 20 years old. He then continued his studies in the cities of Erlangen and Königsberg in 1829.

That same year he decided to interrupt his studies to travel through Germany and return temporarily to Kulm to take care of his mother's mental health problems. Two years later he would return with her to Berlin, finishing his university studies in 1834 at the age of 28.

It was between 1834 and 1835 he took the exams to enter the professional teaching profession and subsequently and subsequently worked as an unpaid trainee teacher at the "Königliche Realschule" in Berlin. He wrote a short thesis for the position, Ueber Schulgesetze (The Rules of the School).

At the beginning of 1837 he would admit his mother to Die Charité Hospital in Berlin, being that same year in which his stepfather died and he married Agnes Klara Kunigunde Butz. Agnes Klara was the illegitimate daughter of the owner of the rented house where Stirner was living at the time. The marriage lasted only one year, as his wife died the following year while giving birth to their unborn child.

In 1839 Johann Kasper Schmidt began working at a girls' school for girls from wealthy families. He combined this work with simultaneously frequenting places of great bohemian and intellectual activity, such as the "Café Stehely" and the "Hippel's Weinstube".. That same year his mother died, suffering from advanced mental disorders.

Maturity

Visits to bohemian places in Berlin lead Johann Kaspar to meet a group of Hegelians known as "Die Freien" (The Free). In these philosophical and political gatherings he would establish a productive relationship with Friedrich Engels and Bruno Bauer..

In 1841 he began to write small opinions for the publication of "Die Eisenbahn" (The Railway), entering the publishing world of the prolific German city and it was from then on that he began to sign with the pseudonym of Max Stirner. This pseudonym is a play on words alluding to the fact that he had a large forehead (Stirn in German).

Thus, in these years Johann Kaspar Schmidt devoted himself to educating young bourgeois girls during the day and, when night fell, he became Max Stirnermeeting with the circle of young Hegelians, and being critical against the monarchy and, especially, against the law and the existence of the state.

In 1842 the "Rheinische Zeitung" (The Rhenish Gazette) appeared in the city of Cologne.It was composed of Max Stirner himself, Heinrich Bürgers, Moses Hess, Karl Marx, Bruno Bauer and Friedrich Köppen.

However, shortly afterwards the circle would split in two, with the group of Marx, Rouge and Hess, who distanced themselves from Hegel, and the group formed by Bauer and the League of the Free: Mayen, Buhl, Köppen, Nauwerk and Stirner. The latter group thought of the revolution of consciences through a critique of atheistic, negative and unregulated character..

Minute of fame and philosophical developments

Max Stirner married again, this time to Marie Dähnhardt in 1842.. He begins at that time to write small articles and essays for various periodicals, in addition to the previous ones in which he was already working.

His texts appear in "Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung" and "Berliner Monatsschrift". Among his texts are "Das unwahre Prinzip unserer Erziehung, oder Humanismus und Realismus" (The False Principle of our Education, or Humanism and Realism) and "Kunst und Religion" (Art and Religion).

At the end of 1844, when he was already 38 years old, he resigned from his job as a tutor at the Berlin girls' school, and published his most important and, ironically, most misunderstood work: Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (The Only One and His Property). It is a kind of diary full of rigorous logic and clear style, in which he develops a summary of the Hegelian left during the years 1843 and 1844.

He rejects all social and political integration of the individual, since he considered entities such as the State, society and classes as mere abstractions completely devoid of real content. It is in his most important work where Stirner defends the radical egoism of the empirical and finite self, detached from any moral code and seeing it as the true relaization of the individual.

The work was polemic and not well received by the authorities of the German Confederation.The book was censored and seized from bookstores, which would generate even more popular interest. Shortly thereafter, the censorship was lifted and the book was allowed to be sold, making Max Stirner popular, although this fame would be short-lived.

Final years and decline

Max Stirner writes several essays as a response to the criticisms presented by different authors to his book The Unique and his Property. After separating from Marie Dähnhardt in 1846 he decides to continue answering his objectors. At Die Philosophischen Reaktionaere (The Philosophically Reactionary) he retorts to Kuno Fischer, and in the fifth volume of Epigonen he criticizes Wigand.

In 1847 translates into German some works on economics, such as Traité d'Economie Politique by the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Say and The Wealth of Nations by the British Adam Smith. This would allow him to extend a little more his minute of fame, although he was already beginning to have economic problems and he only subsisted thanks to these translations.

He would not participate in the German Revolution of 1848 but, years later, in 1852, he would publish the first part of "Geschichte der Reaktion" (History of the Reaction), a work in which he captured the events experienced during those turbulent times.

His last years were those of a complete failure. He tried to set up a business but was ruined prosperous and ended up living in destitution.. Between 1853 and 1854 he spent short periods in prison due to financial debts. Max Stirner, born Johann Kaspar Schmidt, died on June 26, 1856. In the Civil Registry, on the occasion of his death, a simple "neither mother, nor wife, nor children" would be noted.

Philosophy

Although Stirner's main work, The Unique and its Propertyfirst appeared in Leipzig in 1844, the origins of his philosophy can be traced back to articles he had published earlier. Among the most noteworthy are The False Principle of our Education, o Humanism and Realism (1842), Art and Religion (1842) y Some Tentative Remarks on the State Based on Love (1843). It is in them that he begins to outline a certain psychological hedonism and individualistic utilitarianism, based on a selfish morality.

For Stirner, the center of all reflection and reality is man.. He speaks of man not as a representative of abstract humanity, but of the individual, the unique "I". The "One" is so not because he is related to anything, but rather because he and he alone is the foundation of every possible relationship. All that we possess in common with other persons is only with respect to the absolute character of our individual uniqueness.

For Stirner uniqueness is not the absence of relation, but relation is, in essence, the absence of uniqueness. The starting point of this work is to deny the existence of God.. For Stirner God is a fictitious entity, created by humans.

At the time when religion arose and was shaping the idea of deities as we understand them today, man renounces his freedom to submit to the dominion, ironically, of his own creation. It makes no difference whether God is replaced by the State or the family, for the problem is essentially the same. Man is only free when he breaks with religion and politics.

Bibliographical references:

• Ruiza, M., Fernández, T. and Tamaro, E. (2004). Biography of Max Stirner. In Biografías y Vidas. The online biographical encyclopedia. Barcelona (Spain). Retrieved from https://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/s/stirner.htm on July 9, 2020.
• Carlson, A. R. (1972). Anarchism in Germany. Vol I. The early movement. New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, p. 53.
• Stepelevich, Lawrence S. (1985). Max Stirner as Hegelian. Journal of the History of Ideas. 46 (4): 597–614. doi:10.2307/2709548. ISSN 0022-5037. JSTOR 2709548.