antithesis. on the comparison of stirner and nietzsche. stirner was no where near as popular and widely read as nietzsche… but the moment you read stirner, you realize that he was nietzsche before nietzsche was nietzsche. ideas so similar it is suspected by many that N had read S, although there’s no definitive proof. some even go so far as to say he plagiarized him.
but what you find once you strip all the romantic garnishing away from the ubermench is striner’s voluntary egoist and ‘unique one’. for stirner the highest type would be anarchistic and oppose any kind of formation of ‘state’… for nietzsche the highest type - a description that often changed throughout his writing - was originally the master statesman, the establisher of great states, etc. but if you follow nietzsche’s thoughts you find him eventually appear to lose both hope and interest in politics and redefine the ubermensch to be independent of his original master/slave morality; the overman was no longer concerned with ‘leading’ and instead sought to emancipate himself from the dirty business of politics, so to speak. he most likely felt that statecraft would inevitably lead to fascism and nationalism - which he despised - but maintained the idea that the higher type still must not be reduced to the simple citizen. hence, he wouldn’t lead or follow. now you see here a big ass circle in the development of the idea… one that ends up back at stirner’s formula.
so what i see is a unique relationship between these two beasts. nietzsche was an undeniably smarter and more elaborate thinker/writer, but because of this complexity he lacked the sinewy strength and solidness that stirner had. perhaps because stirner was simpler and much more skeptical of philosophical thinking in general, he wasn’t able to complicate the concept of the higher type as nietzsche did. in the end, when nietzsche arrived back at stirner, we can only ask ‘you had to do it the hard way, didn’t ya, fritz?’
what really happened was N refused to embrace nihilism (which he was consciously trying to avoid), while stirner reveled in it. the natural consequence of N’s refusal, while also acknowledging the complete loss of objective values in the world, was to try and do the impossible; replace those lost values with new, subjective values to be declared law and sanctioned by the master, ubermensch type, for the purposes of elevating mankind to new heights. in a word, creating and forcing new objective values onto the world.
stirner, on the other hand, was a bit more aware of the impossibility/absurdity of such a project in a world governed by ubiquitous class conflict… and in a sense he saw, before marx and engels, the fundamental problem that had to be resolved before any such nietzschean project could be realized. nietzsche was naive enough to believe such a revolution of supreme politics by the hand of the masters could be possible in such an environment. stirner wuz like ‘umm… no. it’ll never happen, B.’
somewhere in the halls of ILP i did a post where i made the critical connection between what i called the beginning and end of the ethical spectrum of man… on one end you have stirner, on the other marx and engels. and between them, the entire course as well as the final solution was plotted. a resolution that if not reached… that is to say, doesn’t resolve the stirner problem of egoism… would never facilitate a truly ethical world based on a civil contract. and every possible ‘philosophical position’ meanwhile falls somewhere between these two extremes. one is either essentially an anarchist, or one is essentially a marxist. any ideology short of the principles and practices of marxism cannot substantiate a workable system of ethics that all are obligated to observe, uphold and defend. hence, as stirner called it, the ‘state’ is only an abstraction and there exist no ‘men’, only individuals.
this fact alone is interesting, but not as interesting as the lengths those opposed to marxism will go to pretend there is, or even can be, a working social contract in a society where the means of production are not democratically owned by the producers themselves. it’s a seemingly simple thing to note and one asks ‘how could something so trivial be such an important thing to note’, yes. it’s the ramifications and consequences of this arrangement (in a capitalism) that extend so far into socio-political-economic life as to permeate every aspect of civil existence itself. that’s why it’s a big deal, and that’s why the anarchist doesn’t take society seriously until this problem is resolved. western capitalism is a non-starter for the social contract.