Forgotten Thinkers: Max Stirner

Summary

In this engaging lecture by Wes Cecil, the forgotten philosopher Max Stirner is resurrected for a contemporary audience. Stirner, primarily known for his seminal work "The Ego and Its Own," challenges various ideologies by positioning individualism at the forefront. In a modern context, Stirner’s ideas provide a radical critique of the foundations of societal norms, questioning the established ideas of freedom, democracy, and even love as abstract notions not rooted in the individual's reality.

Highlights

• Max Stirner is discussed as having been forgotten, yet significant in philosophical circles. 🤯
• His book 'The Ego and Its Own' critiques prevailing social norms and ideologies from an individualist perspective. 📖
• Stirner's notion of 'spooks' critiques abstract concepts imposed on the individual by society. 👻
• Stirner emphasizes the importance of individual experiences over abstract ideals. 💪
• Through Stirner's lens, societal systems and concepts like freedom and democracy are viewed as limiting. 🚫

Key Takeaways

• Max Stirner is introduced as a forgotten philosopher, known for his work 'The Ego and Its Own'. 📚
• Stirner's philosophy centers on radical individualism, rejecting societal norms and ideologies. 🤔
• He critiques concepts like freedom and liberalism as mere abstractions, urging individuals to prioritize their unique needs. 🚫
• Stirner argues that societal systems often impose 'spooks' or ghosts of thoughts on individuals. 👻
• Despite his radical views, Stirner believes in the innate goodness and cooperative nature of humans. 🌟

Overview

Max Stirner, though not widely known today, presents a radical individualist perspective that challenges many of the foundational ideas of society. In his book 'The Ego and Its Own,' Stirner expounds on the concept that individuals should prioritize their own needs and realities over abstract societal norms. This lecture delves into Stirner's ideas, contextualizing them within his time and linking them to contemporary issues like modern-day terrorism and freedom of the press.

Wes Cecil explains how Stirner perceived societal constructs such as religion, patriotism, and love as 'spooks' – illusions that distract individuals from realizing their own power and potential. Stirner provocatively questions whether any social or political ideology can truly represent the individual's interests, pushing for a personal evaluation of values based on one’s own experiences rather than imposed systems.

Despite his controversial stance, Stirner's belief in the potential of human goodness and cooperation stands out. He posited that humans do not inherently require rigid systems to regulate behavior, as their natural inclination is towards community and productivity. Stirner's critique remains relevant as it invites us to reconsider the balance between individual agency and social conformity.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Max Stirner The chapter introduces the largely forgotten philosopher Max Stirner, noting that he's not widely recognized even among knowledgeable audiences. It suggests that there have been periods of renewed interest in Stirner's work, followed by times when his contributions are largely overlooked.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Max Stirner's Relevance Today The chapter titled 'Max Stirner's Relevance Today' begins by discussing a tragic event in Paris, similar to other recent tragedies, prompting a reflection on why individuals commit extreme acts of violence, even when it involves their own death. The narrative seeks to explore the motivations, thoughts, and emotions driving such actions. This sets the stage to connect these themes with the philosophical ideas of Max Stirner.
• 01:00 - 06:30: Stirner's Critique of Society The chapter examines Stirner's critique of societal norms, particularly in response to events like the Paris attacks. Stirner's philosophy provides a unique viewpoint that differs from mainstream media narratives, rejecting intellectual and social frameworks that contribute to such incidents.
• 06:30 - 17:30: Stirner's Unique Philosophy The chapter explores the unique philosophy of Stirner, focusing on his aggressive response to the social and cultural events of his time, which spanned from 1806 to 1856. Stirner lived in a period rich with cultural significance but also marked by considerable social upheaval.
• 17:30 - 25:00: Stirner's Impact and Misinterpretation The chapter delves into the revolutionary wave of 1848, highlighting how various European regions such as Italy, France, Belgium, Switzerland, the German states, the Hapsburg Empire, Ireland, Sweden, and Hungary experienced significant upheavals. In a mere six weeks, these areas witnessed either complete overthrows of governments or violent clashes.
• 25:00 - 52:30: Conclusion and Stirner's Legacy In the chapter titled 'Conclusion and Stirner's Legacy,' the narrative recounts a period marked by significant revolutionary activities across various European capitals. This era was characterized by substantial public dissent and resistance against the prevailing conditions. Notably, Max Stirner was part of a political or freethinkers group, which included prominent figures such as Bruno Bauer, Friedrich Engels, and Karl Marx. Stirner's involvement in this milieu is highlighted, indicating his connection to a broader intellectual and revolutionary network of the time.

Forgotten Thinkers: Max Stirner Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 um all right tonight Max sterer how many people have heard of Max sterer just a quick poll one person ah yes so um I think I think you're in for a treat personally um max Sterner so certainly fills the bill of a forgotten philosopher when such a literate and knowledgeable audience has not heard of him I think that means he has been forgotten it turns out there's periodic Max sterer booms and then he goes to
• 00:30 - 01:00 zero so he's sort of a boomer bust stock market guy um but I want to start by by saying we've had this tragic event in in Paris this following week uh that modled many other tragic events and one of the questions that people always ask is how is it that someone decides that they they are going to kill a bunch of people when they know they're going to die themselves how how is this possible what drives someone to do this um what is this what what what are they thinking essenti what are they feeling why Max
• 01:00 - 01:30 sterner's philosophy asked this as a central question and he has a response to the Paris attacks that you will not hear from anybody I assure you uh online or on the news media or any place else because he rejects the kind of philosophical or intellectual social drives that lead to something like the Paris attack but he rejects them absolutely and so in understanding something like what's going on um when you have these sort of suicide side
• 01:30 - 02:00 bomber fanaticism it's really helpful to look back at at a a period of thinking where at least sterer for his part really did respond aggressively to this sort of event um he was born in well when was he 1806 to 1856 he he lived in an very um Rich cultural environment but also filled with much Social upheaval and the front part I hear I I give you a map and this
• 02:00 - 02:30 is of the revolution of 1848 um in 1848 in the course of about 6 weeks there were revolutionary movements in Italy France Belgium Switzerland German states there wasn't really a Germany per se but there are German states hapsburg Empire Switzerland Ireland Sweden Hungary and a lot more I mean on this map you can see all kinds of governments overthrown places where there are violent clashes but within truly a matter of just a few weeks
• 02:30 - 03:00 there were major revolutionary outbreaks in almost every um capital city in in Europe there was an extraordinary Outburst of popular resistance to what was going on at the Times um sterer was in a in a in a sort of political group or a freethinkers group that included people like Bruno Bower um friederick Eng Les uh Carl Marx you may have heard of him um this sort of uh Mill you and in his world in his
• 03:00 - 03:30 life what was happening is the industrialization of of the world was beginning to really accelerate so in a city like Berlin saw its population triple or quadruple in 50 years from 1800 to 1850 uh London's population I think doubled in 50 years basically every major capital in Europe was seeing its population double or triple within a lifetime it so this was not a slow you
• 03:30 - 04:00 know over a 100 or 200 years it was when I was 20 my city had 150,000 and when I was 40 it had 450,000 people so this brought all kinds of new stresses and new people um there're also a time of incredible intellectual ferment many of the of the you know uh freedom of the press freedom of religion freedom of thoughts expanded suffrage rights for workers um socialism commun ISM the the
• 04:00 - 04:30 the fundamental thinking that underg that was really came to fruition um in in those years in fact you can you can see kind of the revolution in France kicking it off and then it spread um and so by the time you get to 1848 these forces just sort of explode they were set in motion however uh when you have the peace treaties following the Napoleonic Wars because when Napoleon lost the revolution uh as
• 04:30 - 05:00 such loss it' already been defeated by Napoleon a long time before but the but that revolutionary notion was defeated by the forces of reaction um and so most of the governments that were put in place were were much more conservative often than the governments that had preceded them and a lot of the impetus of social reform was impeded Castle raw and metnick and and and various other figures of the time were conservative too reactionary and so a system was set up that lasted for at least 50 years until
• 05:00 - 05:30 1848 and much of it lasted longer than that and so uh you have an old monarchical often but topheavy uh governing systems that are resistant to change you have revolutionary fervor of increased amount of Education industrialization rapid expansion of cities a boom in agricultural production that allows for the population to be sustained increases in wealth all
• 05:30 - 06:00 creating this incredible ferment and turmoil and the values that were generally espoused now the thing with the Revolutions of 1848 is the value there was no it wasn't coordinated it was just a sort of spontaneous Outburst of resistance so generally not invariably but generally that the resistance was crushed and nothing either nothing changed or things got worse but it does set sort of a marker like okay people people want
• 06:00 - 06:30 these things people wanted freedom of the press freedom of religion capacity to move where they wanted to protection for workers um sort of rights to travel all sorts of freedoms and popular intellectual ideas that we still celebrate today um were were were being fought for in the streets and the amazing thing about Max sterer is he said all of this is nonsense Max sterer was before against the revolution that were coming because
• 06:30 - 07:00 he thought they were already out of date and his big book the ego and its own the book for which he's famous to the extent that he's famous although since nobody knows him to this extent to which he's not famous the the the book to read the book dour would be the ego and its own um is and it came out 1844 so four years before you had this incredible fluorescence of popular cultural resistance
• 07:00 - 07:30 to conservatism and repression and totalitarianism and all of these bad things sterer had come out with a book uh that basically said I'm already against the next Revolution not because he was in favor of what was in existence but because he thought the answer that was coming was wrong and he thought the answer that was coming would lead to the Paris attacks that we saw just this last week it turns out he very well may have
• 07:30 - 08:00 been correct it was an extraordinary uh extraordinarily foresightful analysis of his time and the response of it he was uniquely positioned to make this response because he was in the social milu that was agitating for revolution he was Bruno Bower again Frederick Les Carl Marx he he knew them they knew him he read the journals he wrote articles that were repressed by the censors so he understood State censorship um he was
• 08:00 - 08:30 you know uh he he s he had friends who were on the barricades and and various revolutionaries you know he was right there and yet he said I think you've got it fundamentally wrong and understand his critique and how at variance it was um is what I want to do tonight because I think at A Moment Like This is important to say wow 50 years later we in some ways we really haven't changed our our tact and so is his Central thesis if you
• 08:30 - 09:00 want is um well we can read a quote here um at the bottom just under the map it says first and foremost the good cause then God's cause the cause of mankind of truth of freedom of humanity of Justice further the cause of my people my prince my Fatherland finally even the cause of mind and a thousand other causes only my cause is never to be my concern shame on the egoist who thinks only of himself
• 09:00 - 09:30 Bruno Bower's critique is pretty simple I am the center of the universe nothing else matters I believe in nothing but me I am unique and uniquely important and all values all truths all Necessities all needs and wants should be measured against myself and myself alone and it was so radical at the time that when marks and angles when the book
• 09:30 - 10:00 came out they wrote uh I was just reading this I forgot to get the exact number of pages but it's like two or three times as long as uh sterner's book they wrote a response against it it infuriated them so much because they said no the people have to come together we come together together we form a a a a democracy or a federation or a Fatherland or we for something bigger than ourselves that then achieves great
• 10:00 - 10:30 things sterer there is nothing bigger than yourself the biggest thing in the universe is you or the every individual and the only way to avoid all of the problems that we see is for us to embrace radically Embrace ourselves as simply the center of [Music] all that's what he's calling for and if if again I'll keep referencing this but if you think of the Paris attacks um
• 10:30 - 11:00 those the the people were not being sacrificing themselves for themselves they were sacrificing themselves for a higher cause and that's essentially what sterer is against he going to say it over and over again as we go through this there is no such thing as a higher cause there's only your cause and if you believe that then you can avoid all kinds of evils in the world so some of his examples so he says TR it goes through time and he says the fundamental problem comes excuse me
• 11:00 - 11:30 comes from our concepts of religion and he says the notion is that there is this power which we call God at first that is greater than us outside of us and greater than us sterer has no problem with there being Powers outside of us he just doesn't think any of them are greater than us even if there were a god sterer would say that's
• 11:30 - 12:00 fine but it's not greater than you in fact it's lesser than you in fact it's probably irrelevant you should just not even care because God is so insignificant to your total greatness as to be not worthy of of your concern so that sort of attitude he carries to its you know just radical extension but basically he thinks look we there is no such thing as God um and
• 12:00 - 12:30 so just get that out of your mind and he says what's happened is he calls them Spooks he says our minds are haunted by Spooks at first there's a God and so we want to do things that please God some outside force that needs to be propitiated or sacrifice to but in any way we have to do things for the God and he says this goes from the ancient world all the way through it's a critique particularly of Christianity in many ways but not just he says he's against all of them he's like look any
• 12:30 - 13:00 concept of a God is wrong all you do is you change the flavor and the nuance and he say so then what happens is he says okay well well we start saying well you know not God how about the spiritual the spirit Spirit is good not any particular God but the spirit it's like okay if you are the spirit then that's fine but if not oh that's not fine there is no spirit it's another spook it's out outside of you something's greater than
• 13:00 - 13:30 you it's just a ghost it's a story to scare little kids don't believe it set yourself free there is no there is no spirit and then he says then we go to this is where the liberalism of his time this is really the birth of modern liberalism says well humankind humanism the human you know the mankind he says I have no use for mankind forget mankind mankind is just a substitute you just take out God and put in mankind and
• 13:30 - 14:00 then you have the same thing I'm not interested in mankind I'm interested in me I'm interested in one person if if if if you're interested in mankind the only person you can't be interested in is yourself right it's all the other people count but not you sacrifice yourself for mankind mankind he says this is just an abstraction he says what happens is when you're a child anything that's a immediate you
• 14:00 - 14:30 understand anything that's not immediate you have no concept of and he says as you grow up you get these ideas your mind takes over he says this isn't wrong but it misleads us so that things of the mind we start we're going to sacrifice ourselves for things of the mind again Spooks so he says then then love he says Universal love right love is what we should be sacrificing ourselves for the love of mankind no he says no no forget
• 14:30 - 15:00 love don't that you should not sacrifice yourself for love love is not greater than you love is not a good it again it's another type of spook he says we're just substituting abstract categories for abstract categories um and and when you do that you just confuse yourself then you get patriotism love of country there's two good things love and Country what could
• 15:00 - 15:30 possibly go wrong right I see this is the thing we think love of our country good fascism bad as if the fascists didn't love their country well that's wrong kind of love of your country well sterer is like no just get rid of that don't love your country because it's an abstraction there's a great poem by Pablo nuda who says someone asked me if I would fight for my country I paraphrase I cannot do as
• 15:30 - 16:00 poetry and I said uh no for certain Rivers a few valleys and perhaps a mountain or two right and that and that's the that's the concrete that's the real if if you love a river you can fight for it but to love to fight for an abstraction sterer is like no don't do that that's not you this is just your mind failing you so
• 16:00 - 16:30 has this whole critique of basically all the values of liberalism so this is where he begins with he says our mind is haunted by the these these specters these ghosts of abstractions and if if you read The Communist Manifesto uh it it begins with the um a ghost haunting Europe and and he and Mark says oh we
• 16:30 - 17:00 want to kill it but then he he offers another abstraction to kill it the hapsburg Empire is this horrible totalit not horrible but sort of Imperial repressive system how do we what do we replace it with Czech nationalism you know uh uh polish nationalism all the nationalisms it's like no that's just substituting why is one nationalism better than an imperial monarchy what's this is two flavors of the same sort of abstraction where are you in this you
• 17:00 - 17:30 should substitute you for the hapsburg Empire that's his that's his argument that's what you should be um so he says once you skip through this then you have to start thinking about well what does the individual want how does this manifest itself and he says one of the problems we have is we keep saying well we want freedom and he says Freedom this is incredibly misleading one of the examples he us which I think is quite helpful is freedom of the press we
• 17:30 - 18:00 believe in freedom of the press that seemed like a good idea he says this is a stupid idea he says freedom of the press is a bad idea because it's the government allowing you to have freedom of the press sterer says freedom is never asking if you have to ask you're not free and so it turns out that now we know like U Snowden right the the gentleman who who broke uh the stories and Rel releas the information about the government spying on everyone and is now
• 18:00 - 18:30 in Exile in Russia see we have freedom of the press except for things the government doesn't want published which is kind of a funny kind of freedom of the press right that you're free to publish anything the government says is not okay for you to publish which is exactly not I mean is precisely the definition of not freedom of the press but if you ask us we say oh yes we have freedom of the press sterner's point is like no that's that
• 18:30 - 19:00 freedom of the press means you do not ask you publish what you want and by the way this is someone who was systematically repressed by censors not surprisingly by the way um again he was a revolution or two ahead of his time so they were censoring the revolutionaries and sterer they didn't even know what to make of actually they have some of the documents of the censors trying to figure out what he is up to and all they know is it's bad they're not sure but they're like well you know I just don't think this is good it's so we're not sure what he's
• 19:00 - 19:30 driving at but we're sure it's not what we want so let's Cent it so he's always he's having to move his publication locations around um and and change dates on Publications and whatnot to try to get around the censors and baffle them um so he knew what press censorship was but he said freedom of the press is not the government saying it's okay for you to publish what you want freedom of the press is you publishing whatever you want and it also highlights another aspect he said freedom is not an
• 19:30 - 20:00 abstraction we don't want the freedom to have food we want food is it is the observation I always make about our Health Care system is we have this whole Health Care system and everybody talks about how people want health insurance people do not want health insurance when they break their arm they want it treated this is not wanting health insurance this is exactly what sterer is saying he's saying look we don't want insurance as an abstraction we don't want the idea that we could have food no if we're hungry we
• 20:00 - 20:30 want food and so when we talk we look at like the Press of the United States and we look at someone like rert Murdoch or the major corporations that run the news Medias we say well we have freedom of the press it's just that no one has access to it and sterer is like yeah this is my point that is not Freedom that's a stupid kind of Freedom that's Freedom as an abstraction as long as you don't want to publish anything the government doesn't want you to and as long as you want to have no access to an audience
• 20:30 - 21:00 you're good to go you have all the freedom you want so in 1844 sterer was already against this I think I really do think it's a remarkably foresightful uh U moment in history when he just lays that out but he but he makes it clear that that we get confused by this that that the the the notion of Freedom which he's not opposed to but he says we get it wrong because we think it is something that is either granted from
• 21:00 - 21:30 the outside which it cannot be only you can make Freedom it cannot be given to you or allowed for you um another way to think of it is everybody is free to say climb Mount Everest give or take but almost nobody does because we don't want to which is fine and or we can't which is our own limitations and he says the freedom to do it is no it's it's the doing of it if
• 21:30 - 22:00 you can't actually do it then the freedom is meaningless you have to be able to enact it make it physical make it your own and so this his his critique of of freedom and and this notion that oh we want freedom is is well it's you know it's pretty radical even today um I think if if you look at something well we'll talk about in a second then he moves on he says all right so what he he Advocates is not surprisingly kind of radical
• 22:00 - 22:30 individualism in which he says okay look if if uh let's say we have free public education that's great um but what what if my public education is bad well well then as far as Sterner says then the entire system is broken because I rate it by me and so when we do like uh testing or whatever in the education system we always want averages and certain like that's the
• 22:30 - 23:00 system thinking that's an abstraction there is no student that performs average every student is unique and if you look from the group we go well on average it's fine but if you look at the individual no say he says you cannot do that the individual needs to stand up and say no this is unacceptable for me I don't care about other people um again if if you think of like the black lives matters movement one of the
• 23:00 - 23:30 first responses to it was people said well you know black lives matter by the way that should have an exclamation point it has no punctuation I don't understand why that is because the history of this is black lives matter shrug question mark um and so what they mean is black lives matter exclamation point they need to get an exclamation point that's an aside um but but if you think of the black lives matter movement one of the first responses of the sort of outside of that that movement was no all lives matter not black all lives
• 23:30 - 24:00 matter this is sterer all ster is like no no no wrong my life matters if I'm black my life matters if I'm white my life matters but it upsets us when any small group of people stand up and say I matter we want abstract sense of everybody having vague capacities or opportunities or freedoms when small groups or individuals stand up and say look I'm not getting it we're like well on
• 24:00 - 24:30 average how's everybody doing well screw average we do not care about average sterer like forget that we're not doing analysis of sociological systems which is what we tend to do U in reporting and and studying look at the individual the unemployment rate I always use the example if if I'm unemployed the unemployment rate is 100% if I'm have a job the unemployment rate is zero this is how we should these statistics um and and but we don't
• 24:30 - 25:00 because one it would be sort of a bit unwieldy uh but but also it it it's not how we tend to think about these sorts of larger systems but he he he's at pains to point out by the way that this does not simply create an ethical vacuum of chaos now the critique of this is like oh well now you have 300 million Americans all just running around naked with guns setting fire to buildings or whatever it is you know that that that this would just lead to
• 25:00 - 25:30 utter chaos another aspect of stern that's quite remarkable is this is the critique of humanity that comes to us from a certain flavor of Christianity that humans are bad and that left to their own they will do wrong things and so we need systems and laws and order to govern them sterer actually believes in good people he says basically you're a good
• 25:30 - 26:00 person you do not need all this order in fact it actually does not help you it hurts you that you're constantly being repressed and and convinced of these abstractions and taken out of yourself and haunted with Spooks it makes you less than you should be so another just to keep with the theme uplifting theme of terrorism um on 911 what was it 12 guys with box knives destroyed the World Trade Center in
• 26:00 - 26:30 several 747s and a lot of lives now if people were by Nature chaotic think of how many millions of manh hours the technology the money investment to build those buildings to build those airplanes to keep them flying it's an incredible example of how Cooperative human beings are by Nature we want to work together we like to work we build cities there's no reason for us
• 26:30 - 27:00 to have cities if we couldn't cooperate if we were by Nature chaotic and wanted to tear things down we wouldn't have cities because it takes 12 guys with box knives to destroy the work millions of manh hours and and resources to produce and since then we've put the buildings back up communally cooperatively sterer says this is who human beings are we aren't these terrible you know animals that
• 27:00 - 27:30 have to be caged and straightened and trained and beat or else we'll do something wrong we're we're we're generally good and he also points out that freedom not only just an external issue but it's an internal issue if you do not control your desires you are not free then you are an animal if you allow any single like lust for food to control you then you've lost
• 27:30 - 28:00 your freedom now you're not your own you've lost yourself this is not you in your totality this is one part of you overwhelming the rest of you that's not Freedom that's not you being in control that is terrible he says if you get a fixed idea say killing people for all out this is not Freedom this is you being overwhelmed by an idea by a spook by a ghost and and you are not expressing
• 28:00 - 28:30 your totality and he says what our civilization has tended to do is try to repress various aspects of ourselves food is not bad but if you get overwhelmed by the lust of food that is bad so we oh well we try to hedge that in but he says that doesn't mean you give up your desire for food that means you control control it because it is part part of you you do not resist this so when when he talks
• 28:30 - 29:00 about radical individualism he doesn't mean an ethical vacuum he means you really expressing the greatest possible version of you that you can and he just doesn't think we're the best possible versions of ourselves when our various animal desires overwhelm us when our fears overwhelm us when a single idea romantic love I will kill myself you know s Romeo and Juliet Juliet is what 13 when she dies for Romeo I think it's she 12 12 or
• 29:00 - 29:30 13 I always forget it's preposterously young but we love that idea oh she sacrificed herself for love sterer is like no that is the dumbest thing ever this is not the complete expression of a fully integrated powerful uplifted well individual this is a social pathology and and you should not kill yourself at 12 when you think that your
• 29:30 - 30:00 your your your boyfriend um is dead you know that that's that is just a mistaken concept and he says if if you work on your own you measure it by yourself then you say wow I'm really upset that my boyfriend's dead but that's okay I'm still here and I'm God and I'm the universe so that's plenty yeah and this so this this concept does not create an ethical vacuum we we think it creates an ethical vacuum because we're so in ingrained in
• 30:00 - 30:30 us the idea that if we don't have rules chaos descends but sterer points out um he says look people like to have friends this is a glorious part of being a human being if you are s such an egoist that you damage your capacity to have friends again you're not being your whole self you're not being true to yourself you're you're being tricked either by yourself or by your
• 30:30 - 31:00 Society in some way and that's what he's really concerned with now the greatest extreme this would lead to like if if if you have a sociopath killing people you he could use Sterner as and say look well you know look this says sterer says I should just do what I want it's like yeah and there are sociopaths and that has to be addressed and dealt with but most people are not sociopaths this is what Sterner is talking about we shouldn't behave as if everybody is a
• 31:00 - 31:30 sociopath when almost no one is a sociopath it's a it's a misleading sense of who we are and so one of the things that also grows out of this is the people who do love sterer who read sterer and sort of keep the sterer uh flame burning are anarchists because he was so resistant to all this but the thing is he wasn't I I would argue I don't think he was an anarchist he's not against social
• 31:30 - 32:00 systems he's against having to subsume yourself to a social system he didn't he didn't subscribe to any of the anarchist causes which were around he wouldn't I mean he wasn't a joiner let's put it that way not surprisingly not much of a joiner and because the anarchists tend to be well organized and have big groups sterer would almost certainly not have wanted to associate with them because he he's like look I I'm I don't believe in cause of anarchism because it's an
• 32:00 - 32:30 abstraction social governments are real don't be confused about that human beings and we've had governments going back for as long as we have history social groupings he's not against social grouping he's not against cities he's against the inversion of values that tells you that there's something more important than yourself and so then he he concludes his his argument um the end of the last chapter of it's a very short chapter the last chapter of the ego in its own is
• 32:30 - 33:00 called the unique one and he and he just basically says in there look to really get a grap grip on this just think I am unique I am the only thing I am the only one everything is measured against me this is this is what I mean is it mine do I control it do I possess it can I destroy it or keep it or withhold it or throw it away as I see fit if if yes good if no it either has nothing to
• 33:00 - 33:30 do with me or don't lie to me and tell me that it does I it it's not mine if I cannot dispose of it as I see fit so curious this leads to he's a very strong proponent of private property oddly for for a social radical in every way because he says look if I can't control it and do with it as I see fit then it's not mine absolutely no use for this notion of communal property he's like well sharing is great but then
• 33:30 - 34:00 what part is mine that's his question very straightforward I don't you know everybody wants to share but who makes the rules about sharing right again think of it people talk about income disparity right is a big topic these days what's me all men are created equal as long as you don't count money which is a funny thing not to count in a society almost entirely denominated by money right and and that's where he says well who sets up
• 34:00 - 34:30 the rules well we've set up a rule where everybody's equal and we have to share everything except for the cash and of course it's the cash that we care about so it's like freedom of the press to publish anything that doesn't upset the government you know Freedom equality of of everybody being created equal except for with money it's just it's a weird exception sort of an exceptional exception I would say in this kind of society and sterer is saying I didn't want to get rid of that he's just like look you you have to look at the rules and most of the rules most of the time
• 34:30 - 35:00 don't seem to say You're really important and what you want is what matters the government the school the the commune the again he was at the birth there of socialism and communism and all the various isms of the time he was right there and he's like no I don't I don't like any of them I don't want to have to subsume myself to any cause whatsoever not even to the cause of trying to spread sterer ism he he would be he would have been
• 35:00 - 35:30 opposed to sterer ISM because he said that's mine it's not yours it's mine so so go away you know that's the uh uh um you know that's the sort of clear idea that he has there and so he presents this just stunning I think quite powerful critique and and I the limit some there are limitations I want to look at this real quickly it is a powerful critique in fact I think reading ego his own is sort of like it's like walking not knowing how
• 35:30 - 36:00 thirsty you are when you've been working on a hot day and then as soon as you start drinking water you realize you're really thirsty cuz it's completely out of a different take he's not liberal he's not a conservative he's not a communist or a socialist or a capitalist or a bureaucrat he's he's just like w he's sterer and he's coming out of this very incredibly different place and his critique resonates in many ways unfortunately but not surprisingly
• 36:00 - 36:30 it's an almost entirely negative critique which is to say he says what's bad and he says what's good is you but it's not really nearly as welldeveloped as what's bad so in in in 300 Pages there's about 292 pages of what's bad uh eight pages seven and a half pages saying you're really great and not a lot of working out of what that means um and so that is definitely a limitation but it is a challenge because
• 36:30 - 37:00 any systematic of working out of what it means would of course be a system and then we would be in trouble because he would be opposed to that because what was good and what it meant for him may not be what's good and what it means for you oddly I think in many ways he's actually articulated where we are but it tends to be the kind of things we hate we say Well everybody's just in individual everybody's just out for their own sterer would say
• 37:00 - 37:30 good people just move around willy-nilly go whatever they want do what they want sterer would say great people have no connection with the past good that's a spook people in fact I I do a poll of my students every year and it's remarkable I say ask how many of my students um either plan to or would be perfectly happy to to to leave the United States and not live here again and almost all of them raise their hands they're not planning to leave the United States they
• 37:30 - 38:00 just don't see any reason why they wouldn't if they had the opportunity they have almost no attachment to Country this is going to have ramifications it's it and there's other sources of evidence that this is true that the coming generation has essentially no sense that America is someplace that you would be attached to what does it mean if you have a country of people none of whom care that they're in the country like zero sense of patriotism I don't know what happens but it certain be a fascinating experiment
• 38:00 - 38:30 this is how monarchies fail by the way monarchies failed when people just sto believing in Kings and it's not clear exactly why historically this happens all the time but apparently you know there's just times in history when the people are just like King huh we don't believe it anymore and then that's it I mean when when people say that your monarchy really is done because you have no heft you have no sort of Voice or power to to sway opinion and and and then pretty soon you get some other form of government either less good or or better but you're
• 38:30 - 39:00 dumb um and so these sorts of critiques that that we tend to get throw against ourselves of radical individualism of people giving up all their ties of you know less attendance to religion and bless spirituality and U people moving around not attached to their families not attached to their place not attached to their country sterer would say good good good good good good good that's all good because most of that is just spooks just ghosts things that you've been sold you've been
• 39:00 - 39:30 convinced of they don't come from you one of the experiments He suggests not just ster but other place is take any uh religious system and ask yourself left to your own devices would you have come up with that if no it's not a good religion for you would you have written that book those books that collection the the rig vadas would you have thought of that you know would that would that like probably not so forget it's not it's not you it's not from you and so throw it
• 39:30 - 40:00 over and so back to the Paris attacks when we Ponder this we say okay here's some some young people usually this is Young People by the way because they have that ideal this is idealism Made Concrete this is where the autod defay Act of Faith by the way that's what that means out of faith when you used to burn people alive it was an Act of Faith and you did it to help them you felt good about burning them alive
• 40:00 - 40:30 because you were doing them a favor um if if and we think oh wow we're we don't do that anymore oh yes we do apparently we still do do this these people have an idea and they think that they're doing good they're helping people because there's this ideal abstraction whether it's a religious conception of heaven or a certain feeling of obligation that they have that's been impressed on them it's
• 40:30 - 41:00 nothing concrete because it's obviously they aren't doing anything concrete besides killing people and most of them if you ask them they said Do You Believe In killing random people they're like no that's not a good thing ah unless it's tied to this abstraction this conception of Faith but we struggle because our only response has tended to be another abstraction well they need to be Versed and educated in the ways of liberalism or democracy or Freedom or
• 41:00 - 41:30 humanitarianism or love right it's anything but asking them helping them listening to them what do you want why do you want that where does that desire come from right would you do this on your own we tend not to think of it or look at it that way so we'll respond as we have historically uh jce people did in 1848 when faced with these revolutionary
• 41:30 - 42:00 uprisings it one isms versus another isms and we tend to prefer our isms and often they're quite preferable I would argue there's many reasons to believe that they are are better but they're not of a different flavor and they do not get out of this sort of strange dialectic of moving between this ISM and that ISM and this contrast and that contrast and you know he and sterer really does bring this other and Strange Life light to shine on this corner of our thinking where he says you know get
• 42:00 - 42:30 rid of the Spooks there's another long quote I thought I wanted to give you just uh just uh on the back there by the way this picture of of of sterer was sketched by friederick Les so I like that because it sort of there's a moment in history for you Max ster as sketched by Fredick Eng Les so um excuse me man your head is haunted you have wheels in your head you imagine great things and depict yourself of a whole world of gods that
• 42:30 - 43:00 has an existence for you a spirit realm to which you suppose yourself to be called an ideal that beckons to you you have a fixed ideal do not think that I am justing or speaking figur you when I regard these those persons who cling to the higher and because the vast majority belongs under this head almost the whole world of men as veritable fools fools in a mad house what is it then that is called a fixed idea an idea that has subjected man to itself when you
• 43:00 - 43:30 recognize with regard to such a fixed idea that it is folly you shut its slave up in an asylum and is the truth of Faith say which we are not to doubt the of ma the Majesty of the censor is um oh the Majesty of people which are not to strike at he who does is guilty of Le Majesty virtue against which the sensor is not to let a word pass that morality may be kept pure are these not fixed ideas is not all the stupid chatter of most of our newspapers and the babble of
• 43:30 - 44:00 fools who suffer from the fixed idea of morality legality Christianity Etc and only seem to go about free because the mad house in which they walk takes in so broad a space so this is a very generous and open critique right this is a this is a a um a brick to throw at everyone I think it's it's sort of the universal brick throwing but but this is his concept when we have thick ideas that come from outside of us but we act as if they're
• 44:00 - 44:30 real we're duded if my fixed idea is that oh I don't know um I'm walking on the moon and I behave like that and I wear an astronaut suit all the time and I won't open it up because I'm afraid I'll suffocate they'll eventually take me away and get me some help because they'll say you're not walking on the moon then you go to the mad house and what what what saying is look but there's so many ideas that we have that
• 44:30 - 45:00 bear no more scrutiny than this that we should all be in the mad house and that really we are in the mad house like he says we just don't notice because it is the whole country right it just it's so big that we we don't recognize it's a mad house with very large borders and like I said that's why I used the example earlier of freedom of the press because we believe we have freedom freom of the press almost No One controls the press a few large companies
• 45:00 - 45:30 a few rich people and the government doesn't let you print what you want I mean Snowden is in exile for trying to do that other than that we have freedom of the press which is not freedom of the there's no it's but it's by definition not freedom but we believe we have it and that's what matters and he says these sorts of just powerful delusions and the curiously he doesn't even care about freedom of the press this I should mention this sterer is not like ad V ating he would like there to be feeding P but he's not advocating for it he's
• 45:30 - 46:00 just saying it's wrong to think that you have it when you don't if you don't have it you should recognize that and go oh no we don't have it that's fine I don't care if you care you care ster says if you care then care if you don't care don't care but don't be deluded don't get it into your mind that you have something this fixed idea and P and and Ponder this because this is what it leads two by the way and this is um the critique you see one of
• 46:00 - 46:30 the things I always believe is every time someone tries to come up with something that's pure or right or just because humans are involved the only way to achieve it is to kill them as you fast as you possibly can right communism would work except for that people are greedy and self-interested so you have to kill them and beat it out of them until the abstraction works right this is the history of all these great ideas and systems is almost always this this history of repression and Punishment and torture because it's
• 46:30 - 47:00 not human humans are greedy for good or ill we all are humans like to do strange things um that many systems like to say no we shouldn't people shouldn't be anytime somebody says that by the way people shouldn't be like that this is a denial of reality it's the mad house or anytime there's a terrible Act people say well that's barbaric or that's animals or that's inhuman that's what we
• 47:00 - 47:30 like to tell ourselves oh that's inhuman well the history of the world demonstrates no that is absolutely right in the mainline of the human that's the problem that we need to look at and saying that that's not what humans do is to dude ourselves and what keeps us from recognizing this and and and focusing on it is all these fix these Spooks these ghosts these wheels in our heads these beliefs that it's that it's that it's all G to uh you know somehow
• 47:30 - 48:00 magically turn out better or be okay or that everyone's going to wake up tomorrow and love their nature love their neighbor love nature embrace the environment everything's going to be fine some people just don't care some people do you know and how do you address that he argues not by invoking all of these sort of mystical magical thinking um and so finally I think if you go back to the the the the revelation of
• 48:00 - 48:30 1848 um you know we do live in this surprisingly and suddenly quite turbulent time in in the late 90s oh God what's his name I can never remember his name is um he wrote uh he wrote the end of history and the last man and it was an argument fukiyama Francis fukiyama one of the dumbest books ever written um and which he he wrote it was a bestseller he works at the Rand I think he still works to the Rand company Rand research Corporation and he argued
• 48:30 - 49:00 that you know liberal democracy had won the day and and L Fair capitalism and one so we know what the best form of government is and we know what the best form of economy is and and now all that's going to happen is everybody's going to adopt it and we're going to work out the bugs hence history has come to an end a hegelian idea um and I thought wow history suggests that never happens right history always seems to come up with something new that's going to bother us and certainly that's where we are and so from a very status quo
• 49:00 - 49:30 sorts of situation which is what Europe felt like after the Napoleonic Wars people looked around and said we dodged that bullet we've got everything set up we've got these everything we're doing well um and then in 1848 they realized oh we're not doing that well and I think we're in another time period like that where you we thought there for about 15 or 20 years oh we've got this we've got you know everything's
• 49:30 - 50:00 going great it's all settled we've we've answered the problems we don't need to think anymore we can all relax and have a beer life is good and then it turns out Incorrect and I think we're kind of depressed about that I don't think we should be depressed about that because that's pretty much history right history is this sequence of problems and humans and troubles and then then we work and do the best that we can and this is what sterer is really trying to drive at trying get these large abstractions as much as possible out of your mind and
• 50:00 - 50:30 ask yourself what does it have to do with me how does it influence me do I actually care can I do anything about it do I want to do anything about it what would I enjoy doing would it Aid me to do this is it fun is it relaxing does it make me feel good does it help my friends out do my friends want to do it and for that's really basically the list of questions you should ever ask does it help me grow does it help me
• 50:30 - 51:00 Thrive does it make me a bigger and better person if yes probably a good thing to do if no probably not a good thing to do and if you set that as your bar for everything and he means everything then he says you'll have a if nothing else a much clearer understanding of the world you'll no longer be confused by all kinds of abstractions because you'll be measuring
• 51:00 - 51:30 them always against a concrete real which is you you're the center of the universe you are the measure that you can give against everything and so you kind of have the the the dream of the universal weight or the universal measure so you can say how does this affect me and you can say yes no good bad indifferent and you'll always know and therefore you'll always be grounded there's any number of critiques you can
• 51:30 - 52:00 make of sterer and many have been made and many more will be made I'm sure but I think it is important and one reason I think it's unfortunate that he has been forgotten and I hope that that more people remember him is because it is such a refreshing change from just about everything we get almost all the time that it is sort of like it's like a vitamin I'm not sure you should take lots of vitamins every day but it's probably good for you to take some vitamins every once in a while right so
• 52:00 - 52:30 there you have it the life of Max sterer thank you very [Applause] much e