The Philosophy of Max Stirner with Jacob Blumenfeld

Summary

In this engaging episode of the Hermitix Podcast, host James Ellis is joined by philosopher and translator Jacob Blumenfeld to explore the complex ideas of Max Stirner, focusing on Blumenfeld's book "All Things Are Nothing to Me." The discussion delves into Stirner’s philosophy of egoism, the concept of 'spooks', and how these ideas interact with German Idealism and anarchism. Blumenfeld explains how Stirner’s ideas can be reinterpreted through modern lenses, touching on themes like personal identity, community, and property. Throughout the conversation, the blend of historical context with contemporary relevance is emphasized, appealing to both philosophical novices and experts alike.

Highlights

• Jacob Blumenfeld discusses his journey in writing about Max Stirner and how Stirner's philosophies resonate in today's socio-political climate. 📖
• A key point is the discussion on 'spooks', Stirner's term for abstract ideas that dominate societal structures without being tangible. 👻
• Blumenfeld offers a unique reading of Stirner through the lens of Stoicism, focusing on the self's ownership and self-discipline. 🧘
• The podcast highlights Stirner’s views on identity and property, contrasting them with traditional libertarian views on ownership. 🏠
• Blumenfeld elaborates on how Stirner’s ideas can foster new forms of community and individual expression without hierarchical constraints. 🌱
• Intriguingly, the podcast touches on philosophical intersections between Stirner and thinkers like Nietzsche, Marx, and elements of Jewish mysticism. ✨

Key Takeaways

• Max Stirner's philosophy challenges conventional social ideas, introducing the concept of 'spooks' as dominating principles that mask personal dominance. 💡
• Jacob Blumenfeld's book reinterprets Stirner in a modern context, bridging gaps with stoicism and the aesthetics of the self. 📚
• The episode covers Stirner's influence on Marxist and anarchist traditions, debating topics like freedom, identity, and individuality. 🤔
• Blumenfeld sheds light on the relevance of Stirner's ideas in contemporary society, especially regarding personal autonomy and social structures. 🌐
• The dialogue traverses both philosophical depth and practical application, making complex ideas accessible and engaging. 🔍

Overview

In this captivating episode of the Hermitix Podcast, James Ellis chats with Jacob Blumenfeld about his deep dive into the philosophy of Max Stirner through his book, "All Things Are Nothing to Me." The discussion unfolds into the realms of egoism, personal freedom, and Stirner's controversial yet intriguing notion of 'spooks'—abstract ideas that exert control over individuals.

Blumenfeld brings a fresh perspective by aligning Stirner with unexpected dialogues, such as Stoicism. He delves into how Stirner's focus on self-ownership can be seen parallel to the Stoic commitment to self-discipline and controlling one's perception of external forces. This novel blend offers listeners an insightful view into how Stirner’s philosophy could adapt to modern intellective discourse.

Throughout their conversation, the duo navigates through complex topical intersections between Stirner’s thoughts and those of other intellectual giants like Nietzsche and Marx, offering listeners not just a historical analysis but a relevant application of Stirner's ideas in today's world. From exploding myths of static identities to nurturing individuality within society, the episode is a treasure trove for anyone keen on contemporary philosophy.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Guest Background In this chapter, the host introduces Jacob Blumenfeld, a writer, translator, and philosopher based in Berlin. They discuss his book "All Things Are Nothing to Me: The Unique Philosophy of Max Stirner." The conversation delves into themes of freedom, German idealism, and egoism. The host also expresses gratitude to patrons and subscribers, encouraging support through links in the description.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Discussing the Work of Max Stirner This chapter is an introduction to a podcast episode discussing the work of philosopher Max Stirner. The episode features an author who has written a book titled 'All Things Are Nothing to Me: The Unique Philosophy of Max Stirner.' The discussion is set to delve into Stirner's ideas, but begins with a brief introduction of the guest, who lives in Berlin and teaches philosophy, including topics such as climate change.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Guest's Background and Ideological Identification The chapter provides an overview of the guest's educational background and professional endeavors. The guest has expertise in ethics, history, philosophy, Hegel, and German idealism but lacks a permanent job, reflecting common precarious employment conditions. They work as a full-time translator, translating texts from German to English. Notably, they have translated a book titled 'Communism for Kids' and works by Rosa Luxembourg. The focus of their efforts is centered around radical German traditions.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Philosophical Discussions and Thinkers The chapter titled 'Philosophical Discussions and Thinkers' explores various deep philosophical ideas and schools of thought. It involves critical theory and Frankfurt School, emphasizing the discussions surrounding theories of property expropriation, housing, anarchist history, and Marxist thought. The chapter also delves into whether the speaker identifies with a particular ideology, revealing a nuanced stance as a 'heretical communist,' indicating a thoughtful and possibly unconventional alignment with communism.
• 03:00 - 04:00: Sterner's Historical and Theoretical Context The chapter titled 'Sterner's Historical and Theoretical Context' appears to explore the influence of Sterner's work and thought within various movements. The speaker reflects on their participation in political activities and movements in the United States, highlighting connections with manaki's movements and various collectives and struggles. The chapter also discusses the speaker's influences from Marxism, anarchism, and the left communist tradition, suggesting a broad engagement with different radical philosophies and their historical contexts.
• 04:00 - 06:00: Sterner's Views on Humanity, Freedom, and Spooks The chapter delves into council communist theory, particularly how it integrates with theories of collapse and decadence. Before discussing Sterner, the conversation includes a hypothetical question about placing three thinkers into a room for a discussion. The possibility of including Sterner and three additional thinkers in the mix is mentioned.
• 06:00 - 08:00: Sterner's Ideas of Egoism and Property The chapter discusses Sterner's Ideas of Egoism and Property, focusing on his tendency to be a silent observer and smoker during meetings with young alien groups. It provides an imagined scenario where Sterner's quiet persona made people unaware of his radical ideas until his book was published. Additionally, the chapter mentions a desire to include Rosa Luxemburg, highlighting her brilliance and revolutionary thinking.
• 08:00 - 10:00: Practical Applications of Sterner's Philosophy In this chapter titled 'Practical Applications of Sterner's Philosophy,' the discussion centers around historical and philosophical figures such as Rosa Luxemburg, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Frantz Fanon. The narrative explores what these thinkers' views might be on contemporary situations. The dialogue seems to suggest a speculative conversation on how these intellectuals would perceive or interpret modern-day issues, reflecting on their revolutionary and philosophical perspectives. Through this hypothetical discourse, the chapter aims to apply Sterner's philosophy in a practical and modern context.
• 10:00 - 12:00: Sterner's Relation to Stoicism The chapter explores Sterner's connection to Stoicism, particularly in relation to modern forms of domination such as capitalism.
• 12:00 - 14:00: Comparisons with Other Philosophers The chapter discusses comparisons between different philosophers regarding ideas about domination and political strategy to address conditions of exploitation. It mentions Rosa Luxemburg's inclination towards insurrectionist methods with a militant party and contrasts it with Frantz Fanon's defense of violence and national liberation struggles.
• 14:00 - 16:00: Sterner's View on Death and Ownership The chapter discusses Sterner's philosophical views on death and ownership. It touches upon the ideological leanings of his followers and how they would approach broader political movements like insurrection. A segment of the transcript highlights the politically charged nature of discussions revolving around Sterner's ideas, suggesting that capitalists might feel out of place in such debates. The conversation eventually shifts to a book titled 'All Things Are Nothing to Me,' which is associated with Zero Books and prompts inquiries about its publication date.
• 16:00 - 18:00: Relevancy of Sterner's Philosophy Today The chapter 'Relevancy of Sterner's Philosophy Today' discusses the author's journey in writing a book on Sterner's philosophy. Initially drafted in 2009, the book took ten years of revisions before publication in 2018. The author was motivated by an interest in anarchism during grad school and was philosophically inclined towards Hegel and Marx, exploring German philosophical thoughts.
• 18:00 - 20:00: Misinterpretations of Sterner The chapter explores the figure of Sterner, highlighting his position on the outskirts of anarchism and his connections to German traditions. It discusses how thinkers like Saul Newman and Andrew Kosh have reinterpreted Sterner as a post-structuralist figure, influenced by French thinkers such as Derrida, Deleuze, and Lacan.
• 20:00 - 21:30: Final Thoughts and Guest's Current Work The chapter 'Final Thoughts and Guest's Current Work' delves into a reconsideration of Sterner's philosophy, focusing on his German context as a post-Hegelian thinker rather than solely a post-structuralist. It examines Sterner's theory of the self as property and the concept of 'nothing,' aiming to reconstruct these ideas beyond mere critiques of morality and humanism.

The Philosophy of Max Stirner with Jacob Blumenfeld Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 this episode i'm joined by jacob blumenfeld who is a writer translator and philosopher based in berlin we discuss his book all things are nothing to me the unique philosophy of max sterner alongside discussions on freedom german idealism egoism and more i'd like to say a big thank you to all my paid patrons and subscribers for making all of this work possible and if you would like to support medics or become part of the community please find links in the description below enjoy uh so jacob blumenthal thanks very
• 00:30 - 01:00 much for joining us on hermetics podcast uh we are going to be discussing the work of max sterner but uh also your book all things are nothing to me the unique philosophy of max sterner but before we jump into that just tell us a little bit about yourself um and what what else you you do other than write about stoner yeah thank you well i i live in berlin and i teach philosophy here sometimes i teach at fu i teach on climate change
• 01:00 - 01:30 on ethics on history philosophy on hegel and german idealism but i don't have a permanent job i'm just kind of precarious like everyone else and i translate so i'm a full-time translator from german english i translated a little book called communism for kids which um was fun to do a couple years ago i translate rosa luxembourg in english and um lot of different texts um kind of the radical german tradition
• 01:30 - 02:00 critical critical theory frankfurt school stuff and i also write on theories of property expropriation housing um anarchist history marxist thought so all these kind of different ideas do you have a specific um do we say ideological identification are you a communist um uh hetero heretical one i would say okay i think that's like the safe the safe
• 02:00 - 02:30 right that's the same one yeah lower case c or lowercase lowercase a and in case of lowercase c okay but uh yeah i've i've been part of like uh manaki's movements back in the past in the states i'm from the states and um you know been engaged in different kind of collectives and struggles so but i'm very influenced by marx and also anarchist tradition and kind of different readings of um the left communist and kind of
• 02:30 - 03:00 council communist theory and how that all kind of blends into kind of theories of collapse and decadence okay cool i'm sure many of many of uh those things probably will come back in but before we jump in with um sterner uh i have to ask you the hermetics question so you can place three thinkers living or dead into a room and listening on the conversation uh we could include sterner in the room and then add three more oh really okay great who would you pick so i mean sterner it was we'll probably be
• 03:00 - 03:30 sitting down like on the side just watching because you know when sterner was alive he would go to these meetings with um with these other young aliens these other groups of free and he would just like sit there and like smoke and talk or smoke and others would talk and then he like no one knew how crazy he was because he wouldn't talk too much and this book came out so i imagine sterner just be smoking in the corner um and then i think i'd like to have rosa luxembourg in there who i've been like translating recently um brilliant thinker revolutionary
• 03:30 - 04:00 insurrectionist rosa luxemburg in there um think the board get the board sitting around i want to know what he's what he's thinking these days and maybe in the middle um i would say either du bois or or friends for none because it's a good good moment to grasp kind of what they would their view on the on the situation would be today let's say let's let's say luxembourg and the board so i mean my
• 04:00 - 04:30 understanding i mean i've read uh the boards decided to spectacle um i've obviously read sterner i haven't read much luxembourg at all um but i see a fair amount of connections there do you think there's anything that would come up where it would be very divisive between those thinkers uh strategy maybe you know political strategy they probably have a certain perspective of forms of domination that are present today um whether that's called capital or the
• 04:30 - 05:00 state that have kind of a similar idea of what's dominating them and whether that's kind of creates more forms of alienation but they would probably different on political strategy like how do you abolish their conditions of domination your conditions of exploitation and rose luxembourg would kind of be more i think insurrectionists want to um maybe based on like a militant party um friends for none would probably defend violence and like national liberation struggle
• 05:00 - 05:30 to board yeah i'm not really sure what he would advocate beyond kind of um detourmont sterner insurrection of course yeah okay okay yeah okay i'm sure these thinkers will come back in it's an interesting room it's pretty politically charged yeah um so you know you don't want to step foot in there if you're a capitalist i don't think yeah um so onto your book all things are nothing to me published by zero books um one when when was this
• 05:30 - 06:00 published the end of 2018 okay okay um so yeah why did you why did you write this what drew you to sterner so much that you were you wrote a book yeah i actually wrote the first draft of that book in 2009 wow and it didn't come out until about 10 years later i i revised it a lot in between um i was in grad school and i was interested in you know politically anarchism but i was also philosophically interested in kind of a hegel marx kind of the german
• 06:00 - 06:30 tradition and i saw this figure sterner kind of on the outskirts of anarchism and kind of somehow also in this german tradition um and then he was also getting reappropriate or re-thought by some by some thinkers like saul newman and andrew kosh they were starting to read cerner as kind of a post structuralist at this point too so and i was reading them they were reading him through kind of french lens um like inspired by derrida de luz or lacan
• 06:30 - 07:00 so i was interested in kind of rethinking sterner in kind of his more german context a little bit more so as a postgalion and not just that's kind of a post-structuralist and then seeing what and also taking seriously his his work on or his his his theory of property of the self um of the nothing i wanted to kind of reconstruct this theory instead of just kind of pointing to his critique of morality or his critique of humanism i want to see if there's something there we could
• 07:00 - 07:30 develop more um so i had fun with it i tried to you know reconstruct it read the new and then i sat on for a while i thought maybe it was not interesting but in the last couple years i noticed that more people were kind of making memes of sterner it was circulating on the web so i decided maybe it's a good time to try to get this out into the world and i revised it and then published it yeah i revised it when i started seeing this kind of sterner becoming more popping up more and kind of memes and online i thought maybe it makes a it's a
• 07:30 - 08:00 good point to put this out into the world so that there's more content here and not just kind of this random figure who keeps on saying the word spook yeah i was about to ask do you think the the well obviously then you think the memes are pretty reductionist yeah but i think they're funny so you know so i like them but um they're kind of just like this they're this this figure of this crazy man saying spook to everything um which can be used for any kind of content kind of ideological vessel which you can put in
• 08:00 - 08:30 anything right or left or extreme or not so i think it's fine it's hilarious but it would be nice to kind of give more content to what actually sterner said and you can't get that through a freaking meme so no perhaps it's a good place to start because it's probably the question on everyone's minds you know what what is a spook what is a spook spook yeah i mean the german word right it's like it's like when you have something in your head um that's kind of uh not really there that's what strainer
• 08:30 - 09:00 meant um starting with trying to think about you know um how how is it possible that we think thoughts that tend to dominate us right and uh he called these things spooks um you could think of this in a very reductionist way in which in which this is like really just kind of some ideas out there that if we just stop thinking then they go away like the idea of god or or or truth or justice or morality ideas that
• 09:00 - 09:30 are used to dominate groups of individuals to serve some kind of particular purpose or you can think of in a more complex way in which these are not just kind of ideas but they're actually um kind of ruling principles that structure institutions and ways of life so i try to read it more in the latter way that's what a spook is it's kind of a ruling principle which is developed by human beings but takes on a life of its own and begins to dominate us and that's a spook in a sense there's other words for this that become more technical
• 09:30 - 10:00 okay do you think that's why stan is taken on by you know the entire political spectrum because this idea of a spook is actually fairly um fairly flexible seems to be quite flexible of course yeah i mean if you have no other political or kind of ethical content and sure then like you know uh you know you can call anything anything across the spectrum as a spook but it's it's strange i mean because you have people defending sterner like
• 10:00 - 10:30 stern's a bit like nietzsche right it's hard to pin down it's hard to say if he's consistent on certain points you know you have people defending stronger from kind of a pro property perspective like he's a big libertarian or defending him from a more kind of anti-capitalist perspective as if he's like um the communist which i kind of promote i kind of reread him in that way but you know i try to say that he wouldn't want to be or his his theory
• 10:30 - 11:00 doesn't tend to be uh it cannot be supported by any claim based on something like a fixed idea like like a nation you can't use them to defend a nation i would say or a race or like a certain racial perspective or a gendered perspective anything that's kind of used to defend an identity that's kind of what he's really against whether that identity is religious national racial uh political even
• 11:00 - 11:30 right since it's not political and it can be it's open to everyone like he's even against politics right so at the end of the day so do you think there's some there would be something missing or something wrong about someone who sort of used his philosophy to um almost legitimize a personal nihilism no it's not wrong i mean that's there i think that's there i mean and i think that and that's where the struggle of the interpretation comes in and then you need to you need to take a perspective and say okay that's that's your perspective
• 11:30 - 12:00 it's a weak version of sterner i think it's there right it but there are a more i think the more coherent perspective is the social version because sterner you know the end of his book like the last hundred pages is about intercourse which is the german word for like interaction like a solidarity of um you know unions of of individuals coming together to interact and to enjoy each other right and to enjoy life um and to create their own kind of values together and and that's i think more where
• 12:00 - 12:30 sterner's ending up it's kind of proactive way of life of forming new lifestyles together so you could stop that's kind of the nihilist part of it which is fine it's just kind of the critical but um that would be i think i'll need to go halfway mm-hmm so what's because this is the the common understanding i would say when you see the memes when you see people sort of utilizing him um it's almost like a justification of well that's just a spook that's just to speak and anything that comes in is just
• 12:30 - 13:00 to speak now you know perhaps i'm repeating myself but there must be more to it than that you mentioned insurrection um but what what other sort of cornerstones to sternarian philosophy would you say there are because that seems to be the basis and to move from that basis it's quite difficult because of course that's a constant sort of um removal of anything that gets positive yeah so you you know is there any sense i should say is there any sense of creation or building within us
• 13:00 - 13:30 within standards philosophy yeah i mean this this is the this is the paradox right how do you how do you move beyond just critique right right because every time you posit something that you want to defend well it could be subject to the same criticism or aren't you just kind of defending something new like an ego right when that was marxist critique right marx was saying marks and angles was like oh you're just positing a new spook which is the ego itself and sterner actually responded to this and say you know actually um he doesn't care about the ego in a
• 13:30 - 14:00 sense right he's talking about himself and and what it means to to be to be i so to speak from a subjective first person perspective so i think we need to start with what is sterner responding to and see where that gets us and started responding to kind of a a social order which is dominated by certain kind of ideas and principles that are said to be universal but are used to serve particular purposes so some of these ideas are god church the state
• 14:00 - 14:30 justice even like humanity you know we're doing this for the sake of humanity um that's why you should you know get in line and go to work you should be productive um you should be good and he's like this is 50 years before nietzsche kind of or 40 years before nietzsche's writing these things scherna is trying to say actually all these values that are being used to get people to work to be good citizens to be functional to be um happy um these are just ways of kind of siphoning off um or you know exploiting um ourselves as concrete you
• 14:30 - 15:00 know as concrete individuals exploiting us for someone for some another group of concrete individuals i think that's kind of a powerful move to say okay let's break out of these abstractions that are used to kind of talk about what's actually happening which is the concrete exploitation or domination of some group of people by another group of people um and this is also kind of the rise of industrial capitalism in which it's getting harder to see who is dominating who right because
• 15:00 - 15:30 we're ruled by all these abstractions like money right who who owns who rules money what is an economy how do we how do we fight who rules the economy right um what is the state what's the modern state not a feudal state with a king but a modern republic which is supposedly ruled by the people so cerner's trying to theorize like criticizing these these new forms of domination that are harder to see that are self-produced i mean produced by human beings but are done in the names of some groups of people over others and so he wants to get back to
• 15:30 - 16:00 to you know what he calls i everything that's considered kind of um a bad from the perspective of the ruined class which is you know egoism individualism consumerism he says actually you know it i'm an egoist i want to start from what i believe from for myself for my needs and i think that's that's so that's his turn that that's his kind of reversal and maybe that seems more common today because now we have kind of a history of
• 16:00 - 16:30 critiques of alienation and reification which he's kind of starting to theorize but from that starting point you know what is what who am i what are my desires what do i want what's dominating me then can we start to build up kind of real human relate or real um positive enjoyable kind of relations with other people based on recognizing them as also singular individuals and from there he starts to build up kind of a theory of society i would say a theory of intercourse a theory of joy of pleasure of
• 16:30 - 17:00 interaction that you know does have some positive content there but it's not kind of fully fleshed out it's more open and i give kind of this quasi you know communistic reading of sterner which is of course controversial because i say in the end of the day he's talking about communes or unions of these egos coming together to interact and enjoy violate each other to kind of um to to to not just set up a new state but to kind of overthrow the state without
• 17:00 - 17:30 setting up a new ruling principle and to do so in a way that you know can always be you could always exit from so you know you could see this quasi-anarchist kind of small-scale communistic and you know other people can read them in more kind of libertarian ways and he's talking about the free market but i think that's a bit i don't think that really works at the end of the day in what sense does he move away from the the language in in the sense that the language
• 17:30 - 18:00 uh and signification is something that holds us because obviously you mentioned you know we were beholden to these values good you know to be good to be a citizen whatever a citizen means you know these are um signifiers which we all understand uh in a collective sense whether or not we have a sort of nuanced view we all understand like in a subjective way what it is to be a good person yeah in what way does he move away from that almost as like an analytical proposition that we're all just beholden
• 18:00 - 18:30 to these signifiers yeah i mean it's one thing to just to name it to call it out be like oh actually what are these kind of what are these these these values that are what are the value of these values like nietzsche would say it's another to try to move beyond it and this is where this is where it gets tricky because you can read it in a way in which in which sterner is saying that
• 18:30 - 19:00 the way to get beyond the value of let's say what he calls like humanity which is this new word um that the critical critics are using like bawa they're using this word human being or humanity to criticize religion which is kind of a form of domination of this moment in which people are categorized by their religious beliefs and the church actually is a form of power and opposed to this power people are saying no we're all humans we're all human beings and as human beings we should you know form a human community and and and and you know form a
• 19:00 - 19:30 political community based on just our humanness and sterner says well actually maybe this is just placing up a new principle um which which acts which can exclude certain excludes certain people who don't appear human right who don't fit the categories and i think this is kind of a far out for our understanding i mean with even with the idea of human rights you know we tend to think that human rights are universal but they actually you know there are a lot of people who don't have the right to rights who are left out of this category um who are just seen as less than human
• 19:30 - 20:00 and sterner's already grasping at this and on the one hand he says to challenge this we really need to kind of think our way out of it you know we need to use different language of course any language we use is always going to be somehow influenced by those who are or by the language we grew up in kind of by the traditions that's why his language he says it comes out confused he tries to use sarcasm
• 20:00 - 20:30 and play and allegory um to kind of show us the contingency of our words um and at the end of the day he it's someone's almost nominalist he wants to he wants to so far get away from abstractions that he tends to just say you know we can't even talk about what's real which is i um but i think he at the end he wants to say no we can talk about it we just have to realize when we're talking about these things we're not positing new universal principles that are that are valid historically
• 20:30 - 21:00 forever we're so i'm talking about me you're talking about you we can even talk about human beings and truth and the good but we have to recognize um that we are we're we're staking a claim and we're saying this is what i want that's what you want and we can kind of slowly agree together on certain new ways of organizing our lives but that would be kind of a different way of coming to terms with with our with these words in this language than just adopting them and and trying to be a better one or a
• 21:00 - 21:30 worse one so instead of saying i'm a good or a bad citizen you know why don't we reclaim or posit a different word that we can fill the content with in the way we want so in the sense of hergelian dialectic it's the synthesis begins from the individual from the ego as opposed to sort of as an event well there's a lot of technical terms in there yeah um i don't know if there's a synthesis in sterner at all
• 21:30 - 22:00 um i don't know if i don't even know if it's adequate to call it dialectics what he's doing okay i would say he's a reader of hegel as a student of hegel um i try to say in the book that he begins where the phenomenology of spirit ends so when hegel's from now knowledge of spirit it ends with absolute knowing in which the subject realizes that um they're not separate from the object that they're conceptualizing there's kind of a unity between subject and object and that unity requires understanding our history and our time and our culture
• 22:00 - 22:30 and uh language itself as both a product and a presupposition of our customers so we could really begin from our first person perspective but without being separated from what's up from our environment and sterner is like yes i let's start with let's start with the eye or the particular eye and let's let's kind of try to reshape the world around us from this perspective instead of um giving up our power to some authority whether that authority
• 22:30 - 23:00 is you know philosophy the academics the philosophers the state the religion to speak for us so he posits his eye this kind of this revolutionary principle not an abstract eye like ficta does but a you know particular eye and you know this is seen as what he calls egoistic because how can you what's the what's the value in in this eye where do you get you know how can you build up society from an eye sounds crazy it doesn't make these times too particular subjective
• 23:00 - 23:30 and i think okay well um i think so for instance marx and angles they didn't think it was subjective they thought that this was actually interesting they thought that maybe we really we need to start with ourselves you know start with what am i lacking what do i want what do i need and from there you could appeal to a or you could create an alternative way of life instead of saying we're fighting for justice or truth or the good
• 23:30 - 24:00 or or humanity itself so this kind of i read as this beginning from this concrete individuals as cerner says and starting from there to rethink our needs on our desires um and he doesn't have the end though he doesn't say where does it go except for some kind of vague union of egos and insurrection but his starting point is revolutionary okay is that why you say he's the perfect candidate for absolute negation
• 24:00 - 24:30 yeah yeah because he you know he doesn't want anything he doesn't want to be identified with anything he said our eye you know what what we call our subjective our first person perspective um constantly we fill it in with categories the new categories whether it's um yeah like nationality or racial categories or or are ideological categories identity categories and there's a term that adorno uses which is you know a non-identity
• 24:30 - 25:00 i don't know a donor writes about non-identity um as kind of a way in which the the subject and the object is never kind of identical itself um and sterner somehow says yes we you know every attempt to identify this i with a name the proper value a proper name can be resisted and moved against um and that idea of that constant negation of our properties which he calls properties or attributes or equalities that which wants to define
• 25:00 - 25:30 ourselves that absolute negativity is the i that's subjectivity in a sense that's what it means to be a self to be able to consume and reject all the identifications that we go through so i'm not just a parent or or man i could also reject these categories and change them but even though they're a part of me i'm not just a um a worker i'm not just a philosopher whatever i think i am even
• 25:30 - 26:00 though i can con these properties i can adopt but i i don't want to be just a human you know but whatever that means disturn a state sort of is there a process to this negation like how we we perform this rejection in a way i try to trace out a process in the book in all things or nothing to me i try to show this kind of process of taking what's alien to us and making it our own again it's what he
• 26:00 - 26:30 calls you know ownness from eigenheim um where we we we own our qualities we own our properties and i say it's i i call it expropriation right it's it's a way of reclaiming property that seems property is kind of a broad term here for attributes qualities those things that identify us by expropriating them by claiming them as our own and and abandoning them
• 26:30 - 27:00 so rejecting them destroying that which we identify with is a way of claiming ownership of it so in a sense this doesn't necessarily have to be like a literal right but it can be literal so rejecting my my qualities as as being identified as a worker in a sense by striking let's say or by giving up or by being a bad worker um is a way of showing my ownership over this attribute
• 27:00 - 27:30 in the sense that i'm not defined by it but i define it i have power over it so i so i read this as kind of a practical ethics in a sense right so it's a practical way of orienting oneself to the world so that they can show that they have somehow a power over those qualities that we tend to think are independent of us of course in the end you can't do this alone i think this requires more people inspires more power what he calls power but that's a way of showing one's
• 27:30 - 28:00 ownership to the object by being able to reject it and this is also a classic attribute of um of property rights so in in extended theater property rights you have the right to possess sell you also have the right to destroy in my kind of liberal property theory so if if i have this like tissues over here i can rip it i can destroy it that's my right and i think cerner says okay yeah we can also kind of destroy all these qualities and attributes of us and that also shows that we are in a
• 28:00 - 28:30 sense owners of it and right doesn't give us that law doesn't give us that our power gives us that okay and that's where you know one of the interesting things which sort of surprised me about your book is um sort of the first third is an overview of sterner's um the first two sections are overview of standard philosophy and then it goes to part three which is your stunner or in the book my sterner and you begin a lot of practical sort of um practical views of standard one of the ones that really interest me is that i thought well how is he going to pull this off is you read sterner
• 28:30 - 29:00 through the lens of um stoics through aurelius and seneca i wonder if you could expand on this because i think i think um you know for anyone with a sort of my sort of understanding of uh stereo is obviously fairly amateur and i don't really think it takes too much to understand the stoics but my understanding of them both is that's a real um almost like hardline opposition in terms of philosophy that you know there is no one who is more beholden to
• 29:00 - 29:30 values in an extremely disciplined practical way than the stoics so in what sense can you um yeah you know i just think this is probably the best example of the way in which you sort of you utilize stern's philosophy in a practical sense how can you uh yeah how can these two things work together yeah great thanks for showing thanks for pointing that out um i'm great that you found that because i haven't been asked about that so i actually had another section on um on the stomachs which i cut because i just thought it was getting
• 29:30 - 30:00 too weird i want epictetus oh i wanted more i did i know i thought like i think maybe it's because i've been reading epic i actually had been reading epictetus okay yeah recently and i thought so you knew it okay yeah so i had a section on cerner i was like it doesn't make any sense i have to cut it um so i got this idea actually from foucault who who says this in his hermeneutics of the subject that he wants to read sterner and kind of some 19th century anarchist philosophy in a relationship with stoics because they're all doing somehow an aesthetics of the self mm-hmm
• 30:00 - 30:30 what what food co called the aesthetics of the self a way of understanding kind of the self presentation in the world care for the self the logic of the self and he he traces this 19th century tendency in baudelaire and sterner and schopenhauer it's kind of reflection on the self back to the stoics who also had this kind of this like kind of greek understanding of self-discipline right focusing on the self and training the self um into the world to know what is up to them what is not up to them what can be changed what cannot be
• 30:30 - 31:00 changed it's highly disciplined you're right with exercises breathing exercises from physical exercises um that can train one to deal with hostility and enmity in a way that can neutralize i mean first of all like sterner is seen as kind of anti-stoic on first appearance because he's you know hedonistic no anything goes no rules pure pleasure pure consumption pure joy um that would be the opposite of
• 31:00 - 31:30 stoicism which is seen as controlled unemotional and disciplined i said okay well actually sterner's one way of reading sterner is as a a way of understanding oneself it's a way of treating oneself as a way of disciplining oneself to confront the things that dominate them the for the the kinds of structures or
• 31:30 - 32:00 principles or ideas that tend to keep one fixed that means not able to develop their own potential to pursue who they really want to be who they really are and this is what stoics in a sense are also trying to do when they say okay we need to distinguish between that which is up to us now which is not up to us i mean we need ways of cultivating a sense of self that can withstand external forms of external conflict or external objects and ways that we could also deal with our internal our internal forms of
• 32:00 - 32:30 control or internal forms of pain and suffering and change those so how do we change the forms of suffering that that are up to us and how do we accept the ones that are not up to us i think sterner i say okay stern has a theory of property right which is what is up to us versus what's not up to us and his way of thinking is to in a sense train the soul
• 32:30 - 33:00 you know of course he wouldn't use that word but train the self discipline the self to withstand um these attempts to shape uh one's subjectivity into a principle that one does not identify with or to alienate themselves um now this is a particular way of reading sterner and the stoics there are other ways but um but i thought it was there's something there to see sterner as kind of a modern stoic and to also change the way we see stoics that they're not just
• 33:00 - 33:30 these asocial you know emotionless um aesthetics they're all they were trained and disciplined they had schools they had communities it was a way of life in which the self was seen as kind of a work of art that should be sculpted and trained and disciplined and strength is not so explicit on this but it's in the sense of showing how we could think ourselves out of certain puzzles he's getting closer to that okay okay um is there any um other examples
• 33:30 - 34:00 of your the you know my sterner section that you'd like to to bring up that you think sort of might have been overlooked in terms of sort of sterna scholarship um yeah i mean a lot of it was speculative right i was just trying to bring sterner into contact with philosophers and just say what happens when do the sparks fly um and can we reach sterner in you know what happens when we read him in comparison with heidegger heidegger has an idea of mindness um and
• 34:00 - 34:30 sterner has an idea of oneness are they the same thing are they different i try to say that they're different heidegger's focus on being towards death stronger doesn't care about death um i liked reading sterner next to levanas which kind of also makes no sense since larry nasa's whole philosophy is about ethics of the other person how does the how does the how do i understand myself in relation to another and sterner's entire perspective is how do i understand myself from my own perspective but i try to say there's something there
• 34:30 - 35:00 they're both these both quasi-anarchic philosophers who have no who try to say there's no principle determining the self they don't want to be beholden to a totality levonos's language um they also have a they they meet at certain points and i thought that that's kind of interesting i liked reading also sterner in relationship to jewish mysticism landauer who landauer was influenced by sterner at certain points of life and i'm not sure at this point he was but there's a certain overlap of
• 35:00 - 35:30 thinking you know landauer talks about um landowners anarchists he says don't kill others only kill yourself and what he means by that is you know you know kill the kill kill the cop in your head kill the forms of violence that are dominating yourself and try to change those structures and build from there and you know he kind of wants to do all these um he's promoting almost more grassroots level projects to change society instead of taking and
• 35:30 - 36:00 seizing power and that seems very close to sterner so what's stern's view on death interesting um he talks about in the beginning of his book he talks about kind of the three cycles of light or the three stages of life he's following hegel here talks about the um the child it's kind of this proto-psychoanalytic understanding of this of the of the mind he says the child is a realist the child just sees what's around him and and plays with with the real objects
• 36:00 - 36:30 and then the the uh the teenager becomes or the adult or the teenager becomes more idealistic wants to see the ideas behind things causes and the reasons and sterner hopes that the adult becomes an egoist in his sense the words in which he's able to see to stop looking for the causes behind things um and like the kid enjoy them for what
• 36:30 - 37:00 they are but also relate them back to himself and see how what he's looking for is also a product of his own of his own will um and then he says there's a fourth stage which is like you know death old age and death but he says when that comes i'll get to that um so i think he doesn't i don't think he has a theory of death um if anything he's he doesn't see death as as negative at all which would put him close to the um epicureans right who epicurus who also has kind of a he's not worried about death no
• 37:00 - 37:30 he said there's no fear of death because death doesn't exist when when we die we don't experience it you know we're gone we can't own deaths really right we can own our conceptualization of death we can still let it affect us though so that would be yeah our subjective creation of the concept of death that we're allowing to affect us exactly yeah okay so maybe we're dominated by a certain conception of death that says
• 37:30 - 38:00 um you know death is the bridge to eternal life or something like that or um this world is impermanent the next world is permanent and death is that transition i think he would he would be critical of these ideas of kind of making a metaphysical conception of death as somehow all meaningful and determinative and rather have a more playful conception of death at the end of the day though we can't not die not yet um so there would be
• 38:00 - 38:30 a sense in which we are never completely owners of ourselves and we can't fully own our conditions of existence and i think i'm not sure if he says that but that's where i go in the book there is a certain incompleteness to the self right we cannot own everything about us and that's a good thing i think you know that's what it means to be ourselves is also determined from the outside and there's a certain acceptance of that in a way that that can be integrated into
• 38:30 - 39:00 one self conception and not just denied or repressed or you know tried to overcome through ideologies or religions okay i mean a fairly i'd say this is a fairly big question um what perhaps perhaps nothing changes at all but what do you think happens um to to the ego establish the sternary and outlook uh perspective of the subject within our contemporary sort of i don't think anyone knows how to describe it so i'll
• 39:00 - 39:30 throw a few signifiers out there post-modern neoliberal assemblage of various isms and things like that which i would define as basically actually an alteration to to how we perceive time in that we're in a smaller and smaller present every day and we live like you know basically a tweet length existence and i would say that this this is a bit of a problem for like the egoist outlook because it seems to me from understanding that the the egoist who's trying to relate
• 39:30 - 40:00 thing properties back to the subject needs that deeper subjective understanding of culture myth history events to draw back and forth between two to then understand the object or the the ideology of the spook right so what happens in the current state that we're in where our brains have basically sort of been fried into this just living in a tiny and present where we actually have where we're detached we're detached from the future in the past yeah yeah
• 40:00 - 40:30 that's great i mean that's you you nailed it um i mean you can call it the spectacle which we live in or you call it you know space-time compression uh you know capitalism i mean it's called capitalism but you know you call it different different phases of capitalism neoliberalism or whatever you want but i think the tendency has been there and it's just accelerating and accelerating um and there's one there's a but now sense in which our our presence is egoistic or individualist right in the banal
• 40:30 - 41:00 sense of that we are socialized to think of ourselves as consumers of products and that we identify with certain products and these products these you know choosing these products is the the realm of freedom and we have a right to these freedoms and when we when we buy these things we have property rights to them and we can orient our our entire lives according to certain different product choices you know we can think of our our careers as as also um as making ourselves into a
• 41:00 - 41:30 product right the other product and you know slowly all of our ties to bigger questions and bigger social groups become cut and we are atomized and and that's that and that's kind of a contemporary form of egoism that has not really much to do with sterner but it gets confused with sterner okay because for sterner stern's not really thinking about this atomized consumptive individual who just fixates
• 41:30 - 42:00 on their goods right he would criticize this as another spook as another form of um what he calls addiction right we're addicted to our goods our properties we can't just if we can't destroy them if we can't separate ourselves from them then we're dominated by them yeah this is my question though is yeah what it you know this should we say like external ego is capital e consumerist egoist smally yeah yeah what happens if the small egoist is so dominated that they don't even realize there is a possibility of sort of getting to that true egoism they're just
• 42:00 - 42:30 forever stuck yeah i mean we have no time right to to break to break the chains if we can't see them because we have no time to understand the relationship past present and future so i think sterner would say you know we can always break the chains right we can always no matter who we are when we are um everything comes from our ownness from what from our negative particularity from our nothing
• 42:30 - 43:00 right there's nothing there that we that humans don't put on themselves right everything everything that is that is ourselves we can we have given to ourselves i don't know how far that goes in terms of like natural sciences but he goes pretty far right every category we use we can we can get rid of um and that goes all the way down and at the core of us is kind of a creative power we call it the creative nothing and that's the power for us to redefine and redetermine who we are as a self as an i and i think he would
• 43:00 - 43:30 say that's in a sense irrepressible forever right that can always reappear i would say yes but that here's my kind of uh my sterner to realize that to take advantage of that requires other people we need other people to help us sometimes break out of repetitive routines of life which were captured in which are which are dominating us which are you know which we can't break free of without
• 43:30 - 44:00 without other people without a union of egos what he calls it without solidarity without a commune um and so i would say yes you need to look at you need to socialize it or communize it right and then you need forms of action forms of interaction which can unify to break the forms of domination that keep us isolated from each other and that arises in certain moments of uprising that happens forms of critical
• 44:00 - 44:30 thinking forms of you know creativity forms of art i think it's political aesthetic and ethical moments in which this kind of repetitive spectacle society is temporarily pierced and and those are the moments that can be expanded into forms of unions or forms of communal ways of life that are never institutionalized for sure but never also ultimately repressed
• 44:30 - 45:00 okay okay um is there anything sort of any um misinterpretations that you want to draw on that we might have missed or anything key that we might have missed that you know maybe something that people always think that that stirrer but it isn't or something along those lines that sort of always irks you when people bring up stone um what always irks me people tend to reach sterner as someone who doesn't believe um
• 45:00 - 45:30 in kind of social relations as if you know we're born we're like he people read him as a hobbesian you know we're born like um life is brutal nasty and short we're born alone we die alone we just fight for each other um and and that's it so the point is to just dominate and gate and just fight and have gain as much power as possible um that's kind of a hobby and interpretation of sterner and i think that's not there at all i think sterner says we're born in society we're thrown into
• 45:30 - 46:00 society all of our kind of conceptions of ourselves are social and the trick is to try to reclaim or to break those social categorizations of social identities and break those forms of identification and reclaim them redefine them maybe re-adopt them but for ourselves um from our own perspective and we could do that as an i as an ego and with others um so i think he is kind of social from the start and trying to break free of this this kind of form of social domination back
• 46:00 - 46:30 to a sense of what do i generally want what do i generally need and then from there build up kind of a different social understanding um yeah i think he's not a he's not like a libertarian really um people tend to think he's like just a believer in property rights he says over and over again he doesn't give a about right right right there's no such thing as right that can give him a claim to a the state doesn't give him authority over an object his idea of property is way weirder way more expansive you know theory of
• 46:30 - 47:00 attributes a theory of those objects around me which define me which i can use and discard for my own pleasure so this is not a theory property rights per se freedom is also not even a big category for him he doesn't really care that much about freedom um what we so i think how come he doesn't care about freedom in the sort of comments yeah the common sense i mean maybe we could say he's got a deeper theory of freedom if we want but in the common sense he says over and over again like people talk about freedom they always mean freedom from something
• 47:00 - 47:30 right so their freedom from some kind of master freedom from some kind of control and he says this way of thinking you know it ends up just always giving us a new master that we're always trying to get free from and we're always trying to get free and there's always a new one it's always kind of repetitive and what at the end of the day what is it that that's always trying to get free mm-hmm he wants to start from there in that sense he doesn't seem like much of a negative thinker as a
• 47:30 - 48:00 like dare i say it and just overly complicate everything he seems almost like a delusion in the sense that everything is positive so it's like it's not freedom from which would be a negation but it's actually freedom to not so pre like freedom for the subject to positively not do that there you go but that's not like in relation to like a master slave thing i think i think that's it i mean yeah i mean that that's where like absolute
• 48:00 - 48:30 negativity turns into positivity at a certain moment right because he's really against this idea of negative freedom yeah he thinks it's completely um completely wrong very bullock's um and there's like delusion readings of sterner right dulu is also red sterner and commented on him a little bit but yeah there was this idea that we need to kind of own ourselves right there's a common i'm saying in english you know own up own this and not in the sense of buy it right but own it means to kind of take responsibility and claim it as yours and some that let me take responsibility understand it
• 48:30 - 49:00 deal with it um incorporate it into yourself but maybe move beyond it without kind of disavowing it so that's all aaron sterner and that's a different way of understanding his his kind of on his words his language which which are caught in this 19th century jargon which is hard to see beyond um that's it i also i think it's important to read sterner in kind of his german context as opposed to galleon um which is not really done much anymore
• 49:00 - 49:30 because it's not seen as like sexy enough but i think it's it's it's it's productive to read sterner in relationship to hegel to marx to nietzsche um to schopenhauer um and see them all as kind of struggling with these similar ideas of value what is the value of values um you know what is truth what is good what is the grounding of our society when there's when religion plays no role anymore when when the states are just kind of sovereign from the people so i like to read him in that context kind of this
• 49:30 - 50:00 this radical thinker in this moment trying to understand um what are the what are what are the new forms of alienation that are being created in kind of modern capitalism um how do we define ourselves in opposition to it or or not and certain is also fun i mean he's a funny thinker he's he's shouldn't be taken too seriously all the time you know that's why he's not kind of adopted in philosophical circles as much because his language is a bit too
• 50:00 - 50:30 sarcastic i think well unfortunately yeah i mean i did sort of want to mention this that um i've my originally rent i read the uh the unique and it's property is that the original title yeah no no no the ego on its own is that original translation from language yeah from the 1920s which is like as soon as i read the is it the wolfie wolfie landstrucker yeah translation the unique in its property i've never seen a translation where the differences are so glaring huge right
• 50:30 - 51:00 like ridiculous like it's almost like a different book so like anyone listening it's really difficult to get a paperback version of that but you can probably find a pdf of get the wolfy striker translation because it it just fundamentally changes the book yeah the unique in his property yeah i have the translations great great great version and he did a service you know 100 years after the first english translation and i would say yeah you know read sterner have fun with it read it from multiple perspectives and then uh you know see how it works and you know go from there
• 51:00 - 51:30 so right now i'm really interested in like theories of property and expropriation which sterner talks about a bit and understanding what does it mean to expropriate um to to to reclaim or to to dispossess or disown or re retake property without right um so i think there's a lot there's a lot there to go with scherner both kind of in terms of like philosophy but also politics and ethics um so yeah are you working on anyone anything else at the moment have you got a book coming out or anything um yeah
• 51:30 - 52:00 i i i'm writing um some text on expropriation as kind of a political tactic i have some articles on that and i can send you some links i write for this um new york magazine once in a while called brooklyn rail and you just google my brooklyn rail my name i have articles there every couple month every year every couple months on kind of um culture politics art philosophy i've been thinking about climate change and trying to understand our you know what does it mean to be a human being what does it mean to be a
• 52:00 - 52:30 self in a warming world do we need to re-change our categories of time metaphysics politics ethics i i did a dissertation but i haven't published it yet on on the question of property the meaning of property in german philosophy that'll be out hopefully in a year or two it's a bit it's a bigger more academic book on you know what does it mean to to say mine what is mine what is which is it's there in sterner but i
• 52:30 - 53:00 went really who else he's sort of drawing from in that i draw on hegel a lot i draw on kant and i draw on ficta oh and then i look at contemporary stuff too but those are the big three germans right right up to sterner so right before sterner and marx who are these german idealists what were they thinking about and why are they obsessed with this question of um you know mine no shopping haul um i don't get the schopenhauer no i don't get there that's the same next book
• 53:00 - 53:30 okay that's it oh cool man um yeah i think it's a good place to finish up thanks very much yeah thank you