Max Stirner: biography of this German thinker

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

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

Despite the curious nature of this, Stirner is seen as one of the precursors of ideologies as disparate as the nihilism, existentialism, individualist anarchism, psychoanalytic theory, the extreme right and the proto-fascism. Let's take a deeper look at his life through a biography of Max Stirner, in summary format.

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Summary Biography of Max Stirner

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

Early years

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

When little Johann Kaspar was six months old, his father died of tuberculosis, with which in 1809 his mother would remarry, this time to Heinrich Ballerstedt. Sophia would temporarily leave her son in the care of relatives in Bayreuth, while she went to Kulm, west of Prussia.

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

The sociopolitical context is important in the life of Max Stirner. At the time of birth, the politics of central Europe presented brief stability. Sixteen German princes, including that of Bavaria, signed the Rheinbund act forming the Confederation of the Rhine, ending their ties with the Holy Roman Empire and allying themselves with France.

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

Adolescence

In 1819, at just 12 years old, Johann Kaspar Schmidt returned to his hometown., returning to live with relatives and continuing his schooling at the local school, which he had interrupted when he had gone to Kulm to live with his mother.

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

Youth

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

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

It is between the years 1834 and 1835 He takes the exams to access professional teaching and, later, he would work on unpaid internships as teaching staff at the “Königliche Realschule” in Berlin. To access the position he wrote a short thesis, Ueber Schulgesetze (School rules).

At the beginning of 1837, his mother would be admitted to Die Charité Hospital in Berlin, and that same year his stepfather died and he married Agnes Klara Kunigunde Butz. Agnes Klara was the illegitimate daughter of the owner of the rental home where Stirner was residing at the time. The marriage would barely last a year, as the woman would die the following year, while she was in childbirth with their unborn child.

In 1839 Johann Kasper Schmidt began working at a girls' school for young ladies from wealthy families. This work combines simultaneously frequenting places of great bohemian and intellectual activity, such as “Café Stehely” and “Hippel's Weinstube”. That same year his mother would die, suffering from advanced mental disorders.

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Maturity

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

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

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

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

However, shortly after the circle would split in two, there was the group of Marx, Rouge and Hess, who marked distance with Hegel, and the group formed by Bauer and the League of the Free: Mayen, Buhl, Köppen, Nauwerk and Stirner. This last group thought of the revolution of consciences through a criticism of an atheistic, negative and ruleless nature.

Minute of fame and philosophical developments

Max Stirner would marry again, this time to Marie Dähnhardt in 1842.. At that time he began to write small articles and essays for various periodicals, in addition to the previous ones in which he already worked.

His texts appear in “Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung” and “Berliner Monatsschrift”. Among his texts you can find “Das unwahre Prinzip unserer Erziehung, oder Humanismus und Realismus” (The false principle of our education, or Humanism and Realism) and “Kunst und Religion” (Art and religion)

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

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

The work was controversial and not well received by the authorities of the German Confederation., censoring the book and kidnapping it from bookstores, which would generate even more popular interest. Shortly after, censorship was removed and its sale was allowed, making Max Stirner gain popularity, although this fame would not last long.

Final years and decline

Max Stirner writes several essays in response to the criticisms presented by different authors to his book The Only One and His Property. After separating from Marie Dähnhardt in 1846 he decides to continue answering his objections. In Die Philosophischen Reaktionaere (The Philosophically Reactionary) replies to Kuno Fischer and in the fifth volume of Epigonen criticizes Wigand.

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

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

His last years were those of complete failure. He tried to start a business but it went bankrupt and ended up living in poverty.. Between 1853 and 1854 he spent short periods in prison due to financial debts. Max Stirner, born Johann Kaspar Schmidt, died on June 26, 1856. In the Civil Registry, regarding his death, a simple “neither mother, nor wife, nor children” would be recorded.

Philosophy

Although Stirner's main work, The Only One and His Property, first appears in Leipzig in 1844, the origins of his philosophy go back to the articles he had previously published. Among the most notable we have The false beginning of our education, either Humanism and Realism (1842), Art and religion (1842) and Some provisional comments on the State based on love (1843). It is in them that he begins to outline a certain psychological hedonism and individualistic utilitarianism, based on selfish morality.

For Stirner, the center of all reflection and reality is man.. He speaks of man not as a representative of abstract Humanity, but of the individual, of the unique “I”. The “One” is so not because it is related to anything, but rather because it and it alone is the foundation of every possible relationship. Everything we have in common with other people is only with respect to the absolute character of our individual uniqueness.

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

At the time when religion emerged and is shaping the idea of ​​deities as they are As we understand today, man denies his freedom to submit to the domination, ironically, of his own creation. It does not matter whether God is replaced by the State or the family, because the problem is essentially the same. Man is only free when he breaks with religion and politics.

Bibliographic references:

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