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volbet's review
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
Orson Wells was quoted as saying that we sit through Shakespeare just to recognize the quotations. And I would argue that we sit through Stirner just to recognize the bare essence of the ideas that would come to define Western thought from the 19th century onwards.
The Young Hegelians were a wild bunch, and non were rowdier than Stirner. In this book, Stirner will tear a hole in everything modernity holds dear. The state, the family, rights and ideology are all lined up against the wall.
What is most surprising about the Ego and it's Own is just how unhegelian it actually is. Instead of a strict rationalism, Stirner opts for for an epistemology that stops right at the individuals' nose. Putting the individual at the center of knowledge and at the starting point of all analysis. It's probably the strictest version of epistemological individualism ever put forth.
Don't go into Stirner expecting structured syllogisms or empirical arguments. Rather, expect text dripping with sarcasm, bile hyperbole and increasingly obscure references to Prussian politics, Kant and Hegel.
Especially Stirner's play with words, phrases and textual understanding reads like a clear precursor to the projects Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger would launch decades after Stirner's death. Hell, even Stirner's epistemological project seems like a less methodical version of Nietzsche's entire career.
And Stirners critique of his contemporary politics reads equally as a predecessor to Karl Marx Ragnar Redbeard.
The Young Hegelians were a wild bunch, and non were rowdier than Stirner. In this book, Stirner will tear a hole in everything modernity holds dear. The state, the family, rights and ideology are all lined up against the wall.
What is most surprising about the Ego and it's Own is just how unhegelian it actually is. Instead of a strict rationalism, Stirner opts for for an epistemology that stops right at the individuals' nose. Putting the individual at the center of knowledge and at the starting point of all analysis. It's probably the strictest version of epistemological individualism ever put forth.
Don't go into Stirner expecting structured syllogisms or empirical arguments. Rather, expect text dripping with sarcasm, bile hyperbole and increasingly obscure references to Prussian politics, Kant and Hegel.
Especially Stirner's play with words, phrases and textual understanding reads like a clear precursor to the projects Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger would launch decades after Stirner's death. Hell, even Stirner's epistemological project seems like a less methodical version of Nietzsche's entire career.
And Stirners critique of his contemporary politics reads equally as a predecessor to Karl Marx Ragnar Redbeard.
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