Is there any valid refutation of stirners concept of the "spook" or "fixed idea"? After fully understanding him I feel as if im speechless in refuting him. The fixed idea of me wanting to be a "virtuious" or "honorable" man means I would go out of the way of my own desires to subscribe the the concept of virtue/honor. Stirner was right when he said our minds are haunted!
>>713116
Virtuous* sorry
Its defining is tailored to egoism. A spook as any idea you put above the self. But you could just say it's any idea you put above the family! But, you say, the family itself is a spook! But that's based entirely on you saying a spook is any idea you put above the self. You're begging the question with your definition.
>>713129
Really the problem is that stirner didn't realize the self is a spook
It's literally all spooks. Everything. There is no escape.
>>713136
The self cannot be a spook, because Stirner's definition of a spook is an idea which is given precedence over the self. He intentionally precluded the self.
>>713116
I am poor and cannot get his book. I am curious, what is his idea of self interest?
>>713144
Yeah, once you say the self is an illusion that needs to be destroyed you are a Buddhist monk trying to run away from everything.
>>713158
http://dflund.se/~triad/stirner/theego/theego.pdf
Read it yourself.
>>713169
Thank you anon!
>>713158
Self interest is paramount, there is nothing greater than you. You are the creative nothing, not a nothing in the sense of emptiness but the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.
>>713178
Right, but what is meant by self interest? Doing what makes you happy? What makes you rich? What propagates you?
>>713190
Stirner derives his egoistic pleasure from making other people happy. So you could say self intrest is whatever you percieve that poses a beneficial outcome.
>>713226
That is very pleasant to read. I think I will read this book as fast as I can so I can know more about him. Thank you very, very much, this is very helpful
Wait, isn't Stirner basically ethical egoism?
As someone who is very interested in Max Stirner, can we please. PLEASE agree to reduce the number of these threads? One a week is preferable to the daily thread asking the exact. Same. Thing.
The discussion is rarely deep enough to get anything out of it, devolving in to meme spouting quickly, and I think I am getting cancer from overexposure.
>>713287
Ethics is a spook, if you subscribe to an ethical concept, you are being governed by it, which in case, is not in your self interest but in the interest of what is ethical.
>>713328
Yeah you just described ethical egoism
>>713375
Why would stirner advocate a spook? It makes no sense
You can still be virtuous and honorable, you just understand that these things are ultimately in service of your own ego.
>>713287
No, psychological egoism. His position is basically that the ideas we place above ourselves aren't really above ourselves, and are placed as such in a futile attempt to escape our egoism. He doesn't rail against the idea of holding on to ideals, or even engaging in altruism or cooperation, he just suggests that you remain conscious of your own egoism, and ensure that these ideals are done for the purpose of serving you.
>>713375
Not exactly, he doesn't make an ought of egoism. He states that egoism simply is, and you can either be aware of it, or not aware of it.
>>713190
Everything you do is in self-interest in Stirner's view. If you aren't conscious about it, you're just an involuntary egoist
>>713287
That's a risky way of phrasing it. It might be better to say "egoism which may coincidentally happen to match ethics, but is not inherently ethical".
It also involves psychological egoism, which states that "You act in your own self interest" as opposed to ethical egoism, which states "You OUGHT to act in your own self interest".
>>713178
>there is nothing greater than you
Says who.
Read Nietzsche.
>>714633
Do you know what thread your in?
>BTFO
>>714633
>>714952
No I'm pretty sure the play he was making is that the line "there is nothing greater than you" needs to have come from somewhere, and if you abide from where it came from, you are subordinate to it, thus proving the claim "you are subordinate to nothing" wrong.
He's basically just calling Steiner a Spook, but I don't think that ultimately denies any of Steiner's claims.
>Stirner was right when he said our minds are haunted!
Indeed. Enlightenment is mostly about how fully of spooks everyone and everything is
>mfw
He is no better than everyone he denounces before him considering that his intellectual endeavour amounts to nothing more than a seduction. In its own little way it is a sort of immature petulant and infantile seduction as well, one that does not have the sincere conviction behind it of past ideologies but on the other hand it has the gall to disrupt the game of rhetoric that ideologues gleefully take part in, sort of like a child who disregards the rules of a game because he is tired of losing at it or some such poor behaviour.
Stirner knows his own doctrine does not have a leg to stand on, that the whole exercise he engages in is contradictory. His whole project is a failure simply because it's a contradiction. The only way you could consider it a success is if you think the overall outcome is that you have the ability to question or attack ideology. But that is hardly a quality specific to Stirner's writings, it's simply the ability to think critically, and it's what most philosophers with a system of thought have done throughout history. Except Stirner appears to be inferior to most of them because where every other philosopher attacks the previous prevailing ideology and replaces its center in its own coherent if not infallible manner, Stirner simply attacks these ideologies with no center to prevail in replacement, the attack itself is contradictory, and there is no real insight gained into the lack of the center because Stirner himself has no answer or interest in attempting to solve this contradiction of negation. So where every other philosopher has been out with the old and in with the new, Stirner is simply out with the old, and not even in a logical manner, with no new. You're getting short-changed and fucked in the ass. And on the other hand there are numerous more in-depth attempts to address the contradictory logic of negation Stirner is using, from Zen to Deconstruction.
>>713287
Psychological and rational egoism, not ethical egoism, was Stirner's position.
>>714979
Have you even read stirner? You come off as retarded and incoherent.
>>714979
>Stirner simply attacks these ideologies with no center to prevail in replacement
That's the fucking point you goddamn mongoloid
>>715344
>Coherent argument
>Entirely built on ignoring the most important part of Stirner's work
>>715344
>I agree with it
>Therefore it's correct
W E W
E
W
>>714965
It's grounded in an actual logic. You are basically the cornerstone of your reality, further in Stirner's view, everything you do is ultimately directed by your will and pursuit of gratification. Yourself and your will are the lever and fulcrum with which you interact with reality.
>>715336
He's also flat out wrong. The last chapter of his work is a proposed replacement.
>>713144
Stirner himself is a spook to everyone other than him.
Anti Stirnerians on suicide watch
>>713116
No, because his whole philosophy relies on circular logic
>>715994
How does it rely on circular logic?
>>713116
Replace "spooks" with "social constructs". Now refute that.
Alternatively, look up Marx's 500-page "REEEEEEEEE" at Stirner. He deserves to be in the fucking history books just for making Marx so mad that communism happened.
>>717550
>tfw you make Marx so mad his critique on you is longer than your entire bibliography.
>>717469
>MFW you've had the internet, psychology, modern science in general, and various other things to assist you in your philosophical endeavours that men in the 1800s didn't have
>MFW they were still able to find these concepts on their own, while you were clearly influenced by the works of both the men who conceptualized the ideas and the men whose works were influenced by those ideas
>MFW you're still enough of an edgelord to think that you're smarter than them
>>717577
I had no internet until I was 15 years old, there's nothing on TV that taught me anything about philosophy.
The claim that you get philosophically educated through osmosis in the 21st century is just a non-sensical one.
Just deal with the fact that some people have intuitive intelligence you don't have.
>not only believing in the concept of the self but completely submitting to it
Truly a cuck philosophy.
>>719269
>Serving yourself is cuckoldry
>>719330
The whole point is that you're not serving the self, but things that you identify to be the self.
You're getting cucked by your thoughts, emotions and desires.
>>719480
Does the self exist outside of thoughts, emotions and desires?
>>719480
Its up to you to learn to control your emotions and desires
But if you deny them you'll be as much of a cuck as a non self-aware hedonist
>>719966
Yes. You are what you do. So you can't actually be cucked by anything because your every action and your every mental state is direct manifestation of you as person and your personal will.
