Talk:Max Stirner

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Portrait of Max Stirner.svg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 18:22, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

Stirner's racism

A reading of The Ego and His Own reveals a treatment of topics overlooked in accounts of it by anarchists influenced by Stirner. I recall passages describing the purported development of the human race in which I seem to remember phases associated with races described in such terms as "Mongol" and "Negro". Rudolf Steiner, whom, Stirner influenced, describes human spiritual development in similar terms. For completeness, the article should include Stirner's racism, which his admirers choose to ignore. 12:27, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

I would take a look at this section of Apio Ludd's introduction to the The Ego and His Own, which addresses the passages you're talking about directly. Ludd says

The apparent racial hierarchy found in the perspective Stirner was mocking comes straight out of Hegel (though Hegel, like most of the progressive thinkers of the time, did not understand race biologically and assumed all humanity could eventually achieve the progressive transformation in which he believed), and Stirner’s mockery is a delightfully politically incorrect joke on the cultural hierarchy Hegel assumed. Stirner’s playful argument is that, even if you assume that there is a history that progresses, by Hegel’s own logic, you have to end up back at egoism. All that progress won’t bring us anywhere else... And his attribution of “Mongolism” to his German contemporaries shows that even one of his tactics for avoiding the censors (using “China” or “Japan” instead of “Germany” whenever he was making a critical reference to the German authorities of his time) was part of the joke.

Now, I haven't read Stirner myself, and it's not immediately obvious that Ludd's interpretation is more (or less) trustworthy than your own. But it does seem like multiple people can read the same passages in The Ego and come to different conclusions about whether Stirner was a racist (Ludd would argue Stirner is mocking the racist views you're attributing to him), so reliable secondary sources seem necessary for the inclusion of your interpretation in the article. Alecnotalex (talk) 13:19, 4 February 2023 (UTC)