Abstract
This translation makes available to the Anglophone world, for the first time, what is possibly Max Stirner’s final reply to his critics, entitled ‘Die Philosophischen Reactionäre’ (1847). The article was signed ‘G. Edward’, and its authorship has been disputed ever since John Henry Mackay ‘cautiously’ attributed it to Stirner and included it in his collection of Stirner’s lesser writings.1 If it is indeed Stirner’s final reply, then some of the main traits of Der Einzige und sein Eigentum are restated and posited against those whom Stirner scornfully refers to as ‘the philosophers’. Since it was written almost three years after his magnum opus, it would offer a unique insight into Stirner’s own appraisal of the book in the wake of the ultimate demise of Young Hegelianism. Other than its obvious historical-philosophical significance, the text bears witness to Stirner’s own ‘spectrality’. The controversy over Stirner’s authorship is related to the inherently idiosyncratic nature of his thought. Stirner defies — and indeed mocks — all philosophical and theoretical conventions or categorizations.
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Notes
J. H. Mackay (1977) Max Stirner, sein Leben und sein Werk (Freiburg: Mackay-Gesellschaft), p. 172;
M. Stirner, ‘Die Philosophischen Reactionäre’ in J. H. Mackay (1914) Max Stirner’s Kleinere Schriften und Entgegnungen auf die Kritik seines Werkes: ‘Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum’ aus den fahren 1842–1848 (Berlin: Bernhard Sachs Verlag), pp. 401–415. David Leopold is equally cautious in his richly annotated edition of The Ego and Its Own, when writing that the reply was ‘possibly written by Stirner’.
M. Stirner (1995) The Ego and Its Own, ed. David Leopold (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) p. xxxiv.
M. Stirner (1845–6) ‘Die National-Ökonomen der Franzosen und Engländer’, Ausführliches Lehrbuch der praktischen politischen Ökonomie von J.B. Say’. Deutsch mit Anmerkungen von Max Stirner, (Leipzig: Otto Wigand), 4 volumes.;
M. Stirner (1846–1847) ‘Die National-Ökonomen der Franzosen und Engländer’, Untersuchungen über das Wesen und die Ursachen des Nationalreichtums von Adam Smith.’ Deutsch mit Anmerkungen von Max Stirner (Leipzig: Otto Wigand), vol. 4.
For an introduction to Karl Schmidt, see Ernst Barnikol’s inexhaustible ‘Das Entdeckte Christentum im Vormärz’ in E. Barnikol (1927) Das Entdeckte Christentum im Vormärz (Jena: Eugen Diederichs), pp. 39–52.
Stirner. A. Ruge, Brief vom 14 März 1847 an Kuno Fischer, in A. Ruge (1886) Briefwechsel und Tagebüchblätter aus den fahren 1825–1880, v. 1, (Berlin: Weidmann), p. 429 (see also p. 439).
Reference works, such as a bibliography of socialism and communism, and a lexicon of pseudonyms, also treat ‘G. Edward’ as a pseudonym of Max Stirner. See J. Stammhammer (1900) Bibliographie des Socialismus und Communismus, v. 2, (Jena: Gustav Fischer), p. 99;
M. Holzmann (1906) Deutsches Pseudonymen-Lexikon, (Wien: Akademischer Verlag), p. 71.
‘Rezensenten Stirners’ in B. Laska, (ed.), (1986) Parerga, Kritiken, Repliken, (Nürnberg: LSR-Verlag), pp. 147–148.
Ernst Barnikol was also intrigued by the mystery surrounding Stirner’s authorship. After referring to ‘Die Philosophischen Reactionäre’, he added in footnote: ‘Did Stirner find this pseudonym in Edelmann’s book: “Die Göttlichkeit der Vernunft”, where Edellmann speaks out against professor Edward?’ (Barnikol, Das Entdeckte Christentum im Vormärz, p. 50). Adding to the mystery are a couple of articles by one ‘G. Edward’ in ‘Berliner Zeitungs-Halle’, entitled ‘Reiseskizzen aus Algier’ (‘Traveling Sketches from Algiers’). They were published from 17 May 1847 to September 1847. What makes this particularly intriguing is that Stirner’s former wife, Marie Dähnhardt, was also publishing (anonymously) a series of articles in the ‘Berliner Zeitungs-Halle’ between March and November 1847. This series was entitled ‘Vertraulichen Briefen aus Engeland’ (‘Confidential Letters from England’): H. Mackay (1977) Max Stirner, sein Leben und sein Werk, p. 189.
D. Moggach (2003) The Philosophy and Politics of Bruno Bauer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 153–156;
M. Tomba (2005) Krise und kritik bei Bruno Bauer, Kategorien des Politischen im nachhegelschen Denken (Frankfurt: Peter Lang), pp. 152–155.
Feuerbach probably revised his earlier stance after Stirner’s criticism in Der Einzige und sein Eigentum. In Das Wesen der Religion (1846) a naturalistexistentialist motive prevails over the Hegelian motifs expressed in Das Wesen des Christentums (1841). See A. Van Harvey (1995) Teuerbach and the Interpretation of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 21.
Stirner, The Ego, p. 164; M. Stirner (2000) Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (Stuttgart: Reclam), p. 201.
B. Kast (1979) Die Thematik des Eigners im philosophischen Denken Max Stirners (Bonn: Bouvier).
Lichtfreunde: An association of ‘rationalist’ and liberal Protestants that arose around 1841. G. Müller (2003) Theologische Realenzyklopädie, (Berlin: de Gruyter), p. 294.
Most likely a reference to Das Verstandesthum und das Individuum, in which Karl Schmidt made a parody of Stirner’s allegedly dialectical reasoning in Der Einzige und sein Eigentum. In the chapter on Stirner, reference is made to natural sciences in separate chapters on physics, chemistry, medicine, geology and astronomy, etc. K. Schmidt (1846) Das Verstandesthum und das Individuum (Leipzig: Wigand), pp. 249–276. ‘Edward’ implies that Schmidt — like Fischer — didn’t understand how Stirner was trying to return to the philosophers their own ‘dialectic art’. Schmidt’s own ‘dialectical artwork of a philosophy of nature’, however, would not ‘dissolve the great facts of natural sciences’. Stirner’s dialectical artwork, on the other hand, successfully ‘beat the philosophers with their own weapons’, according to ‘Edward’. This is consistent with what has already been argued: that Stirner’s use of dialectical reasoning in Der Einzige und sein Eigentum was strictly parodic.
See W. De Ridder (2008) ‘Max Stirner, Hegel and the Young Hegelians’, History of European Ideas, 34/3: 285–297. For more information on ‘Das Verstandesthum und das Individuum’, see the final note.
Reference to Stirner’sfirstreplytohiscritics,publishedin 1845:’Rezenstenten Stirners’, Wigands Vierteljahrsschrift (Leipzig), Vol. 3, pp. 147–194. See: ‘Rezensenten Stirners’, in Parerga, Kritiken, Repliken. Abridged translation: M. Stirner (1977) ‘Stirner’s Critics’, The Philosophical Forum, 8/2–3–4: 66–80.
This is rather striking, since the entire chapter on ‘humane liberalism’ (humanism) and its postscriptum were solely dedicated to Bauer, and were not at all inconsistent with Stirner’s ‘fight against humanism’. Bruno Bauer’s position as a leading critic of Restoration Prussia had, however, waned between 1843 and 1847. Many of his contemporaries, like Kuno Fischer and Karl Marx, considered him a radical subjectivist who had abandoned the Hegelian Left. This was, in part, due to his writings in ‘Die Allgemeinen Literaturzeitung’ in 1844. Stirner dedicated his postscriptum to these articles, but considered them the logical conclusion of Bauer’s humanism, which now ‘saw the inhuman everywhere, except in his own head’. In order to refute Fischer’s erroneous claim that Stirner was in fact the consequence of Bauer’s philosophy of self-consciousness and its alleged ‘subjectivism’, ‘Edward’ had to downplay the importance of Stirner’s criticism of Bauer altogether. For an overview of the debates on Bauer’s subjectivism and conservatism after 1843–1844 and its relation to Stirner, see W. De Ridder (2011) ‘The Philosophy and Politics of Bruno Bauer, Krise und Kritik bei Bruno Bauer’, Historical Materialism, 19/1: 315–329.
Reference to the anonymously published book, written by Schmidt, Das Verstandesthum und das Individuum. Fischer criticized it in ‘Moderne Sophisten’, while claiming that the anonymous author had superseded Stirner. The book can be considered, in part, a parody of Stirner and the Young Hegelians. Schmidt frequented the so-called Berlin Young Hegelians (‘Die Freien’) between 1844 and 1846. After developing his critique of Stirner and Young Hegelianism, he went on to become a renowned historian of pedagogy. For an annotated translation of chapter two of the book (‘Das Individuum’) and the beginning of the introduction, see K. Schmidt (2010) The Individual (North Syracuse: Gegensatz Press).
Eric v.d. Luft explains in his introduction that Karl Schmidt (pseudonym: Karl Bürger) published another satire of Stirner in 1846: Liebesbriefe ohne Liebe. Translation: A. Schmidt (2010) Love Letters without Love, (Gegensatz Press: Syracuse, 2010). In his introduction, Eric v.d. Luft considers Das Verstandesthum und das Individuum as a ‘proto-existentialist’ work. Moreover, both books ‘sought to reduce dialectical philosophy to its own absurd and self-contradictory consequences’. (Schmidt, The Individual, p. 8). It is noteworthy, therefore, that Edward disparages Schmidt in his reply to Kuno Fischer. ‘Edward’ even accuses Schmidt of having himself written a critique of his own book that was published anonymously in Ernst Wilhem Hengstenberg’s Evangelische Kirchenzeitung. A translation of this text can be found in Eric v.d. Luft’s edition. ‘Edward’ probably refuses to read more than ‘one single page’ of Das Verstandesthum und das Individuum, because the book merely copies Stirner’s ironic use of Hegelian elements and is, for that reason, equally the work ‘of a man who wants to be famous à tout prix’.
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© 2011 G. Edwarda and Widukind De Ridder
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Edward, G., De Ridder, W. (2011). The Philosophical Reactionaries: ‘The Modern Sophists’ by Kuno Fischer . In: Newman, S. (eds) Max Stirner. Critical Explorations in Contemporary Political Thought Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230348929_5
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