Max Stirner’S Vision I: Hierarchy, Humanity And Sinners

Max Stirner was a German Philosopher who is often seen as one of the precursor of Nihilism, existentialism, psychoanalytic theory, postmodernism and individualist anarchism.

According to the great philosopher, Men are sometimes divided into two classes, cultured and uncultured. The former, is far as they were worthy of their name, occupied themselves with thoughts, with mind and demanded a servile respect for the thoughts recognized by them. State, Emperor, Church, God, morality, order, are such thoughts or the spirits that exist only for the mind. A merely living being, an animal, cares as little for them as a child.

But the uncultured are really nothing but children, and he who attends only to the necessities of his life is indifferent to those spirits, but, because he is also weak before them, he succumbs to their power, and is ruled by thoughts. This is the meaning of hierarchy.

Hierarchy is dominion of thoughts, dominion of mind! We are hierarchic to this day, kept down by those who are supported by thoughts. Thoughts are sacred.

Now what comes in mind is, everyone should have an interest in human beings, love for human beings, no matter how they are.

But see how far you get with this “should,” with this law of love. For two millennia this commandment has been led people by the heart, and still today, socialists complain that our proletarians get treated with less love than the slaves of the ancients, and yet these same socialists still raise their voices quite loudly in favor of this, the law of Love.

If you want people to take an interest in you, draw it out of them and don’t remain uninteresting sacred beings holding out your sacred humanity like a sacred robe and crying like beggars. “Respect our humanity that is sacred.”

Last but not the least is, Do not call men sinners, and they are not. You alone are the creator of sinners, you, who fancy that you love men, are the very one to throw them into the mire of sin, the very one to divide them into vicious and virtuous, into men and un-men, the very one to befoul them with the slaver of your possessed, for you not love men, but man. And I tell you, you have never seen a sinner, you have only dreamed of him.

“He who, to hold his own, must count on the absence of will in others is a thing made by these others, as the master is a thing made by the servant. If submissiveness ceased, it would be over with all lordship.”