Troy Southgate

Nov 18, 2024

I HAVE always believed that the extreme individualism advocated by Max Stirner in The Ego and Its Own (1845), fails to take into consideration the fact that we are each shaped by important genetic and environmental factors. Even Karl Marx rightly noted that Stirner’s notion of the ‘unique one’ is something of a philosophical abstraction. However, I recently discovered that the Russian theologian and existentialist Nikolai Berdyaev (1874—1948) had a very interesting perspective on this issue, contending that

“in Max Stirner, in spite of the falsity of his philosophy, true personalism is to be found, but in a distorted form. In him a dialectic of the self-affirmation of the ego comes to light. The ‘unique one’ is not personality because personality disappears in the infinity of self-affirmation, in unwillingness to know an other, and to achieve transcendence to the utmost. But in the ‘unique one’ there is a modicum of truth, for personality is a universe, a microcosm, and in a certain sense the whole world is its property and belongs to it; personality is not partial not a particular nor subordinate to the whole and the common.” (Slavery and Freedom, 1943)