Conclusion: Stirner: The Happy Nihilist?

Summary

Max Stirner is seen as occupying a minor position in the history of ideas, somewhere between an enfant terrible and the invisible man. This book has attempted to demonstrate that, at least from an unpartisan viewpoint, his ideas constitute an original and valuable contribution to philosophical inquiry and reveal new perspectives in an age of unparalleled skepticism and uncertainty, where the search for an answer to the ancient problem of how to live well is more frenetic than ever. The issue of Stirner's relationship to nihilism is key to an appraisal of his legacy because the orthodox labeling of Stirner as a nihilist, which is so widespread as to have become almost axiomatic, exposes both the crucial themes of his philosophical project and the ideological backdrop to his polarized reception. If, as this study has sought to establish, Stirner's status as a nihilist is doubtful at worst and partial at best, it underlines, among other things, the importance of reevaluating his standing as a thinker and reassessing the substance and significance of his thought.

One of the key findings to come out of this investigation is that Nietzschean or existential nihilism occupies a prominent position in the common (mis-)understanding of Stirner as a nihilist. While Stirner had a limited effect on the development of Russian nihilism, and while moral nihilism may adequately describe Stirner's ethical outlook but not his philosophy as a whole, it is the assumption that he is expounding a doctrine of emptiness, in the sense of meaninglessness, that has continually dogged the debate about Stirner and nihilism, especially since World War II. Stirner's critics in this regard have invariably ignored the fact that his version of nothingness, insofar as the concept plays any significant role in his thought, is meonic, in the form of the “creative nothing” of a transitory individual's life. The equating of Stirner's meonic nothingness with the empty void of existential nihilism is a recurrent misconception in Stirner criticism and one which must be rectified before a coherent picture of his thought can emerge.

Stirner's detractors have also tended to disregard the fact that the central themes of pessimism, like the pernicious effects of the passage of time or the absurdity of human existence, which are a fundamental part of existential nihilism, are entirely absent from Stirner's writings.