Egoism

From the Archives

Victor Yarros, “‘Egoism’ Bedeviling Anarchism”

August 11, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

Benjamin R. Tucker’s rather sudden conversion to Max Stirner’s philosophy of Egoism was a calamitous accident. There is nothing in common between individualist and philosophical Anarchism as Tucker developed it on the foundations laid by Jefferson, Thoreau, Emerson, Warren, Spooner, Spencer, Herbert, Green and Andrews, and Stirner’s German political metaphysics. Some of Tucker’s adherents uncritically swallowed. Egoism and persuaded themselves that it was a corollary, if not a logical deduction from anarchistic premises. This was a gross error. Egoism is half platitudinous, half fallacious. […]

From the Archives

Dyer D. Lum, “The Science of Social Relations” (1890)

February 25, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

By the law of the Three Stages, so elaborately set forth by Auguste Comte, we are told that every science, each branch of knowledge, passes through three different theoretical conditions; the theological, or mythical; the metaphysical, or speculative; and the positive or scientific. “Hence,” said Comte, “arises three philosophies, or general systems of conceptions on the aggregate of phenomena, each of which excludes the other. The first is the necessary point of departure of the human understanding; and the third is its fixed, or definite, state; the second is merely a state of transition.” […]

Contr'un

Stirner’s Critics

April 28, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur

Hurry over to the Vagabond Theorist page and check out the full translation of “Stirner’s Critics,” Max Stirner’s reply to Szeliga, Hess and Feuerbach. There’s a lot of very valuable clarification in the essay. Bravo! […]