The Forty-Nine Steps by Roberto Calasso

Author:Roberto Calasso [Roberto Calasso]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446414873
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2002-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

11 Accompaniment to the Reading of Stirner

“INFAMOUS”

Only a few years after its publication, Max Stirner’s Der Einzige und sein Eigentum1 had become “infamous.”2 In a way it still is: Just as we would search histories of literature in vain for a comprehensive treatment of certain great pornographic writings, so we will find nothing adequate about Stirner in histories of philosophy. And yet Der Einzige had and still has a great many readers, scattered all over the world and differing in level, quality, culture, and intentions. The most faithful, the ones who have constantly felt attracted to Stirner, are autodidacts and maniacs. Academics are less sure about the book, for they seem to fear a loss in status should they take an interest in Stirner. As Ettore Zoccoli had already observed in reference to “Germanic culture” (but his words can be applied to culture in general):

Intellectual Germany, before lending an ear to a thinker’s words, requires him to give proof and confirmation that before developing his ideas, he has not ignored the facts; that before thinking with his own mind, he has taken account of the thought of others; that, in short, before speaking out, he has deeply and calmly studied the book of science and life.

Max Stirner in no way satisfied these requirements of Germanic culture. He was a solitary. He wrote only one book, in which facts are implied and hasty syntheses abound, abstract statements wholly exclude empirical investigation, and metaphysics wins out over historical reality.3

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