Sir, It is usually a mistake to join a fight when you don’t know how it started, but I would award the latest round to S. E. Parker (IC55). You say that ‘people who reject a commitment to truth cannot sensibly expect their statements to be taken seriously.’ This is on a par with the… read more »
HYPERSCEPTICISM Sir, I wonder if you realise that your extension of systematic ideology to the business of everyday living [1] – the ideologies surrounding a flying brick – marries up with hyperscepticism when it is applied to existence itself? In hyperscepticism the viewer does not accept any proposition as ultimately true. Resonance: NIAT. There is… read more »
By the mid-1840s Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had begun to use the term “ideology” in something approaching its modern meaning. They showed themselves aware of having broken through into a new area of understanding and encountered something other than the familiar operations of thought, but did not recognise the full significance of their own… read more »
When, in the course of argument, one asks for an example of universal truth, the proposition that one and one make two usually comes up. A little thought reveals exceptions. One heap of sand added to another heap of sand does not make two heaps of sand, the same applies to puddles of water and,… read more »
‘The individual is the only real thing in nature and in life. Neither the species, the genus nor the race actually exists; they are abstractions, terminologies, scientific devices, useful as syntheses but not entirely exact.’ (Quoted, with approval, from Pio Baroja, in issue No. 10 of THE EGOIST, published irregularly by S. E. Parker, [address],… read more »
I read with interest the exchange with George Hay in IC32. Perhaps I may offer a third position? (i) As I understand the relationship between specific ideation and ideological category, general public disinterest in the overall theory need not have much to do with whether or not a specific idea or term propagates through society –… read more »
In 1845, in Bayreuth, Johann Kaspar Schmidt published a book. Why should this interest IC? Because he used the pseudonym “Max Stirner” and the book was Der Einziger and sein Eigentum, appearing in English as The Ego and his Own; the Case of the Individual Against Authority. The copy in front of us has been… read more »
Sir, I think that all Stirner means is ‘That it is not a good thing to tell the truth all the time.’ I think Kant would agree with that. Yours etc. Isaac Barr Sir, I will accept your injunction not to discuss, for the time being, the issues raised so far in the debate on… read more »
In 1845 Johann Kaspar Schmidt, writing under the name of Max Stirner, published his version of egoism. Highly original, intensely provoking, puzzling and disconcerting, the book acts as an irritant. Working with the English translation by Steven J. Byington [1] I produced more than one short study (appearing in IC and Freedom) which proved on… read more »
ON MAX STIRNER Sir, Apropos your reply to the letter from Bob Black regarding Stirner. What you seem to me to be saying is that if someone tells you he has a ‘commitment to truth’ you will take any statement he makes as ‘true,’ whereas if someone says he has no such ‘commitment’ you will… read more »