Is Max Stirner a Solipsist?

Is Max Stirner secretly a solipsist? Or did he actually destroy solipsism before it began?

In this video, I unpack the philosophical and psychoanalytic tension between Stirner’s egoism and solipsism, and I explore what it really means to own yourself in a world that may or may not be real.

From the spook of the ‘I’ to the creative nothing, we’ll move through:
– What solipsism actually claims
– Why Stirner’s egoism isn’t isolation but liberation
– How solipsism turns the self into a spook
– And how psychoanalysis reveals solipsism as a defense against nothingness

“Everything exists but nothing owns me.”

Video Chapters:
00:01 Introduction & Definitions
5:15 The Spooked I
6:55 The Modern Solipsist
11:27 Stirner’s Break
19:13 The Psychoanalytic Critique
26:28 My Relation to It

MENTIONED IN EPISODE & BOOK SUGGESTIONS:
[some of these links are affiliate links and if you use them to make a purchase on Amazon, I receive a commission payment via the Amazon Affiliate program]:

Primary Sources
Max Stirner – The Ego and Its Own (1844): https://amzn.to/49hFpBo
Sigmund Freud – The Ego and the Id (1923): https://amzn.to/4hjgdg4
Sigmund Freud – Civilization and Its Discontents (1930): https://amzn.to/3Wa6Gya
Sigmund Freud – Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926): https://amzn.to/42OhfL7
Sigmund Freud – Analysis Terminable and Interminable (1937): https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Freud_Analysis_Terminable_Interminable.pdf
Sigmund Freud – New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1933): https://amzn.to/47dLMmF
Sigmund Freud – An Outline of Psycho-Analysis (1940): https://amzn.to/4njfWLr
Jacques Lacan – Écrits (1966): https://amzn.to/4nfjNcy
Jacques Lacan – The Seminar, Book I: Freud’s Papers on Technique (1953–1954): https://amzn.to/3IQskEI
Jacques Lacan – The Seminar, Book II: The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis (1954–1955): https://amzn.to/43jA88I
Jacques Lacan – The Seminar, Book III: The Psychoses (1955–1956): https://amzn.to/46YkrpR
Jacques Lacan – The Seminar, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1964): https://amzn.to/47yr2aI
Jacques Lacan – The Seminar, Book XX: Encore (1972–1973): https://amzn.to/47aiLsc
Bertrand Russell – The Problems of Philosophy (1912): https://amzn.to/3JgoDIt
Thomas Nagel – The View from Nowhere (1986): https://amzn.to/47gOmbE
Slavoj Žižek – The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989): https://amzn.to/4qg4WBa

Secondary and Interpretive Sources
Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, 1996: https://amzn.to/48A12wL
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994: https://amzn.to/42O31tv
Stirner, Max. Stirner’s Critics. In The Ego and Its Own, appendix. New York: Dover Publications, 2005: https://amzn.to/4hk0Io7
Leopold, David. “Max Stirner.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. Spring 2019 Edition: https://amzn.to/3LfZs9n
Paterson, R. W. K. The Nihilistic Egoist: Max Stirner. London: Oxford University Press, 1971: https://amzn.to/4hkrtJ4
Žižek, Slavoj. The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology. London: Verso, 1999: https://amzn.to/4necMIO
Newman, Saul. From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2001: https://amzn.to/48B8R5k

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