From: swilbur-AT-wcnet.org Subject: Re: [postanarchism] egoism / individualist -AT- thoughts and critique ? Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 12:35:47 US/Eastern > Hi I am interested in resources on stirnerite egoism or > neitchian ( sorry spelling ) individualist anarchism / > or should i say critiques of it, in regard to compassion, > friendship, responsibility and ideas of freedom. any > links, would be appreciated, or if people want to discuss it, > then i'll try and keep up . For original sources on egoism, there's a good deal of material at the Egoist Archive: http://www.nonserviam.com/egoistarchive/ Badcock's "Slaves to Duty" and John Beverly Robinson's "Egoism" are there, complete, plus lots of magazine articles and debates. "Non Serviam" magazine is a good source for more contemporary egoist material. It strikes me that there is nothing about egoism that necessarily puts it at odds with compassion, friendship or responsibility. Badcock first opposes love or desire to the "duty to obey," then goes on to show how various other potentially positive feelings and expressions are captured and neutralized by the sense of "duty." How egoism is manifested is going to depend a great deal on how one understands the "ego." Those of us influenced by poststructuralism are likely to reject the classical formulations on the basic of more complex understandings of how the "I" is constituted. With the distinctions inside/outside, self/other, subject/object rather shaken, the starker sorts of egoism seem hard to maintain. However, it *might* be the case that our awareness of the "I" as precisely a *problem* makes something like egoism interesting to us again. I have, for some time, been reading Badcock, who i think is a very thorough egoist, through the filters of derridean "responsibility." It would probably make at least as much sense to pursue a transformation of egoism through the realm of Blanchot's "neuter" or Nancy's conjoined "singular plural." I should be clear: my sense is that the emphasis on the ego in late-19th century individualist circles was very unfortunate, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the increased conflicts with collectivist anarchists and further splintering of the movement. The tendency to treat the mutualists and individualists who preceded Tucker as "heralds of philosophical egoism," as the recently-deceased James Martin did in his (very thorough and interesting) "Men Against the State," seems to me to cover over all sorts of very interesting questions and problems raised along the way. It seems, at the very least to go against the emphasis on the "individual" in Warren and the "unique" in Stirner. -shawn --------------------------------------------- This message was sent using Endymion MailMan. http://www.endymion.com/products/mailman/
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