Ego and Existance: Existentialism and the Absolute Individual in the Philosophy of Max Stirner and Julius Evola

By Davide Moiso

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CHAPTER I

Existential philosophy and psychotherapy: basic concepts

This chapter will try to outline the main themes of existential philosophy and psychology with a short presentation of the major exponents of Existentialism. The interpretations of Boss will be particularly recalled.

Existentialism is philosophical movement or tendency, emphasising individual existence, freedom, and choice, that influenced many diverse writers in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Major Themes

Because of the diversity of positions associated with existentialism, the term is impossible to define precisely. Certain themes common to virtually all existentialist writers can, however, be identified. The term itself suggests one major theme: the stress on concrete individual existence and, consequently, on subjectivity, individual freedom, and choice.

Moral Individualism

Most philosophers since Plato have held that the highest ethical good is the same for everyone; insofar as one approaches moral perfection, one resembles other morally perfect individuals. The 19th-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, who was the first writer to call himself existential, reacted against this tradition by insisting that the highest good for the individual is to find his or her own unique vocation. As he wrote in his journal, "I must find a truth that is true for me . . . the idea for which I can live or die." (Mathieu, 1969)

Other existentialist writers have echoed Kierkegaard's belief that one must choose one's own way without the aid of universal, objective standards.

Against the traditional view that moral choice involves an objective judgement of right and wrong, existentialists have argued that no objective, rational basis can be found for moral decisions. The 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche further contended that the individual must decide which situations are to count as moral situations.

Subjectivity

All existentialists have followed Kierkegaard in stressing the importance of passionate individual action in deciding questions of both morality and truth. They have insisted, accordingly, that personal experience and acting on one's own convictions are essential in arriving at the truth. Thus, the understanding of a situation by someone involved in that situation is superior to that of a detached, objective observer. This emphasis on the perspective of the individual agent has also made existentialists suspicious of systematic reasoning. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and other existentialist writers have been deliberately unsystematic in the exposition of their philosophies, preferring to express themselves in aphorisms, dialogues, parables, and other literary forms. Despite their anti-rationalist position, however, most existentialists cannot be said to be irrationalists in the sense of denying all validity to rational thought. They have held that rational clarity is desirable wherever possible, but that the most important questions in life are not accessible to reason or science. Furthermore, they have argued that even science is not as rational as is commonly supposed.

Nietzsche, for instance, asserted that the scientific assumption of an orderly universe is for the most part a useful fiction.

Choice and Commitment

Perhaps the most prominent theme in existentialist writing is that of choice. Humanity's primary distinction, in the view of most existentialists, is the freedom to choose. Existentialists have held that human beings do not have a fixed nature, or essence, as other animals and plants do; each human being makes choices that create his or her own nature. In the formulation of the 20th-century French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, existence precedes essence.

Choice is therefore central to human existence, and it is inescapable; even the refusal to choose is a choice. Freedom of choice entails commitment and responsibility. Because individuals are free to choose their own path, existentialists have argued, they must accept the risk and responsibility of following their commitment wherever it leads.

Dread and Anxiety

Kierkegaard held that it is spiritually crucial to recognise that one experiences not only a fear of specific objects but also a feeling of general apprehension, which he called dread. He interpreted it as God's way of calling each individual to make a commitment to a personally valid way of life. The word anxiety (German: Angst) has a similarly crucial role in the work of the 20th-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger; anxiety leads to the individual's confrontation with nothingness and with the impossibility of finding ultimate justification for the choices he or she must make. In the philosophy of Sartre, the word nausea is used for the individual's recognition of the pure contingency of the universe, and the word anguish is used for the recognition of the total freedom of choice that confronts the individual at every moment.

History

Existentialism as a distinct philosophical and literary movement belongs to the 19th and 20th centuries, but elements of existentialism can be found in the thought (and life) of Socrates, in the Bible, and in the work of many Pre-modern philosophers and writers.

Pascal

The first to anticipate the major concerns of modern existentialism was the 17th-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal. Pascal rejected the rigorous rationalism of his contemporary René Descartes, asserting, in his Pensées (1670), that a systematic philosophy that presumes to explain God and humanity is a form of pride.

Like later existentialist writers, he saw human life in terms of paradoxes: the human self, which combines mind and body, is itself a paradox and contradiction.

Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard, generally regarded as the founder of modern existentialism, reacted against the systematic absolute idealism of the 19th-century German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, who claimed to have worked out a total rational understanding of humanity and history. Kierkegaard, on the contrary, stressed the ambiguity and absurdity of the human situation. The individual's response to this situation must be to live a totally committed life, and this commitment can only be understood by the individual who has made it. The individual therefore must always be prepared to defy the norms of society for the sake of the higher authority of a personally valid way of life. Kierkegaard ultimately advocated a "leap of faith" into a Christian way of life, which, although incomprehensible and full of risk, was the only commitment he believed could save the individual from despair.

Nietzsche

Nietzsche, who was not acquainted with the work of Kierkegaard, influenced subsequent existentialist thought through his criticism of traditional metaphysical and moral assumptions and through his espousal of tragic pessimism and the life-affirming individual will that opposes itself to the moral conformity of the majority. In contrast to Kierkegaard, whose attack on conventional morality led him to advocate a radically individualistic Christianity, Nietzsche proclaimed the "death of God" and went on to reject the entire Judeo-Christian moral tradition in favour of a heroic pagan ideal.

Heidegger

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), German philosopher, developed the 20th century notion of existential phenomenology. Heidegger's original treatment of such themes as human finitude, death, nothingness, and authenticity led to his association with existentialism.

He began his career as an assistant to Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, and was also influenced by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.

Although influenced by Husserl, Heidegger rejected his attempt to put philosophy on a conclusive rationalistic basis.

He argued, instead, that humanity finds itself in an incomprehensible, indifferent world, and that human beings can never hope to understand why they are here.

He believed that each individual must choose a goal and follow it with passionate conviction, aware of the certainty of death and the ultimate meaninglessness of one's life.

In his most important and influential work, Being and Time (1927), Heidegger formulated what he considered the essential philosophical questions: What is it, "to be," and what kind of "being" do human beings have?

Heidegger's theory of 'being and time' may be summarised as follows: Individuals are thrown into a world that they have not made, but which consists of potentially useful things, including cultural as well as natural objects.

Because these objects come to humanity from the past, and are used in the present for the sake of future goals, Heidegger posited a fundamental relation between the mode of being of objects and humanity, and of the structure of time.

The individual, he claimed, is always in danger of being submerged in the world of objects and everyday routine, and the conventional, shallow behaviour of the crowd.

Ultimately, a feeling of dread (Angst) brings the individual to a confrontation with death and the ultimate meaninglessness of life.

But only in this confrontation can an authentic sense of "Being" and of freedom be attained.

After 1930, Heidegger expanded his thoughts on Being, including new ideas which were later expressed in such works as An Introduction to Metaphysics (1953).

He felt that modern technological society had fostered a purely manipulative attitude, which had deprived Being, and human life, of meaning-a condition he called nihilism.

Humanity had forgotten its true vocation, and needed to recover the deeper understanding of Being to be receptive to new understandings of human existence.

Although his work had a crucial influence on the French existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, Heidegger eventually repudiated the existentialist interpretations of his work.

Because of his early public support of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, Heidegger's professional activities were restricted after World War II and controversy followed him until his retirement in 1959.

Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), philosopher, dramatist, novelist, and political journalist, and the leading exponent of French existentialism.

Sartre gave the term existentialism general currency by using it for his own philosophy and by becoming the leading figure of a distinct movement in France that became internationally influential after World War II.

His philosophic work combined the phenomenology of Husserl, the metaphysics of Hegel and Heidegger, and the social theory of Marx into a single view.

Sartre's philosophy was explicitly atheistic and pessimistic; he declared that human beings require a rational basis for their lives but are unable to achieve one, and thus human life, he concluded, is a "futile passion."

Sartre nevertheless insisted that his existentialism is a form of humanism, and he strongly emphasised human freedom, choice, and responsibility.

In his early philosophic work, Being and Nothingness (1943), Sartre conceived humans as beings who create their own world by rebelling against authority and by accepting personal responsibility for their actions, unaided by society, traditional morality, or religious faith.

His theory of existential psychoanalysis asserted the inescapable responsibility of all individuals for their own decisions and made the recognition of one's absolute freedom of choice the necessary condition for authentic human existence.

His plays and novels also expressed the belief that freedom and acceptance of personal responsibility are the main values in life, and that individuals must rely on their creative powers rather than on social or religious authority.

In his later philosophic work, Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960), Sartre's emphasis shifted from existentialist freedom and subjectivity to Marxist social determinism; here he tried to reconcile existentialist concepts with a Marxist analysis of society and history.

Sartre argued that the influence of modern society over the individual is so great as to produce serialisation, by which he meant loss of self.

Individual power and freedom, he claimed, can only be regained through group revolutionary action.

Sartre's philosophical views, which he related to life, literature, psychology, and political action, stimulated so much popular interest that existentialism became a world-wide movement.

Existentialism and Theology

Although existentialist thought encompasses the uncompromising atheism of Nietzsche and Sartre and the agnosticism of Heidegger, its origin in the intensely religious philosophies of Pascal and Kierkegaard foreshadowed its profound influence on 20th-century theology. The 20th-century German philosopher Karl Jaspers, although he rejected explicit religious doctrines, influenced contemporary theology through his preoccupation with transcendence and the limits of human experience. The German Protestant theologians Paul Tillich and Rudolf Bultmann, the French Roman Catholic theologian Gabriel Marcel, the Russian Orthodox philosopher Nikolay Berdyayev, and the German Jewish philosopher Martin Buber inherited many of Kierkegaard's concerns, especially that a personal sense of authenticity and commitment is essential to religious faith.

Existentialism and Literature

A number of existentialist philosophers used literary forms to convey their thought, and existentialism has been as vital and as extensive a movement in literature as in philosophy. The 19th-century Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky is probably the greatest existentialist literary figure. In Notes from the Underground (1864), the alienated antihero rages against the optimistic assumptions of rationalist humanism. The view of human nature that emerges in this and other novels of Dostoyevsky is that it is unpredictable and perversely self-destructive (like the already quoted character of Kirillov); only Christian love can save humanity from itself, but such love cannot be understood philosophically. As the character Alyosha says in The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoyevsky ,1879-80/2000), "We must love life more than the meaning of it."

In the 20th century, the novels of the Austrian Jewish writer Franz Kafka, such as The Trial (1925; trans. 1937) and The Castle (1926; trans. 1930), present isolated men confronting vast, elusive, menacing bureaucracies; Kafka's themes of anxiety, guilt, and solitude reflect the influence of Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, and Nietzsche. The influence of Nietzsche is also discernible in the novels of the French writers André Malraux and in the plays of Sartre. The work of the French writer Albert Camus is usually associated with existentialism because of the prominence in it of such themes as the apparent absurdity and futility of life, the indifference of the universe, and the necessity of engagement in a just cause.

Existentialist themes are also reflected in the theater of the absurd, notably in the plays of Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco. In the United States, the influence of existentialism on literature has been more indirect and diffuse, but traces of Kierkegaard's thought can be found in the novels of Walker Percy and John Updike, and various existentialist themes are apparent in the work of such diverse writers as Norman Mailer, John Barth, and Arthur Miller.

Existential Psychology

The followers of existential philosophy who have translated these thoughts into statements about personality include the Europeans Ludwig Binswanger, Medard Boss, and Victor Frankl. Major American theorists include Rollo May and Paul Tillich, but I will also include some writings of Salvatore Maddi. The following notes represent an attempt at a synthesis of the writings of many theorists, with a particular focus on Boss.(notes from "The False Dasein: From Heidegger to Sartre and Psychoanalysis." By Jon Mills Published in the Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 1997, 28(1), 42-65.

Core of Personality

I. Core Tendency:

To achieve authentic being. Being signifies the special quality of human mentality ( intentionality), that makes life a series of decisions, each involving an alternative that precipitates persons into an unknown future and an alternative that pushes them back into a routine, predictable past. Choosing the future brings ontological anxiety (fear of the unknown), whereas choosing the safe status quo brings ontological guilt (sense of missed opportunity). Authenticity involves accepting this painful state of affairs and finding the courage or hardiness to persist in the face of ontological anxiety and choose the future, thereby minimising ontological guilt.

II. Core Characteristics

A. Being-in-the -world: This concept emphasises the unity of person and environment, since, in this heavily phenomenological position, both are subjectively defined. Being-in-the-world has three components:

Umwelt ("world around") - the natural world of biological urge and drive.
Mitwelt ("with-world") - the social, interactive, interpersonal aspects of existence.
Eigenwelt ("own world") - the subjective, phenomenological world of the self.

B. Six ontological principles:

Every person is centred in self and lives life through the meaning he or she places on that centre.
Every person is responsible for mobilising the courage to protect the self, to affirm it, and to enhance its continued existence.
People need other people with whom they can empathise and from whom they can learn.
People are vigilant about potential dangers to their identities.
People can be aware of themselves thinking and feeling at one moment and may be aware of themselves as the person who thinks and feels in the next moment.
Anxiety originates, in part, out of a person's awareness that one's being can end.

III. The goals of integration:

Man conceives of the human being as conscious of self, capable of intentionality, and needing to make choices. To do this we must recognise and confront the paradoxes of our lives. A paradox is two opposing things posited against each other all the while the fact is that they cannot exist without each other. Thus, good and evil; life and death; and beauty and ugliness appear to be at odds with each other, but the very confrontation with one breathes life and meaning into the other. The goals of integration include confronting one's potentialities for the daimonic, power, love, intentionality, freedom and destiny, and courage and creativity.

The Daimonic: This is defined as "any natural function that has the power to take over the whole person". Sex, anger, and power can become evil when they take over the self without integration. We are capable of both good and evil.
Power: Life can bee seen as a conflict between achieving a sense of significance of one's self on the one hand, and the feeling of powerlessness on the other. Violence has its breeding ground in impotence and apathy. As we make people powerless, we encourage violence, rather than control it.
Intentionality: Intentionality underlies any decision. It is "the structure which gives meaning to experience". It is the capacity to participate in knowing. How a piece of paper is perceived will differ depending on whether one intends to write on it or to make a paper airplane. May holds that we cannot know the truth until we have taken a stand on it.
Freedom and Destiny: Freedom is the capacity to pause (and make a choice) between a stimulus and a response. In the debate between dispositional and situational factors, there is a third alternative - human beings can choose when and whether they are to be acted upon or do the acting. To the extent that one is unaware of one's responses, then determinism may be the appropriate term. The shift from determinism to destiny occurs when a person is self-conscious about what is happening to him or her. To accept one's destiny is to accept personal responsibility.
Courage: Courage is the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair. Courage is necessary in order to make being and becoming possible. The paradox of courage is that we must be fully committed but at the same time aware that we might be wrong.

Periphery of Personality

Personality types emphasising self-definition and world view:

Authenticity or individuality (ideal type) involves the self-definition as someone with a mental life permitting comprehension and influence over one's social and biological experiences. The world view is characterised by considering society the creation of persons and properly in their service.

The individualist's functioning has unity and shows subtly, taste, intimacy, and love. Doubt (or ontological anxiety) is experienced as a natural concomitant of creating one's own meaning and does not undermine the decision-making process. There is a minimum of ontological guilt, or sense of missed opportunity.
Conformism (non-ideal type) is the expression in adulthood of not having learned courage in early development, and, hence, being unable to learn from failures. The self-definition is nothing more than a player of social roles and an embodiment of biological needs. Expression of symbolization, imagination, and judgement, is inhibited, leading to stereotyped, fragmentary functioning. Biological experiencing is exaggerated and gross, and social experiencing is contractual rather than intimate. The conformist feels worthless and insecure because of the build-up of ontological guilt through frequently choosing the past rather than the future. The relevant world view stresses materialism and pragmatism. This type represents a vulnerability to existential sickness, which tendency becomes an actuality when environmental stresses occur that are sufficient to disconfirm the conformist's self-definition and world view.

Being-in-the-world

The depth of Heidegger’s re-evaluation of human existence is reflected in his evident need to used a new word - Dasein - to indicate the human being.

Heidegger’s masterwork, "Being and Time" is devoted to explaining and illuminating what is meant by the term Dasein. What a thinker as Boss understood about this new reading of human existence it is important in order to understand his work and its implications. For Boss, "the very essence of man's existence is an immediate and primary awareness of Beingness-as-such.......This primary awareness is - as the most fundamental feature of man's existence - not an attribute or a property which man has, but that man is this primary awareness of Beingness, that he is in the world essentially and primarily as such. Man, then, is a light which luminates whatever particular being comes into the realm of its rays. It is of his essence to disclose things and living beings in their meaning and content." (Boss 1963 quoted by Mills,1997.)

Boss builds up the picture of the human as a being whose unique fundamental nature is to be open to existence, who creates around him a 'clearing' which is, so to speak, illuminated by his awareness, and within which meanings are unfolded or disclosed. Indeed, he states that "Man's existence seems claimed by Beingness as the necessary clearing into which all that has to be may come forth and within which it may shine forth." (Boss ,1963 ibid. ) So for Boss, man's awareness is 'out there' in the world, rather than located somewhere inside him, and he insists that one cannot think or talk of man in any way that does not include this basic function. So that when talking of someone's 'world', we must take into account that this is in reality a world of meanings, in which events, things and people - regardless of whether we might call them real or imagined - have a particular significance to that person that is uniquely theirs and totally valid as phenomena that appeared to them in the light of their clearing.

Authenticity

In 'Being and Time', Heidegger refers to what he calls "Dasein's authentic potentiality-for-being-a-whole" (Heidegger 1927 quoted by Mills,1997), indicating that man's sense of wholeness and well-being is dependent on his capacity to experience himself in relation to Being-as-a-whole, or to realise his full potential. He distinguishes between the authentic self, which emerges into the light of its own self-understanding as a being free to realise "his ownmost possibilities", and the inauthentic self, the 'they-self' that is lost in everydayness.

For Boss, the authentic self is one which is free to be o-en to existence in a wide variety of ways, allowing the full expression of potential ways of being, "choosing freely in which of his relational possibilities he wants to engage himself and to occur as a human existence at any given moment of his life." (Boss 1963, ibid.). Bearing in mind Boss's view of man as being "out there" so to speak, among the phenomena of existence, we can understand his idea that man has to reclaim his being in order to come to himself in an authentic way, to define and realise his potential. In contrast, the inauthentic or they-self is not free, it is caught up in the world of the other, in the narrowed-down mentality of an anonymous, inauthentic everybody." Because of man's openness, and his ontological need of the phenomena that he encounters, his initial reaction is to fall prey to them, so that he, so to speak, loses himself to them, preventing his authenticity from manifesting. By turning his attention of himself, by shining his light on his own nature, he can allow the meanings of his own existence to unfold and become clear, and in this way he can reclaim his self from the experienced phenomena of the world.

The fact that man has the capacity to choose whether to accept or refuse to accept his possible ways of being is for Boss the very core of human freedom, a freedom which is in turn balanced by man's being "claimed" by Beingness-as-such as the realm into which individual beings manifest in their fullness. He also acknowledges that there is a being-closed to certain possibilities that does not arise from a free decision, in that someone who has not yet gained the freedom of being himself will be incapable of admitting certain realisations into the light of his clearing.

Affects and Emotions

Boss, on the other hand, sees affects, emotions, passions or feelings not as something that is either within us or surrounding us, but as a way of being-in-the-world. For Boss, we are our emotions, and he refers to them as different "melodies" or "tunings" that colour our particular way of being open to existence at any one time, and that in turn determine the meanings that can be unfolded for us at that time. "They, these emotional states, are the melodies, the different ways in which we, in our respective relationships with what confronts us, find ourselves tuned at any given time, directly and with our entire existence ..." this state of attunement is "the particular manner of world openness as which we are existing fundamentally at any given moment." For Boss, openness necessarily implies closed-in-ness, "They belong together necessarily and always," and the emotional state can determine the degree of openness or closed-in-ness possible in a given moment. If we are overcome by anger, for example, we can lose to a great degree our capacity as meaning disclosing beings, we can become "blind with rage", and our degree of openness shrinks dramatically.

Similarly, love, hope, indifference, envy, greed, lust, etc. will all colour the ways in which we are open to existence. They will not only determine what we can perceive, but will also alter the way in which we perceive the same phenomenon or person at different times.

Care

It is relevant at this point to introduce another Heideggerian term, namely 'care'. Like the capacity to disclose meanings, care is not seen simply as an attribute of human existence, but a fundamental, essential element of human-being-in-the-world. In that man has been claimed by Beingness-as-such as the clearing in which things can manifest in their fullness, man has a corresponding care for the phenomena of existence - including himself. So caring is the underlying capacity in man to give over his attention to these phenomena in such a way that their meanings can unfold. This in turn allows for his capacity to either become lost in, and fall prey to those phenomena, or to transcend them and be free to fulfil his own possibilities for being.

Implicit in caring is the capacity, indeed the obligation, to care for others, both in the ordinary sense of the word, and also in the sense of giving their world of meaning the same validity that one would give to one's own.

Within this view of the therapeutic relationship as being one of mutual caring between the therapist and the patient, Boss identifies two kinds of caring that the therapist can employ with respect to the patient, namely intervening care and anticipating care. Intervening care can be described as an attempt by the therapist to have the client's awareness for him, in such a way that the patient is dislodged from the centre of his world. It is the therapist taking over something that has to be attended to by the patient himself, if he is to locate it within his own world of meanings. Boss warns against intervening care as something that can actually set back the therapy, by closing the patient off from his own realisations. In contrast to this he recommends what he calls anticipating care, whereby the therapist, ahead of the patient, so to speak, and seeing what it is that needs to become clear for him, allows the patient his own existential unfolding. The therapist "does not take over for the patient, but tries to hand back to him what has to be cared for, so that it becomes an actual concern......It helps the other person to become, in his caring, transparent to himself and free for his existence" (Boss 1963 ibid, )

Anxiety and Guilt

This sense of caring is also taken to include the capacity for self-understanding, for transcending the immediate situation, to objectify, to use speech and symbols and to imagine. It is also the underlying ground of all existential anxiety and, in turn, guilt. For Heidegger and Boss and other existential therapists, anxiety is seen as an underlying or ontological condition that can become manifest in many ways, but that has a basic foundation. Anxiety is seen as the conflict between being and non-being, or to quote Rollo May, "the experience of imminent non-being." (May 1983). hence it is not something that we have, but something that we re. It is the individual's realisation - at some level of awareness - that his existence can be destroyed, that he can lose himself and his world, and it can be seen to always involve inner conflict. May further states that "anxiety occurs at the point where some emerging potentiality or possibility faces the individual, some possibility of fulfilling his existence; but this very possibility involves the destro(May 1983, ibid.)ying of present security, which thereupon gives rise to the tendency to deny the new potentiality." . Kierkegaard was emphatic on this point: "Anxiety is the reality of freedom as a potentiality before this freedom has materialised" (Kierkegaard, 1849 on Mathieu ,1969 ). In this way, we can see that the individual may well surrender his potential freedom to the faceless 'they' in an attempt to assuage his anxiety. This can in turn give rise to another ontological condition of human existence, guilt.

For the existentialists, guilt is the direct result of the failure to live up to one's potential. It is interesting to note that the German word for guilt, 'schuld', also means debt, and in this sense we can see that the idea of one's indebtedness to existence, in that we have been endowed with the potential to be truly ourselves, gives rise to a sense of guilt if we fail to live up to this potential. "If you lock up potentialities, you are guilty against (or indebted to) what is given you in your origin, in your core. In this existential condition of being indebted and being guilty are founded all guilt feelings, in whatever thousand and one concrete forms and malformations they may appear in actuality." (May 1983, quoted by Mills,1997)

In a truly existential manner, Boss points out that the patient is not merely 'having guilt feelings'; he is guilty. This approach, for Rollo May, is "radically existential in that it takes the real phenomena with respect."

(May 1983, ibid) May values this highly , in that by taking the value of guilt seriously, and not reducing it to mere guilt feelings, it opens the way for the patient to take his guilt seriously, and to face the fact that he is in some way losing his being. This issue of guilt must not be taken to mean that the therapist is in any way judging the patient, or his life. It is, on the contrary, based on holding the patient in high regard and taking his life seriously that allows this issue, with all of its implied depth of meaning, to come to the surface.

Dasein and Fallenness

In his philosophical treatise Being and Time, Heidegger (1927) offers an existential ontology of selfhood as Dasein (being-there), the concretely existing human being who is there, as part of a world. In Dasein's original disclosedness as Being-in-the-world, one is thrust into the ontological contingency of "Being-in" (around-world) an environment (Umwelt) and "Being-with" (with-world) others (Mitwelt) and with-oneself (own-world) (Eigenwelt), which underlies all participation, engagement, and concrete involvement with the world that is given in a person's immediate preoccupations and concerns. Thus, the world itself is constitutive of Dasein's Being, for "Being-in-the-world is a state of Dasein that is a necessary a priori, but it is far from sufficient for completely determining Dasein's Being" (p. 79). Heidegger explicates that Dasein's Being takes on a particular character a priori and exists within the modes of authentic and inauthentic disclosedness. He writes, Dasein exists. Furthermore, Dasein is an entity which in each case I myself am. Mineness belongs to any existent Dasein, and belongs to it as the conditions which make authenticity and inauthenticity possible. (p. 78)

The modes of Dasein's disclosedness are already structurally constituted in Dasein's Being-in-the-world. However, they are only the existential conditions that make authenticity and inauthenticity possible. Heidegger points out that these two modes of disclosedness must have ownership; that is, they necessarily belong to the subjective, singular Dasein. For our purposes, Dasein, composed of its ontological and existential dimensions disclosed as Being-in-the-world, is to be understood in the context of Selfhood.

As the self, Heidegger delineates the factuality of Dasein characterised by humankind's naked "thereness," one's abandonment as thrown into the publicness of "the they." While human beings disclose themselves in the everydayness of Being-in-the-world, they discover that they have been thrust into an environment without consultation or choice and by definition have been abandoned to chance factors that already constitute their Being. Therefore, a fundamental propensity of Dasein exists, one that belongs to everydayness and manifests itself as Das Man.

Das Man, one among "the they," is Dasein's ontological destiny. The world is a world in which one shares with others in communal proximity. Thus, Dasein's communal structure lends itself to a participation that cannot be annulled, namely, that of theyness. By virtue of Dasein's communal character, we cannot not participate in a world determined by the pragmatics of society and the everyday concerns that structure Dasein's activities.

For Heidegger, the question of authenticity becomes intimately associated with the existential character of Dasein as concern and solicitude.

He states, "If Dasein-with remains existentially constitutive for Being-in-the-world, then . . . it must be Interpreted in terms of the phenomenon of care; for as "care" the Being of Dasein in general is to be defined. "(p. 157)

Just as Dasein's relation to the environment is that of practical concern, Dasein's relation to the communal world is that of personal concern. As Heidegger explains, this form of concern belonging to everydayness by necessity will ultimately lead to modes of inauthenticity. As the "anonymous one," the unique-ness of selfhood is diffused and lost in depersonalisation and "averageness."

"Being for, against, or without one another, passing one another by, not "mattering" to one another--these are possible ways of solicitude. And it is precisely these last-named deficient and indifferent modes that characterise everyday, average Being-with-one-another." (p. 158)

Heidegger expounds on another structural element in the ontological constitution of Dasein, that of "fallenness." This is the universal tendency of human beings to lose themselves in the everydayness of present concerns and preoccupations to such a degree that it only alienates them from their personal and unique future possibilities, thus reducing the fallen Das Man to a mere "presence-at-hand." He posits: "This "absorption in . . ." has mostly the character of Being-lost in the publicness of the "they." Dasein has, in the first instance, fallen away from itself as an authentic potentiality for Being its Self, and has fallen into the 'world'" (p. 220).

While on one hand, everydayness and fallenness are ontological and natural predispositions of Dasein and so are devoid of any value judgements attached to them; they are nevertheless modes of inauthenticity, ones that cannot be avoided or refused. The degree to which one participates in these in authentic modes, however, has a direct bearing on the existential status of falsehood. As a perpetual mode of inauthenticity, the falseness of Dasein becomes manifested as a "leveling down . . . of all possibilities of Being" (p. 165). The fallenness of Dasein is expressed most ostensibly through idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity. Gossip is an inauthentic use of discourse that simply repeats what is heard and accepted by the public without critically examining the grounds or validity of the subject matter in question. Idle talk is merely a repetition of the conventional, an unscrutinized acceptance of the interpretations of the public. The fallen Das Man is not concerned with understanding the ontological priorities of what is blindly accepted as truth or fact, but with reiterating the public clichés of the "anonymous one." Curiosity, which parallels gossip, underscores Dasein's voracious hunger to explore our environments merely for the sake of discovering novelty that provides excitement, a pleasurable distraction, and knowledge simply for the sake of knowing. Curiosity, therefore, is not motivated by the need for authentic understanding; it is merely an inauthentic form of solicitude. Ambiguity, however, is the dubious nature of information that is disseminated by "the they," which makes it impossible to determine what was disclosed in genuine understanding and what was not. This ambiguity is about the public gossip as well as in reference to Being-with-one-another and Dasein's Being-toward itself, hence, an inauthentic relatedness.

At this point, we must further clarify what we mean by Dasein's falsehood. In his essay On the Essence of Truth, Heidegger (1949/1977) explicates the Greeks' understanding of aletheia as disclosedness or unconcealment. Truth may be disclosed only from its hiddenness in a clearing that opens a space for unconcealment. Equally, as each space reveals the potentiality for truth to be made known, conversely a closing exists in that truth may be revealed only in the wake of concealment. Such movement of uncovering in the presence of covering underlies the dialectical participation of the nature of truth.

Given Heidegger's analysis of aletheia, how can Dasein be false? From this standpoint, truth and falsity are in reference to unconcealed states of Dasein's disclosedness, not in terms of their epistemological status. Therefore, the anonymous one, the fallen Das Man, the identification with "the they" of everydayness as averageness is a direct allusion to a constricted Dasein. This inauthentic mode of Being is a retreat from the ontological obligations that Dasein demands. In these extreme modes, Dasein is a reduced self, a stifled existence, a false Being. In addition, the false Dasein as Being-in and Being-with "the they," starts to take on an existential character that is more negative, similar to Kierkegaard's notion of "the crowd," or even more pejoratively, the Nietzschean "herd." The Dasein who has fallen into falsehood closes itself off from authentically Being-in-the-world and even more significantly from Being-with and Being-toward itself. In psychoanalysis, this might be chalked up to the defence mechanism of denial, that is, people need to deny the ontological obligations of Dasein in the service of more primordial psychological needs or conflicts, such as psychodynamic motivations surrounding security, attachment, and as Heidegger points out, "tranquility." But as he continues to point out, this tranquility. leads to an "aggravation" and alienation of Dasein from itself. Heidegger states: "When Dasein, tranquillised, and "understanding" everything, thus compares itself with everything, it drifts along towards an alienation in which its own most potentiality-for-Being is hidden from it." (p. 222)

This dialectical conflict brought about by fallenness then leads to the "downward plunge" into the inauthentic Being of "the they" in which authentic possibility is lost in obscurity and under the guise of "ascending" and "living concretely." Is it possible, however, that this downhill plunge is a necessary one that provides the dialectical movement toward the fulfillment of Dasein's possibilities? Perhaps this turbulent necessity is the authentic movement of Dasein toward itself as becoming. Rather than falling away from itself, Dasein is falling into itself. But this is possible only if Dasein becomes aware of its possibilities that it hides from itself. At this point we must ask: Why does Dasein close off its possibilities in the tranquility. of fallenness rather than seize them authentically? In other words, why does it hide from itself its own potentiality-for-Being? Perhaps Dasein is afraid--afraid of its freedom.

Dasein in Bad Faith

In offering an existential analysis of the false Dasein, we have determined that Dasein's fundamental structure is ontologically oriented toward fallenness. In the case of the false Dasein, however, fallenness is exacerbated in that Dasein constricts its comportment primarily to the modes of the inauthentic, thereby abdicating its potentiality-for-Being. Why would Dasein abnegate its potentiality? While theoretically distinct from Heidegger's existential ontology, Sartre's conception of inauthenticity may further contribute to our understanding of the psychological-ontical processes immersed in Dasein's falsehood.

While Heidegger's and Sartre's existential ontologies are conceptually distinct with variegated subtleties, the question of authenticity is central to both of their philosophies. Albeit conceived differently from Heidegger's inauthentic Dasein, Sartre's notion of bad faith, as the renunciation of human freedom in the service of self-deception, contributes to our understanding of selfhood entrenched in the toils of inauthenticity and further anticipates the psychodynamic exploration of the underlying defensive processes characteristic of the dynamic unconscious. While Heidegger offers a comprehensive hermeneutical treatment of Dasein in its relation to selfhood, Sartre depicts more acutely the psychological processes involved in the formation and maintenance of inauthenticity. While respecting the distinctions and divergences between Heidegger's and Sartre's ontological discourses, it becomes important to illuminate Dasein's falsehood in terms of its inauthentic ontologicalical relations which is the primary task of psychoanalysis. The equivocation of these different terminologies are therefore intended to facilitate the conceptual bridge between the existential-ontological structures of Dasein and their relation to the existential-ontologicall manifestations of inauthenticity that will be further addressed within a psychoanalytic account of selfhood.

In his magnum opus, Being and Nothingness, Sartre (1956) introduced the notion of mauvaise foi, or bad faith. For Sartre, consciousness is Being, "a being, the nature of which is to question its own being, that being implying a being other than itself," that is, "to be conscious of the nothingness of its being" (p. 86). Therefore, the authentic Being is literally "no-thing."

The failure to define yourself as other-than what you are is to reify yourself as a thing and thus deny the possibility of a future transcendence.

Such self-negation is the pinnacle of inauthenticity. Sartre asserts, "[C]onsciousness instead of directing its negation outward turns it toward itself. This attitude is bad faith" (p. 87). Generally, bad faith may be characterised by self-deception, a lie to yourself. But how can you lie to yourself? Only if you are not consciously aware of such intentions to lie or to deceive. For the individual in bad faith, the nature of such a lie "is not recognised by the liar as his intention" (p. 88). While a genuine lie is a "behaviour of transcendence," the bad faith lie is a denial of such possibility. Such is the case that the liar finds her/himself as the victim of her/his own self-deception and lives in falsehood.

By the lie consciousness affirms that it exists by nature as hidden from the Other; it utilises for its own profit the ontological duality of myself and myself in the eyes of the Other. The situation can not be the same, for bad faith if this, as we have said, is indeed a lie to oneself. To be sure, the one who practices bad faith is hiding a displeasing truth or presenting a pleasing untruth. Bad faith then has in appearance the structure of falsehood. Only what changes everything is the fact than in bad faith it is from myself that I am hiding the truth. (pp. 88-89)

Sartre's notion of bad faith is intimately linked to his model of consciousness. He recognised two levels of consciousness, namely (1) consciousness as intentionality and self-reflection, and (2) pre-reflective consciousness. The former is consciousness as such and encompasses awareness of the self as a human subject. Pre-reflective consciousness is the form of consciousness prior to being aware (of) an object for reflection. This is similar to Freud's notion of pre-consciousness, that is, you are not immediately aware of an internal event or object but could be if your attention were drawn to that particular object for reflection. Sartre vociferously repudiated the notion of the Freudian unconscious; instead, his model espouses Brentano's concept of intentionality. Consciousness is always conscious of or about something--conscious of some object we posit or place before us for reflection. Therefore, consciousness has no inertia; consciousness is not an object, nor does it exist in-itself. For Sartre, consciousness can be positional or non-positional. Consciousness that posits places before it an object for immediate reflection. Non-positional consciousness is consciousness by itself. This is experienced as a "lack," a hole in being. The notion of lack is tied to his concept of nothingness, and as freedom we try to fill the lack through our projects. Therefore, consciousness is what it is not and is not what it is. For Sartre, we are more than what we can be if we are reduced to what we are. What we are is freedom, and as freedom we are transcendence.

Bad faith can manifest in various existential modalities, from singular situational choices to patterns of self-deception, or as may be argued, character structure. Nevertheless, there is a double face to bad faith, namely (1) facticity and (2) transcendence. In the first case, bad faith is the failure to accept one's facticity. In the second, it is a failure of transcendence. For example, Sartre portrays a woman who consents to go out with a man for the first time and in her bad faith she denies the intentions behind his seductive conduct. "She does not want to realise the urgency" of the moment and "refuses to apprehend the desire for what it is" (pp. 96-97).

Throughout the flirtations, her companion places her in such a position as to require an immediate decision, only to be protracted and disguised by the various procedures she uses to maintain herself in this self-deception. Her "aim is to postpone the moment of decision as long as possible" (p. 97). In this example, the woman has failed to project a future, and has allowed herself not to take notice of the reality of the situation. Her decision rests in the locus of pre-reflective consciousness; she chose not to posit a future with this gentleman, thus deceiving herself of such possibility. Sartre relates, "She has disarmed the actions of her companion by reducing them to being only what they are; that is, to existing in the mode of the in-itself. But she permits herself to enjoy his desire, to the extent that she will apprehend it as not being what it is, will recognise its transcendence". (pp. 97-98)

The woman has reduced herself to a thing, a passive object in which events can happen to her that she can neither provoke nor avoid. In bad faith, the person is in possession of the truth, but fails to acknowledge it as such, thereby avoiding the responsibility it requires.

For Sartre, authenticity or good faith is when you represent yourself to yourself in the mode of being what you are not. The bad faith attitude is one in which people seek to flee from their freedom and the obligations it demands by construing themselves as things, each a Being-in-itself rather than a Being-for-itself. Instead of, "I am in the mode of being what I am not," the bad faith attitude is, "I am in the mode of being what I am," thus, a thing-in-itself. In short, as human agents we must choose. As long as we consciously choose in freedom and accept full responsibility for our actions, we are in good faith. Human beings define and redefine themselves via their choices. Decisions are made in the interest of a value, or we are in bad faith. This is the case when we fail to choose, or more appropriately, when we choose not to choose authentically.

Sartre's portrayal of bad faith elucidates the psychological nuances of self-deception that are structurally insubstantiated in Dasein's ontical practices. For Heidegger, bad faith would be a deficient mode of Dasein's Being-in-the-world; more specifically, Being-with-oneself and Being-toward your future authentic possibilities. In this general context, Dasein's fallenness is bad faith, a falsehood, a retreat into the everydayness of theyness cloaked by self-deception. Furthermore, to deny our human reality as freedom by defining ourselves as things is Dasein's propensity to reduce itself to a mere "presence-at-hand."

If Sartre's depiction of bad faith is accurate, then every human being is in self-deception at one time or another. In fact, this is a necessary ontological condition of Dasein itself. Due to our penchants to fall into inauthentic modes of Being-in-the-world, Dasein will inevitably engage in such deceptive practices. For Sartre, we are condemned to freedom, which necessitates radical responsibility for our Being-for-itself. However, choices are made in the context of our ontological facticity and thus are affected by a milieu which, by definition, is deficient or inauthentic. Sartre's position ultimately demands for Being to transcend its ontological structures via choice. To what degree is this possible? Furthermore, he ostensibly denies the primordial motivations of the dynamic unconscious. While Sartre rejected the psychoanalytic project, his delineation of inauthenticity contributes to the psychodynamic conceptualisation of the primacy of ego organisation in personality development. Again, we might say that bad faith is a defensive form of denial, a disavowal in the service of unconscious motivations, wishes, and conflicts. Sartre assumes that every Being has the same developmental capacities and intrapsychic structures to choose authentically as free agents. But what if the individual's freedom to recognise authentic choices has been truncated because of structural deficits in psychological development? Like the case of selfhood's ontological conditions that are predetermined, is it possible that Being itself is robbed of its full potential for authenticity?

We will see that the answer can be "yes", if the Self it is not owned.

CHAPTER II

Max Stirner: the ego and its own

In this chapter we examine the philosophy of Max Stirner, which will be compared and contrasted with the major themes of existentialism. The aim is to show that Max Stirner was influencing , more or less directly, the existentialist philosophy and psychology.

Max Stirner (1806-1856)- Biography

Max Stirner is the pseudonym of Johann Kaspar Schmidt (1806-1856). He was born in Bayreuth October 25th 1806, son of the lower-middle-class couple Albert Christian Heinrich Schmidt and his wife Sophia Eleonora. The year after, his father died, and in 1809 his mother remarried with the pharmacist Ballerstedt and moved to Kulm in western Prussia. In 1819 Stirner went to Bayreuth to attend the prestigious Gymnasium, living with an aunt. In 1826 he went to the University of Berlin to study philosophy under Schleiermacher, Marheineke and Hegel. He continued his studies at the University of Erlangen in 1829, and moved to the University of Königsberg in 1829, returned to Berlin in 1832 and completed his studies there in 1834.

In January 1835 Stirner's mother was committed as insane to Die Charité hospital in Berlin. April the same year, delayed by illness, Stirner took his oral exams in the subjects he intended to teach, but was, however, only awarded a conditional facultas docendi and was rejected as Gymnasiallehrer by the Royal Brandenburg Commission for Schools. In 1837 Stirner married Agnes Klara Kunigunde Butz, the daughter of his landlady. Later the same year his stepfather died. In 1838 Agnes died giving birth to a still-born child. In 1839 Stirner got a position teaching literature at a respectable girls' school in Berlin.

In 1841 Stirner joined Die Freien (The Free), a group of left Hegelians gathering at Hippel's Weinstube. It was in this group he met Marie Dähnhardt, who was later to become his second wife. In 1842 Stirner published, aside from various journalistic articles, Das unwahre Prinzip unserer Erziehung (The false Principle of our Education) and Kunst und Religion (Art and Religion) in der Rheinische Zeitung, two pieces where we clearly can see the direction Stirner's thought. In 1843 he married Marie Dähnhardt. At the end of 1844 Stirner's magnum opus Der Einzige und Sein Eigentum (The Ego and Its Own) was published by Otto Wigand; copies were rapidly distributed to bookstores to avoid the censorship, and the book was dated 1845.

Stirner left his teaching job in 1844. He then tried investing Marie Dähnhardt's inherited fortune in commercial enterprise, but failed and ended up in financial hardship. Marie left him in 1846. In the time after the publication of The Ego and Its Own Stirner wrote two essays in reply to his critics that serve to illuminate his philosophy well. These were Recensenten Stirner's (Stirner's critics), a reply to Feuerbach, Szeliga and Hess, in Wigand's Vierteljahrschrift in 1845, and Die Philosophischen Reaktionaere (The philosophically reactionary), a reply to Kuno Fischer, under the name "G. Edward" in the fifth volume of Wigands Epigonen in 1847.

Stirner was the first to translate Adam Smiths The Wealth of Nations into German. This translation was published in 1847. Stirner's last book was a Geschichte der Reaktion (History of the Reaction) published in 1852.

It has been claimed that Stirner lived in poverty towards the end of his life, constantly fleeing from his creditors. He spent two periods in debtors' prison (5-26 March 1853 and 1 January-4 February 1854) in Berlin.

It has been suggested, however, that he managed his maternal inheritance rather well towards the end of his life, affording him a decent though not affluent lifestyle. His social life included visits to the salon of Baroness von der Golz, where he is said to have aired "radical opinions".

In May 1856 contracted a fever as he was stung by a winged insect. The 25th of June 1856, Stirner died.

Early Writings

Many people are not aware that Stirner wrote a large number of articles before he wrote Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum. They view Stirner's book as a bolt out of the blue. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is possible, by reading through these early articles, to trace the development of Stirner's thought to the point where it is expressed in Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum. It is not possible in this study to include a detailed examination of everything Stirner wrote prior to the appearance of his book. In his early writings Stirner examined Hegelian principles and rejected them. His ideas on religion, education, and the political and social structure of society are to be seen in their incipient stage.

Stirner's book, when viewed from the perspective of his earlier writings, is the logical outcome of a carefully thought out course he was following, and not the instantaneous aberration of a brilliant, misguided, erratic mind as is often inferred. Stirner examines, very carefully, both acceptable contemporary solutions and contemporary proposals on the problems in which he is interested before rejecting their solution as unsatisfactory. This is what is accomplished in his early writings. Once having discovered what he thinks to be the faults of society he set out in Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum to outline what he thinks is acceptable solution. The format for Stirner's assault on religion, the state and society is present in the early writings. Stirner arrived at the conclusion that everything should be determined by one guiding principle: egoism.

Der Einzige und Sein Eigenthum (The Ego and its own)

The Ego and Its Own, as the English translation of Stirner's book is called, was not an immediate success when it was published in 1844. It was re-issued around the turn of the century when the philosophy of Nietzsche was popular.

Today Stirner's book is once again enjoying some popularity among the student anarchists. Der Einzige has been analysed many times. What does this book contain that keeps it alive today nearly a century and a quarter after it was first published? Why do students who feel a "generation gap" between themselves and their parents feel an affinity for Stirner's book? Why sometimes is it considered "the most revolutionary book ever written?"

Stirner starts his book with a short introduction. He uses the first line from Goethe's poem Vanitas! Vanitatum Vanitas! (---)as the title for this introduction. It reads: "Ich hab, mein Sach' auf Nichts gestellt," translated literally as "I have set my affair on nothing" or, translated more freely, "all things are nothing to me."

Everyone and everything mean something to Stirner just as individuals or individualities, not as object referred to a pre-structured religion or moral system.

Understanding Stirner requires not only an appreciation of content and particular statements, but to a very strong degree an understanding of the structure of the work. According to Lawrence Stepelevich, the structure of

The Ego and Its Own is modeled upon Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes (The Phenomenology of Spirit). The Hegelianism in Stirner is not accidental, but rather essential.

Central to the Hegelian school of philosophy is that which is called Dialectics: Resolve dualisms by finding a third which explains/gives both sides. Stirner is a dialectical thinker in this sense. His main triad is that of Materialist - Idealist - Egoist.

Stirner follows up on Feuerbachs insistence that we must tie philosophy to the concrete individual, and later champions this insistence against Feuerbachs "Man", the species-being. Therefore chapter 1 in The Ego and Its Own, "A Human Life", is a statement of the dialectical development as it occurs in the life of concrete persons; as a child one is at the Materialist stage and fears the rod, as a youth one has made "the first self-discovery, Mind" and gotten back of the rod through Idealism, and as an adult also Idealism is seen as a kind of rod, and practical, selfish interest has taken over. This should, however, not take literally but rather figuratively.

Chapter 2, "Men of the old time and the new", is a description of the same development writ large in history. The chapter ends with a section on his friends Die Freien, criticising them as not representing the dialectical dissolution of the Materialist/Idealist opposition at all, but rather being "the most modern of moderns", i.e. the last Idealists.

"Likes are to be treated in the same way" is central to the Idealist stage. This is the basis of the Young Hegelian critique. By the inner dynamic of the critique, "likes" and "the same way" become ever-broadening categories, and "critique" must eventually turn on itself, collapsing under its own weight.

Stirner writes: If the presuppositions that have hitherto been current are to melt away in a full dissolution, they must not be dissolved into a higher presupposition again - a thought, or thinking itself, criticism. For that dissolution is to be for my good; otherwise it would belong only in the series of innumerable dissolutions [..]" (p.---)

So this is the point from which Stirner's own philosophy starts, the collapse of Idealism and the need for a new synthesis. This new synthesis cannot, however, be an Archimedean idea-point outside the world, what Stirner calls a fixed idea. Thus a bit of care is needed when stating what Stirner proposes as a synthesis.

Stirner proposes the synthesis to be found in the interest of the unique - the egoist. This synthesis, qua isolated statement, puts Stirner in the same category as Thomas Hobbes, Friedrich W. Nietzsche, Dora Marsden, James Walker, Ayn Rand and Robert Nozick.

However, the kinds of egoism proposed by these philosophers is, usually, markedly different from Stirner's. The difference lies in the view of what I myself am, and the way egoism is arrived at.

For Thomas Hobbes, all that matters are external comparison of wealth and possession. Stirner's egoism is about the relation of the "I" and the object. In Stirner's synthesis, "I" am Subject, standing in relation to the object by my own will.

For Friedrich Nietzsche, there were set goals for the egoist to pursue. One should "create beyond oneself", create the Superman. Stirner, in contrast, focuses on consumption, the transitory, finite ego's appropriation of the world as its ("appropriation " in the same sense a student must make the literature he reads "his" in order to understand it well).

James Walker (---) gives a biological description which more-or-less defines selfishness as anything the biological individual devotes its energy to, a mechanics of egoism. Stirner, in contrast, describes egoism as a possible chosen path.

Ayn Rand (---) tries to prove egoism from first principles, putting "reason" plus a number of word-definitions - life (qua Man) and justice - as premises. The reply to the question of who is the just recipient of a man's labour, Rand claims, is that man himself. Acting according to that justice - seeing all values as instrumental to the fundamental value of life (qua Man) - is what Rand defines as egoism. Stirner, in contrast, does not "justify" his egoism, and Rand's "qua Man" is nothing but the species-being Stirner rejected in Feuerbach.

Then, what is Stirner egoism?

As said above, in the preface to The Ego and Its Own, Stirner wrote Ich hab' mein Sach' auf nichts gestellt (I have set my affair on nothing). In this piece, he shows how the Sultan, God, the Good etc. are not serving anything beyond themselves, but rather have set themselves up as the highest good to serve. Stirner writes: "I for my part take a lesson from them, and propose, instead of further unselfishly serving those great egoists, rather to be the egoist myself."

So indeed, he does not base his case on an imperative which he implores us to follow, but rather - seduces us by example. This is of focal importance if Stirner is to be consistent and not fall for the axe of his contemporary Karl Schmidt's criticism that Stirner is "making a new chimera" with his egoism.

Stirner's egoism then becomes more a therapeutic recipe for those who will accept it. Egoism for Stirner is just the following of one's own interests as the unique person one is. To somebody's "What are my interests?", Stirner would say that his interests are as unique as he himself, and that it would be for himself to find out. A repeated insistence would meet with only the negative answer Stirner provides in The Ego and Its Own, that one's interests and fixed ideas stand in opposition; that there is no Archimedean point of moral reference outside the values chosen by - the unique.

So "what am I?" This, Stirner spends the latter half part of his book exploring. That is, what are my relations like when they are not the material or natural bonds like filial loyalty or idealist relations like being "one and the same" as Citizen, Ragamuffin or Human? The key concept to answer this, is "Who am I?", and I am Eigentum - property.

"Eigentum", that which is owned, is for Stirner an expression of a willed relation. As a willed relation, it can be discarded at any moment - by will. Opposed to the willed relation is the bond, the "ought" and the "shall". These are simply relations that are not mine to dispose of, but which are given me from without - without also in the sense of an "essence" I must confirm to and cannot dispose of.

A particular case of such a bond is when you are not to let go of an idea. In Hegelian terms: When that thought is seen as exempt from and sacred to "the power of the negative". Such an idea is called a fixed idea. It is, in Stirner's words "An idea that has subjected the man to itself" - an idea that you are not to criticise.

The notion of "Eigentum" applies to relations with other people as well, and it is in this sense we must understand Der Verein der Egoisten (The Union of Egoists) which has confused and eluded the grasp of many commentators.

Stirner rejects law. Laws exist not because men recognise them as being favourable to their interests, but because men hold them to be sacred. When you start to speak of rights you are introducing a religious concept. Since the law is sacred, anyone who breaks it is a criminal. Therefore there are no criminals except against something sacred. If you do away with the sacrosancity of the law then crime will disappear, because in reality a crime is nothing more than an act desecrating that which was hallowed by the state. There are, according to Stirner, no rights, because might makes right. A man is entitled to everything he has the power to possess and hold. The earth belongs to him who knows how to take it. Self -welfareness should be the guiding principle to follow rather than law.

Stirner relates that "you can get further with a handful of might than you can with a bagful of right". The way to gain freedom is through might because he who has might stands above the law.

A person only becomes completely free when what he holds, he holds because of his might. Then he is a self -owner and not a mere freeman.

Everyone should say to himself:" I am all to myself and I do all for my sake. I am unique, nothing is more important to me than myself". Stirner does not believe that a person is good or bad, nor does he believe in what is true, good , bad, right or wrong.

These are vague concepts which have no meaning outside a God- centred or man-centred world. A man should centre his interest on self and concentrate on his own self.

Stirner rejects the state. Without law the state is not possible. The respect for the law is what holds the state together. The state, like the law, exists not because an individual recognises it as favourable to his welfare but because lie considers it to be sacred.

To Stirner the state, like the law, is not sacred. Stirner is the mortal enemy of the state. The welfare of the state has nothing to do with his own welfare and he should therefore sacrifice nothing to it.

The general welfare is not his welfare but only means self-denial on his part. The object of the state is to limit the individual, to tame him, to subordinate him, to subject him to something general for the purpose of the state.

The state hinders an individual from attaining his true value, while at the same time it exploits the individual to get some benefit out of him.

The state stands in the way between men, tearing them apart. Stirner would transform the state into his own property and his own creature instead of being the property and creature of the state. He would annihilate it and form in its place a Union of Egoists.

The state must be destroyed because it is the negation of the individual will, it approaches men as a collective unit, The struggle between the egoists and the state is inevitable.

Once the state is annihilated the Union of Egoists will prevail. This union is not sacred nor a spiritual power above man's power. It is created by men.

In this union men will be held together by mutual advantage, through common "use" of one another. In joining the union an individual increases his own individual power. Each person will now through his own might control what he can. It does not imply though that there will be a region of universal rapacity and perpetual slaughter, nor does it mean the wielding of power over others. Each man will defend his own uniqueness.

Once he has attained self-realisation of true egoism he does not want to rule over others or hold more possessions than he needs because this would destroy his independence.

Stirner's Union of Egoists is not communist. It is a union that individuals enter into for mutual gain from the egoistic union which will be developed within the union. There will be neither masters nor servants, only egoists.

Everyone will withdraw into his own uniqueness which will prevent conflict because no one will be trying to prove himself "in the right" before a third party. Egoism will foster genuine and spontaneous union between individuals.

Stirner does not develop in any detail the form of social organisation that the Union of Egoists might follow. Organisation itself is anathema to Stirner's Union. Within the Union the individual will be able to develop himself. The Union exists for the individual. The Union of Egoists is not to be confused with society which Stirner opposes. Society lays claim to a person which is considered to be sacred, but which consumes an individual.

The Union is made up of individuals who consume the Union for their own good.

How is the abrogation of law, state, and property to be realised so that men will be free to enter into the Union of Egoists? It will occur when a sufficient number of men first undergo an inward change and recognise their own welfare as the highest law, and then these men will bring into being the outward manifestations: the abrogation of law, state, and property.

Let us have a look at the ways in which I can meet another person, from a point of view pertaining to the matter at hand.

1. The Bond.

This is a meeting of two people according to how they "ought" to behave towards one another. It is not as such a meeting which is willed, but rather a meeting according to the "ought". Examples of such are when the father and the son meet in the roles of father and son. "Father" and "son" they will always remain in a descriptive sense. But when they meet according to such roles, they meet by an "ought" and not by a "will". Roles are ascribed when the relation is seen as a static object.

2. The Property.

The relation can be a one-sidedly willed one. In this, the one is an Einzige whereas the Other has become Eigentum (for the one who is Einzige). Perhaps this is the state of things where we can say "Hell is the Other" (i.e. when that Other guy is Einzige and I am reduced to a role as Eigentum).

Now, Moses Hess (---)criticised Stirner's conception of what Stirner call "Verein der Egoisten" ("The Union of Egoists") along the lines that in such a meeting, there would have to be one who did dominate and one who submitted to domination. That is, Hess imagined that "The Union of Egoist" would be a relation of the kind described above. It might describe a Hobbesian egoist. But not "la derniere mallon de la chaine Hegelienne" ,as Stirner has been called.(----) Stirner did himself reply to this criticism by pointing to examples: Two friends playing with their toys, two men going together to the wine shop. These are of course not an exhaustive list of unions, and our man Stirner does indeed speak of unions consisting of thousands of people, too, unions uniting to catch a thief or to get better pay for one's own labour. More philosophically, Moses Hess describes a one-sidedness, and thinks it is a necessary one.

3. The Union.

Apparently, Stirner mean, with the Union a relation which is understood as a process. It is a process in which the relation is continually renewed by that both [/all] parts support it through an act of will. The Union requires that both/all parties are present through conscious egoism - i.e. own-will. If one part silently finds him/her-self to be suffering, but puts up and - keeps the appearance, the union has degenerated into something else.

Only after development has come to the understanding of the union of egoists does Stirner come to the ultimately important relation - the relation of me to myself. In the section entitled "My self-enjoyment", Stirner sets up mere valuing of life against enjoyment of life. In the former view, I am an object to be preserved. In the latter I see myself as the subject of all my valuing relations.

In this sense, Stirner can rebuke the question "what am I?" and replace it with "who am I?", a question which has its answer in this bodily person who asks the question. This is the "nothingness" of which Stirner speaks of as I. "Not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but a creative nothing."

My relation to myself is thus a meeting of myself as willer, a union with myself and a consumption - appropriation - of myself as my own.

To Stirner revolution and rebellion are not synonymous. Revolution is an overturning of the condition of the existing state or society. Revolution is thus a political or social act. Rebellion, on the other hand, is a transformation of conditions. Rebellion stems from men's discontent with themselves. It is not an armed uprising, but a rising up of individuals.

Rebellion has no regard for the arrangements that spring from it. Revolution aims at new arrangements; rebellion results in people no longer permitting themselves to be arranged, but to arrange for themselves, placing no great hope on existing institutions. Rebellion is not a fight against the established order, but if it succeeds, it will result in the downfall of that order. Stirner does not want to overthrow the establishment of order merely to overthrow it. He is interested in elevating himself above it. His purpose is not political, nor social, but egoistic.

To bring about the transformation of condition and put the new condition in the place of law, the state, or property, violent rebellion against the existing conditions is necessary. Force is necessary. If each man is to have what he requires he must take it. This will necessarily mean a war of each against all, for the poor become free and proprietors only when they rebel.

Only rebellion can succeed. Revolution will fail because it will only result in setting up another unfavourable political or social condition. Only rebellion can entirely eliminate unfavourable political and social conditions and permit man to enter into the Union of Egoists where he will be able to achieve the highest realisation of self.

Stirner's Influence

It is difficult to assess accurately the influence of Stirner. There is definitely a connection between his thought and the school of individualist anarchism. The connecting link between Stirner and other thinkers and movements is not so easily established; however, some writers portray Stirner as a precursor of Nietzsche, while others point out that the seeds of fascism are found in Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum, still others place Stirner as a forerunner of existentialism. Much is attributed to Stirner today, but during his life time he was not able to attract any disciples or school of followers.

Stirner's influence during his life time seems to be limited to Julius Faucher (1820-1878), who represented Stirner's ideas in his newspaper the Berliner Abendpost. This paper was, of course, quickly suppressed.

Nettlau agrees with Zenker when he writes that "few books have been so misunderstood or subjected to so many varying critical examinations (Nettlau, , p. 169.)

Stirner's greatest influence came toward the end of the 19th century. It is generally acknowledged that Stirner is the father of individualist anarchism. The individualist anarchist movement, which started in Germany in the 1890 can be traced directly to the writings of Stirner.

Nietzsche

Was Nietzsche influenced by Stirner? In spite of Crane Brinton's(1965) protest to the contrary Nietzsche probably was . Although Stirner is not mentioned in Nietzsche's writings, numerous studies have compared their writings. In the final analysis there is but one piece of evidence to prove that Nietzsche knew Stirner. Löwith ( p. 187) states the case:

Stirner is nowhere mentioned in Nietzsche's writings; but Overbeck's witness proves that Nietzsche knew of him, and not only through Lange's history of materialism. And Nietzsche was so "economical," with his knowledge of Stirner because he was both attracted to and repelled by him, and did not want to be confused with him. (Löwith p.187-188)

Nietzsche was particularly influenced by Schopenhauer's theories on irrational will, and Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection.

Three themes dominate his work:

• a rejection of traditional religious and philosophical ethics

• the concept of Übermensch (superman)

• the will to power

It is impossible no to notice, with just these three concepts alone, how powerful the influence of Stirner on Nietzsche was, who was born the year when "Der Einzige" was published for the first time.

And, if we further exploring his philosophical thoughts, one can see that Nietzsche rejected both the traditional religious values of bourgeois morality and the prevailing idealism of German philosophy, as Stirner does. He concluded that traditional philosophy and religion are both erroneous and harmful.

One of Nietzsche's fundamental contentions was that traditional values (represented primarily by Christianity) had lost their power in the lives of individuals. He expressed it in his proclamation "God is dead." Stirner spent a great part of "Der Einzige" deconstructing the catholic religion and the social moral system (extending the concept of "God" to every source faithfully trusted by the man).

In Nietzsche's view, the fundamental self-betrayal of the human race was its submission to the fictitious demands of an imaginary god. He stressed, instead, the values of individual self-assertion, biological instinct, and passion, and called for a return to the more primitive and natural virtues of courage and strength. He was convinced that the "slave morality" of traditional ethics was created by weak and resentful individuals who encouraged such behaviour as gentleness and kindness because the behaviour served their interests. He bitterly decried the slave morality (enforced by social punishment and religious guilt) and advocated freedom from all external constraints on one's behaviour. In Nietzsche's "natural" state of existence, each individual would live a life without the artificial limits of moral obligation. This is, in nuce, an open declaration that Nietzsche had read Stirner.

About morality, for example, Stirner says (p.87) " In its first and most unintelligible form morality shows itself as habit. To act according to the habit and usage (mores) of one's country [--] is to be moral there", underlining the hierarchical value and the social control of morality.

This idea of natural ethics led to the Nietzschean concept of the Übermensch (overman, or superman).

(Nietzsche's poetic vision of the overman as the dominant figure of a radically transformed society is presented in the prose poem Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-1885). )

Stirner wrote (p.51):" You are distinguished beyond other men not by being man, but because you are a "unique"["einziger"] man. Doubtless you show what a man can do; but because you, a man, do it, this by no means shows that others, also men, are able to do as much; you have executed it only as a unique man, and are unique therein.

It is not man that makes up your greatness, but you create it, because you are more than man, and mightier than other men."

Nietzsche insisted there are no rules for human life, no absolute values, no certainties on which to rely. Freedom can only come from an individual who purposefully disregards traditional morals.

According to Nietzsche, the superman is secure, independent, and highly individualistic; the superman feels deeply, but his passions are rationally controlled.

The superman is a creator of values, a creator of a "master morality" which reflects the strength and independence of one who is liberated from all values, except those that he deems valid. Stirner expressed that in the concept of disinterest or unselfishness (p.78-79) "Where does unselfishness begin? Right where an end ceases to be our end and our property, which we, as owners, can dispose of at pleasure; where it becomes a fixed end or a fixed idea" (and for Stirner religion and social boundaries are fixed ideas)

The superman affirms life, including the suffering and pain that accompany human existence.

Nietzsche returned to Schopenhauer's conception of life as the expression of a cosmic will, and made the "will to power" the source of all value. To Nietzsche, the overman is the highest expression of the will to power, the creative force that produces all human endeavour.

All these concepts are too similar to the characteristics of the individual described by Stirner in "Der Einzige" not to think that not just Nietzsche read Stirner, but that he also absorbed the main part of the philosophy expressed in "The Ego and its own".

Another interesting facet of Stirnerism (and matter of comparison with Nietzsche, who was accused of the same "sin") is its influence on the development of fascism.

In recent years it has become fashionable to consider Stirner as an early exponent of existentialism, as a forerunner of Kierkegaard.

Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard follows Stirner as the antithesis of Marx. Like Stirner, he reduces the entire social world to his own self, but, at the same time, he finds himself in absolute opposition to Stirner; instead of ground in the individual upon creative nothingness, he places the individual "before God," the creator of the world (Löwith, p. 249. and also pp. 318-19, 359.)

(The theme of this solitary individual was dealt with at length in "Concluding Unscientific Postscript "(1846.)).

Briefly, in relation to "the numeric masses," the individual person is of infinite importance. God deals with, saves and judges individuals. The masses have no real essence. In The Single Individual he repeatedly asserts that the "crowd is untruth." He begins with the subject of politics. This is especially significant because politics emphasises the whole, while Christianity, as proffered by Kierkegaard, emphasises the individual before God. The Single Individual begins thus.

In the Postscript Kierkegaard underscores the necessity of approaching truth subjectively. He does not deny objective truth, but asserts that objective truth can only be known and appropriated subjectively.

"In the public and the like, the individual is nothing, there is no individual, the numerical is constitutive and the principle of coming into being a generation aequivoca (spontaneous generation), apart from the public, the individual is nothing, and in the public he is not, in any profound sense, anything either. In community the individual is, dialectically, the individual is crucial as the prior condition for forming a community, and within the community the individual is qualitatively essential and can at any moment rise above "community", that is, as soon as "the others" give up the idea. What holds community together is that each is an individual, and then the idea. But every tree is known by its own fruit.

So also is love known by its own fruits ("Works of love", 1847 on Prini, 1989)

Martin Buber also makes it a point to demonstrate Kierkegaard's debt to Stirner (Buber, 1947).

Both Herbert Reed (Reed, , 1958, pp. 81-82.) and Henri Arvon(1954,p.187) pose the question, if Christian existentialism recognises Kierkegaard, why does atheistic existentialism continue to ignore Stirner?

Martin Heidegger

Heidegger never mentions Stirner, but Heidegger is one of the most important theoretician of nihilism, and Stirner is in more than a sense a nihilist

Jean-Paul Sartre

In some of his basic concepts, Sartre seems to follow Stirner's philosophy very near:

For example, when Sartre says that " Existence precedes essence " (on Prini, 1989), we can refer to Stirner (pg. 50-51) " When one looks to the bottom of anything, i.e. searches out its essence, one often discovers something quite other than what it seems to be; honeyed speech and a lying heart, pompous words and beggarly thoughts, etc. By bringing the essence into prominence one degrades the hitherto misapprehended appearance to a bare semblance, a deception." And also: "What at first passed for existence, e. g. the world and its like, appears now as bare semblance [...]"(if we are just looking, as in this case, for the essence)

Other basic point of Sartre's philosophy are:

SUBJECT RATHER THAN OBJECT. Humans are not objects to be used by God or a government or corporation or society. Nor we to be "adjusted" or moulded into roles --to be only a waiter or a conductor or a mother or worker. We must look deeper than our roles and find ourselves.

FREEDOM is the central and unique potentiality which constitutes us as human. Sartre rejects determinism, saying that it is our choice how we respond to determining tendencies.

OUR ACTS DEFINE US. "In life, a man commits himself, draws his own portrait, and there is nothing but that portrait." Our illusions and imaginings about ourselves, about what we could have been, are nothing but self-deception.

WE CONTINUALLY MAKE OURSELVES AS WE ARE. A "brave" person is simply someone who usually acts bravely. Each act contributes to defining us as we are, and at any moment we can begin to act differently and draw a different portrait of ourselves. There is always a possibility to change, to start making a different kind of choice.

OUR POWER TO CREATE OURSELVES. We have the power to transform ourselves indefinitely.

PASSION IS NO EXCUSE. "I was overwhelmed by strong feelings; I couldn't help myself" is a falsehood. Despite my feelings, I choose how to express them in action.

In all these concepts, Stirner is more than present, with his ideas of the individual that is recognised through what he does, and he does things through his own will and choices. The individual owns his freedom as one of his properties, and he does not recognises God or moral value other than his own. So the connection between some aspect of Sartre's philosophy and Stirner is clear.

But, then, Sartre, as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, seems unable to sustain the pressure (or responsibility) of the possibility to exist as an egoist (. "I am abandoned in the world... in the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without help". On Prini, 1989),suddenly turns to consider the belief in something objectively external to the man. After saying that we are continuously making ourselves as we are, he rejects the first step of our "making ourselves", stating that "We are condemned to be free because we did not create ourselves. We must choose and act from within whatever situation we find ourselves. "(ibid.)

This "condemnation", accompanied by the consequent anguish ( "It is in anguish that we become conscious of our freedom. ...My being provokes anguish to the extent that I distrust myself and my own reactions in that situation."(ibid.), can be , in Stirner's perspective, what God is for the church and the State for the society etc..: a sacralisation of an external influence, which ultimately, Stirner would say, is created by the individual. Therefore it is not a condemnation: it is one of the properties that can be chosen and there to be used by the individuals. It can be perceived as a condemn, if it is what Stirner calls a "fixed idea" (above).

Sartre also adds that:

We must make some choices knowing that the consequences will have profound effects on others (like a commander sending his troops into battle).
In choosing for ourselves we choose for all humankind.

And this can recall the Egoist very closely, but, here, with a strange sense of projection: in reality Stirner would say that , if with the act of choosing ourselves we are choosing for all the members of mankind it is because they are not free enough to exert their will as we, the egoists are Ludwig Binswanger and Max Stirner

NOTE: Binswanger talks about Stirner and the uniqueness in the first part of his book " The foundations and cognition of human existence" (1964), chapter 3,part IV, paragraph b. Unfortunately , the book is out of print, and the only copy I was able to find was in German. For this reason I am not able to comment it. I merely wish to signal Stirner's presence in Binswanger's work.

CHAPTER III

Julius Evola: theory and phenomenology of the Absolute Individual

The chapter presents an overview of Julius Evola's philosophy of the Absolute Individual. Some comparison with Stirner and Existential philosophy are also outlined.

Julius Evola: biography

Julius Evola born in Rome on 19 May 1889 from a noble Sicilian family. There are very little and discordant information about his childhood, most of which is contradictory. He studied Nietzsche, Michelstaedter e Weininger, and participated in the first World War as an artillery officer. Evola is a good artist, and the experience brings him near to the dadaism, becoming in a short time the principal exponent of the movement. He learnt German and French, and spoke them fluently.

Evola started the University in the faculty of Engineering, but he left just before ending, as sign of contempt for the academic titles. The dadaist movement is for Evola the first step to "going over": he completes an extensive philosophical works he started to write during the war. This works is an attempt to overcome the classical idealism, and Evola introduces it presenting ,before hand, a series of scripts: "Saggi sull ‘idealismo magico (Essay on Magical Idealism), 1925, "Teoria dell'individuo assoluto" ( Theory of the Absolute Individual), 1927 and "Fenomenologia dell'indiviudo assoluto"(Phenomenology of the Absolute Individual), 1930.

None of these were ever translated into English.

At the same time, Evola discovers the Far-East doctrines of self-realisation, publishes an Italian version of Tao-te-ching,"Il libro della via e della virtu'"(The book of the path and its virtues), 1923, followed by a very polemical book about the close links between Fascism and Catholic Religion ("Imperialismo pagano (Pagan Imperialism), 1928).

Divided between the spiritual elevation of the Ego and the intervention in the cultural life of his time, Evola occasionally collaborated between 1924 to 1926 on various cultural magazines and publishes "Ur" and "Krur" monthly magazines (1927-1929) , then "LaTorre " (The Tower ,1930), closed by the authority because of its much too lose, in his opinion, interpretation of Fascism. Evola continued his studies on self-realisation and starts to explore alchemy ("La tradizione ermetica (The hermetic tradition), 1937), neo-spiritualism ("Maschera e volto dello spiritualismo contemporaneo" (Mask and Face of contemporary spiritualism), 1932) and esoteric tales ("Il Mistero del Graal"(The mistery of Graal), 1937), interpreted as a way of Western initiatic way.

At the basis of Evola's Weltanschauung there is an anti-modernist, anti-capitalistic, anti-materialistic and anti-progressivist view, which made him very critical either against bolshevism and Americanism, considered the two sides of the same coin in his prophetic essay published on "Nuova antologia"(New Anthology) on 1929 and in his famous "Revolt against modern world" (1934).

Evola tries to introduce this themes in the cultural scenario of his time, and he maintain contacts with most of the best conservative writers of the time, as Spengler, Guénon, Meyrink, Bachofen.

During the second World War, Evola publishes and Essay on Buddhist asceticism :" La dottrina del risveglio" (The doctrine of enlightenment) on 1943. During 1945, in Vienna, a bomb damaged his spine, and paralysed his legs. Evola went then to Rome, where he spent the rest of his life.

From 1948, Evola started to review some of his previous work, and also re-examined the "Theory of the Absolute Individual" which would only be published in the current form in 1973.

In the magazine "Orientamenti" (Orientations), Evola explored for the readers all the position of his pragmatic philosophy, to live in a world that Evola thought was the expression of Kali-yuga, the last and obscure age (examined in the Indian philosophy). From 1953 to 1963 Evola writes several philosophical-political books, as the existentially-oriented

"Cavalcare la tigre" (Riding the Tiger, 1961)

It follows an autobiography through his works in 1963, and other works and collaboration with publishers until his death, in 1974.

The last period of his existence sees Evola in the amazing role of anti-Marcuse: the "movement "of 1968 highlighted his ideas on both the Left and Right wings.

Evola had the merit of enabling the majority of the readers to acknowledge concepts that were, before him, absolutely elitary.

Evola invites us to look at the modernity without losing ourselves in it, because what surrounds us should not affect us too much. Evola is looking for the full consciousness, and, even if the aim is extremely difficult, he invites the reader to try to do better, sweeping up all the "hooks" of the quiet everyday life, to direct their actions to true action, Transcendence.

But it is not a transcendence referred to an external, sacred object: not directed to a god or an idea: it is a movement starting from us, and within us, which sees us as the emanating centre and transcendent horizon of ourselves.

Concept of Tradition

The concept of Tradition is usually denied, misrepresented, or misunderstood. It has nothing to do with local colour or popular customs nor with curious local activities collected by some students of folklore. It is concerned with origins: tradition is the handing on of a complex of established means of facilitating our understanding of the immanent principles of universal order, since it has not been given to mankind to understand unaided the meaning of his existence. The idea most nearly equivalent and most able to evoke the meaning of the word tradition would be that of the spiritual relationship between a master and a pupil. That is to say of a formative influence analogous to that of spiritual vocation or inspiration, as actual for the spirit as heredity is for the body. What we are concerned with here is an inner knowledge coexistent with life itself; a coexistent reality, but at the same time an awareness of a superior consciousness, recognised as such, and at this level inseparable from the person it has brought to birth and for whom it constitutes their reason for existence. From this point of view the person is completely what he transmits, he only is in what he transmits, and in the degree to which he does transmit. Independence and individuality are thus seen to be relative realities only, which bear witness to our progressive separation and continuous falling away from the possession of an all-embracing original wisdom, a wisdom which is quite compatible with an archaic way of life. In the West this exterior aspect was generally expressed in religious terms.

Intended for the general mass of the faithful, the doctrine split into three elements, dogma for the reason, morals for the mind, and rites and ceremonies for the body. During the time in which this split was taking place in the West, the deeper meaning became esoteric and was gradually reduced to greater and greater obscurity, so that now we are compelled to refer to parallel examples from Eastern spirituality to understand the coherence and validity of our own tradition. The progressive lack of real understanding of the idea of tradition has for a long time past prevented us from grasping the true nature of ancient civilisations, both eastern and western, and at the same time has made it impossible for us to return to that inclusive point of view which they had. Only as we return to basic principles can we gain a comprehensive understanding without suppressing anything. This will enable us to make a breakthrough to a new use of language, restore our power to remember and facilitate our inventive faculties, and so establish links between the most seemingly diverse branches of knowledge. All this is only possible as we acknowledge the privileged centre as possessing an inexhaustibly rich store of possibilities which are mediated to us by means of symbols. (Benoist, 1988)

In Evolian terms, Tradition is not simply the situation of man in a primordial era. The sources of the idea of Tradition are not considered the product of a personal speculation, but as a translation, an expression through words, concepts, myths of man's different condition Evola speaks about this difference in ontological terms: the Traditional culture is expression of a humanity ontologically different. The man who produced this kind of culture is able to experience a real contact with the metaphysical reality, with the Principle, or the Divine. (We will see that this is not something which exists outside of the man, but on the contrary is integral part of him). This kind of contact is exactly what the modern man does not have, and it is also the element that explains the common aspect of the historical traditions. Without realising such contact, the idea of Tradition can be perceived just as a simple interpretative hypothesis.

Within the passage between traditional and modern phase it is man who changes, not the metaphysical reality. If nowadays that kind of reality is less accessible, it is because humanity has changed (due to several factors such as a wild industrialisation), and man has too many obstacles to access Reality, which is ,however, always open and accessible. It is just necessary to find the way to experience that Reality, and the experience will not be anything reducible in psychological, biological,scientific or social terms, but something that virtually transfigures the individual who undergoes the experience. It is an ontological reality.

Theory and phenomenology of the Absolute Individual

The theory and phenomenology of the Absolute Individual is one of Evola's truly philosophical and speculative works.

He brings what is called "transcendental idealism" to the extreme consequences , within a theory of the Absolute Individual; this concept substitutes the idea of an abstract "gnoseologic subject", the centre of a simple theory of knowledge.

Moreover, the accent is displaced on the problem of action: the essence of the research can be summed up as follows : the modern philosophy of the immanence has expressed the awareness of its own insufficiency and the necessity of an absolute action starting from inside the individual.

The problem of freedom is particularly analysed and it is constantly underlined, within the analysis, everything Evola notices having an existential character.

In 1927 Evola started to investigate the self-awareness methodology of Western and Eastern esoteric tradition, methods that can lead the person to a real transformation. Evola said that those metaphysical methodologies "have however a technique".

Evola tries to delineate the nature of knowledge under the initiatic perspective, and says that it is impossible to know a thing properly "until the consciousness is able to transform itself into it". There is, then, an identification of knowledge with experience, and the validity of knowledge is given by the degree of active identification, or, in other words, by the degree that the Ego (not intended Freudian sense) implies and unifies himself in its experience, the object of what is transparent to him (the Ego) in term of meaning.

In this term, what is "other" and "separate" to empirical knowledge, is resolved within a relationship of power, where an Ego capable of doing so draws the alterity/duality into itself, instead of keeping it external.

The world is conceived as power or relationships of powers until the "other" remains "other for the Ego" . In this scenario, we cannot have true knowledge, because the rapport of alterity Ego/non-Ego shows a gap, a deprivation, a limitation which would affect the Ego itself. An Ego capable to do so draws the duality into itself: the idea of intentionality becomes an act of will.

What is commonly called Ego, presupposes a deeper reality that is co-existing within us: it is not the immanence of the individual, but it is the notion of Self, the core principle of the person ,distinct from the changeability of the common consciousness, to what the Ego is embedded anyway. The aim for Evola is to awake this principle and possess it as the effective centre of the person, and this is a possibility that everyone, not just "special" individuals can choose to have. It is the Stirnerian Egoist, but just a step further: the individual recognises himself as the centre of himself, as in Stirner, but Evola explores the sense of"divine" , which Stirner demolishes as societal creation (outside us) ;Evola considers it as vehicle (property)of the Ego to undertake the process of self-transcendence, maintaining at the same time our immanent existential dimension in the world. It is an act of will (named by Evola "determining act") which is comparable in a sense with the act of self-creation proposed by Kierkegaard.

The Evolian "being-in-the-world" is the capacity to develop the power to own the meaning of things: the Evolian transcendental immanence of the dual Ego is the awareness of being , differentiated from the unawareness that characterises our everyday life, as Heidegger sustained.

So it is the world that, as said above, is conceived as the relationship of power. It is not the case to find out a way of dominating things, but a way to understand things (owing their meaning/s). The raised knowledge would delete the distance, but not the distinction between Me and Not Me, therefore the individual's Ego will be able to experience the "other than him" as if he was the other, nevertheless not really belonging to it, because of the Ego's capacity to keep his individuality during the experiential process. The capacity of not belonging stops man from shifting his responsibility of choice on the "objects-defence" other than him described by Yalom (1980).

In other words, it is the Stirnerian concept of transitory ego's appropriation of the world. Evola, however, takes a step further considering the metaphysical reality present in the subjectivity of the experience.

This can sum up what, for Evola, is the real concept of Metaphysical reality under a subjective point of view: the experience that a consciousness can realise (through a determining act) in the moment when it ceases to be conditioned by time and space. (since, under the objective point of view, metaphysical reality is every state of the being not conditioned by time and space).

For the absolute individual (as for the initiate) the transcendental principle is immanent to his own being. He lives his existence (immanently), and within that existence he looks for the metaphysical experience: he refuses the separation between the world and the transcendence, because the atemporal and a-spatial principle of transcendence is experienced in his existential becoming.

(There is here some recall to the Buddhist principle of "non-attachment)

In practice , the Absolute Individual has the problem of existing and behaving in a world that is not of his choice just in the sense that, historically, we are living a period of dissolution (the Kali-yuga). However, as we will see, the anguish will be reduced by the fact that every interpretation of the world is determined by the Ego, and anguish will just be one of those.

Evola starts where is the point-zero for the values, where, for Nietzsche "God is dead".

The individual should be able not to get overturned and annihilated by what is not directly controllable, to focus on the processes of self-transcendence to become Absolute ( the buddhist "Riding the Tiger"); the process includes the capacity to assume and experience even the more extreme and negative processes which occur during the life, to utilise them in the sense of a liberation, and not, as often happens, in the sense of distruction of the individual.

Evola's theory of the Absolute Individual is an attempt to explore the nature of the Ego with its attributes: not just reason and knowledge, but also will, power and freedom.

In this attempt, Evola defines the concepts of being and value.

"Value" is the absolute relationship between the basic principle of the Ego, and what in the Ego is distinct from that principle (in other words, between Ego and non-Ego). The notion of non-Ego is equivalent to the multiple realities existing in the world, and these , at least initially, are presented as objects, simple things which seem to have their own independent existence and reality. But they are existing (being) just because I am perceiving them (esse est percepi): the Ego is the only reality I can be sure of, and if the value is the relationship Ego/non.-Ego, therefore the value of the thing perceived is equivalent to its reduction to the Ego. What we call reality does not exist separate from the Ego, but it is a "meaning", or a way of the simple being (as matter of fact ) of an object or power for the Ego (what Stirner calls property).

If there is ,as first point, no reality understandable without referring it to the Ego, nevertheless it is not necessary, as second step, to think the Ego just as something referred to another reality: in fact the first point described is the process of knowledge (immanent) , but Ego can be also considered on its own absolute reality (transcendent) .

"It is possible to detach this principle of self-referral from the particulars contained within the experiences to fold it on itself. Then we will have Ego equal Ego, or a bare experience, a property, something at the same time simple and ineffable" (Evola, 1930)

Paraphrasing Heidegger, substituting "Dasein" with "Ego", we can say that "Ego exists. Ego is not an entity, but Me who in each case is. Mineness belongs to any existent Ego, and any existent Ego belongs to Me through the condition of the determining act".

Every object is always reconducible to an action of the Ego that determines it. Therefore, if the reality is determined by the Ego, evidently this same reality needs an unconditioned factor to be determined. Consequently the Ego not only determines the non-Ego, but it is also transcendent in respect to the reality that it determines, or in other words, to the bare experience of itself (Ego equal Ego) that filters everything, and that is not conditioned by anything.

This Ego is obviously not separated from myself; it is the absolute presence that I am deeply in my individual being. (Evola, 1973)

At the same time, the Ego is not identified with thought: "if nothing is thought before the act of thinking, there is no Ego in the role of thinker before his effective act of thinking. Therefore the Ego comes into being at the same time as thought itself. It comes about from this subjectivity in relation to an object , we distinguish the individual principle as power of the related process in act."(Evola , 1973)

Evola means that it is obvious that there is a thinking Ego simultaneously existent with thought but it is also obvious that, if it thinks, it had the power to do it. Therefore the reality of thinking, with the related and implied categories, emerges from a possibility, a potentiality, a freedom which implies a powerful and free principle, which precedes the reality of the act of thinking and , therefore, determines the Ego as thinker. In other words, esse est percipi for the object thought, for the non-Ego perceived, not for the Ego that perceives. However, the Ego is not just perception: it is also the expression of its own possibility to manifest itself or not, and it is indifferent to this dualism, free because neither of the two possibility are treated as more important than the other . (free because the Ego owns both possibilities, Stirner would say)

The Heideggerian fallenness vanishes into impossibility of loosing oneself in the everyday preoccupations: they are determined by the Ego in his immanent dimension, and the Ego is indifferent to his determinations, being the sole purpose of his act.

If this indifference is not present, it means that the ego starts to be determined by a necessity (a non-free position to be either transcendental or immanent), loosing in this way its power as subject which determines and that is not determined.

For Evola the Ego must be "possessed, (Stirner recalled again) existed, not killed reducing it to a concept, but on the contrary should be realised, experienced in his actualisation through his immanence"

The absolute Ego, intended as absolute freedom is beyond the human thought, but at the same time immanent to man.

However, this absolute Ego is not a datum to which we have access in our everyday experience, and that shows, under the effect of our physical senses, that a world is existing outside us, and that is different from us.

In reality we perceive the world as different from us (and therefore with a reality on its own, not determined by our Ego) just when we assume, as the determining act, our empirical consciousness, which is unable to identify itself as absolute subject, like the Ego is.

In practice, if the Ego is intended as a concept, as Reason, there is inevitably a rational identification between empirical and absolute Ego, that cannot be true, because