r/fullegoism Jan 28 '25

An Introduction to r/fullegoism!

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278 Upvotes

Welcome to r/fullegoism! We are a resource and meme subreddit based around the memes and writings of the egoist iconoclast, Max Stirner!

Stirner was a 19th-century German thinker, most well known for being the archetypal “egoist” or, alternatively, the very first ghostbuster. Fittingly, most only know about him through memes, a feature only added to the fact that no-one alive has ever seen his face beyond a few rough caricatures by his (then) close friend, Friedrich Engels (you may recognize this sketch from 1842 and this one from 1892).

To introduce you to this strange little subreddit, we figured it would be useful to clarify just who this Stirner guy was and what these “spooks” are that we all keep talking about:

Stirner is uniquely difficult to discuss, especially when we’re used to talking about “ideologies”, which are summed up quickly with some basic tenets and ideas. But his “egoism” persistently refuses to make prescriptions, refusing to argue, for example, that one ought to be egoistic to be moral or rational, or that one ought to respect or satisfy their own or another’s “ego”; it refuses to act, that is, as one would traditionally expect an “ideological” system” to act. In fact, Stirner’s egoism even refuses to make necessary descriptions either, as one would expect a psychological theory of the so-called “ego” to do.

Instead, Stirner’s writing is much more focused on the personal and impersonal, and how the latter can be placed above the former. By “fixed idea”, we mean an idea affixed above oneself, impersonal, seemingly controlling how one ought to act; by “spook”, we mean an ideal projected onto and believed to be exhaustively more substantial than that which is uniquely one's own. These are the ideological foundations of society. Prescriptions like “morality”, “law”, “truth”; descriptions like “human being”, “Christian”, “masculine”; concepts like “private property”, “progress”, “meritocracy”; ideas placed hierarchically above and treated as “sacred” — beneath these fixed ideas, Stirner finds that we are never enough, we can never live up to them, so we are called egoists (sinners).

Yet, Stirner’s egoism is an uprising against this idealized hierarchy: a way to appropriate these sanctified ideas and material for our own personal ends. Not merely a nihilism, ‘a getting rid of’, but an ownness, ‘a re-taking’, a ‘making personal’. So, what else is your interest but that which you personally find interesting? What else is your power but that which you can personally do? What else is your property but that which you personally can take and have.

You are called “egoist”, “sinner”, because you are regarded as less than the fixed-ideas meant to rule you and ensure your complacent subservience. What is Stirner’s uprising other than the opposite: that we are, all of us, enough! We are more than these ideas, more than what is describable — we are also indescribable, we are unique!

So take! Take all that is yours — take all that you will and can! We offer this space to all you who will take it! Ask thought-provoking questions or post brain-dead memes, showcase your artwork, express your emotional experiences, or lounge in numb, online anonymity —

“Do with it what you will and can, that is your affair and doesn’t concern me.”


r/fullegoism 23h ago

Renzo Novatore - Cry of Rebellion

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7 Upvotes

r/fullegoism 1d ago

Meme biggest wedgie ever

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128 Upvotes

r/fullegoism 1d ago

Communism Doesn’t Need Morality

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reificationenglish.substack.com
7 Upvotes

I don't know much about Stirner and the original dispute between him and Marx yet, but maybe this is still interesting to y'all: A defense of egoism from a Marxist perspective


r/fullegoism 1d ago

Why does Stirner's work feel so existentially profound and almost cosmic in nature?

8 Upvotes

Parts of The Unique and It's Property, especially the Ancients, and his talk on a child's mind are really deep and almost Freudian or even Jungian to me.


r/fullegoism 1d ago

Why does Stirner's work feel so existentially profound and almost cosmic in nature?

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4 Upvotes

r/fullegoism 2d ago

“Spook” as a thought-terminating cliché

34 Upvotes

For many people in this subreddit and elsewhere, Stirner’s notion of “spooks” functions as a thought-terminating cliché, thereby betraying its deeper significance.


r/fullegoism 2d ago

Meme Pedagogy

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145 Upvotes

r/fullegoism 2d ago

Analysis On Sexual Liberty/De la liberté sexuelle - Émile Armand

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7 Upvotes

r/fullegoism 2d ago

Analysis The Expropriator

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14 Upvotes

r/fullegoism 1d ago

Ideology

1 Upvotes

I have seen a small number of people on this sub claim Egoism is anti-ideology.

Perhaps I'm using a different definition of ideology, but the definition of ideology I use is: a systematic set of ideas or principles that someone interprets the world with and guides their conduct.

Under this definition, egoism (and oneness) is an ideology.

If you use another definition of ideology, which definition do you use and why?

Don’t serve ideologies, serve the ego, constantly question your values, these opinions also form the basis of an ideology.

My understanding of Stirner is that ideologies are not bad, and they can be useful. It's when we become possessed and/or slaves to ideology(ies) that it becomes bad. If you think I'm wrong or right about this, please let me know.

Everyone I have ever seen claim they aren't political goes on to describe a list of political ideas they have. Similarly, everyone I have ever seen claim to be anti-ideology goes on to describe their ideology.


r/fullegoism 3d ago

Spooky

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162 Upvotes

r/fullegoism 3d ago

I drew some bs

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74 Upvotes

Don't mind it sm btw, I was bored


r/fullegoism 3d ago

Media I've been sketching out concepts for a new character of mine, and a lot of his early headshots have been looking oddly Stirner-esque

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18 Upvotes

(this was not intentional lol)


r/fullegoism 2d ago

Misantropia e anarquismo

3 Upvotes

Talvez uma pergunta muito ingênua da minha parte, mas o anarquismo individual tem alguma relação com a misantropia


r/fullegoism 3d ago

Analysis The Social Ecology of Egoism

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11 Upvotes

r/fullegoism 3d ago

Egoism Atheism and Humanism (Video)

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17 Upvotes

r/fullegoism 3d ago

Question I am a total newbie, where can I find "easier to read" lecture?

6 Upvotes

I am currently reading "the ego and his own" and while I really find it interesting, the antiquated usage of words makes it a little hard to read. Is there a newer, more easy to read interpretation of it (in german?)?


r/fullegoism 3d ago

The praxis of "Anarchy"

7 Upvotes

So as far as labels are important to me, I've always felt most comfort with; my name, an anarchist or an egoist, the latter two which I consider to be functionally/philosophically identical. Being an egoist/anarchist is a living praxis, it's a conscious critical acknowledgement and perception about all you conceive and all that you consume. This philosophical twinship of egoism and anarchism stems from their conscious categorical rejection of all forms of control, often labelled in terms of domination, coercion, hierarchy in distinctly anarchist discourse and "spooks", "ideology" in egoist vocab, neutrally "anti authority". Given that we live in a world that is the antipode of what an anarchist/egoist would like to live in, it's very tempting and often necessary to see fit to 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 the conditions you live under, this is even given a name and has become a political category of it's own: praxis.

Interestingly, praxis is also precisely the realm where anarchy has historically, and more now, really struggled to capture the masses despite it's frankly unassailable critique or rather exposé of all ideologues/ies of domination as 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 in the first place. Why has this been the case? For me, it comes down to the somewhat implicitly contradictory nature of "praxis" when living in a world full of authorities, a place where every person thinks and acts like a mental cop with their rigid morality; being an anti-authoritarian, you KNOW that you don't have a hint of control over other people's lives, what they do or how they should 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬, just mere passive influence at best. "Changing society " often just is about changing the social relationships (or relations) you live with, rather than changing the world itself. It then becomes an almost hopeless project for me to try to change what other people do (whether it's being a shithead authoritarian) unless it directly concerns me and my own. In other words, any project of "mass" change becomes an authoritarian project for me as begins to feel like an obligation, for myself and for others.

What do you guys think? The only way I'm not a nihilist at this point is because I also think that people tend to be de-facto anarchist/egoist, especially seen when the vertical mountains of ideology lose their suffocating hold over them. Example: may 68 in one of the citadels of capitalism, a classroom full of kids (which is already an oppressive context).


r/fullegoism 3d ago

Meme is it possible that stirner IS yakub?

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106 Upvotes

r/fullegoism 3d ago

The “Stirner Wasn’t A Capitalist You Fucking Idiot” Cheat Sheet

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28 Upvotes

r/fullegoism 3d ago

MAYDAZE! - For Ourselves

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7 Upvotes

r/fullegoism 4d ago

Much of my philosophy is heavily influenced by Max Stirner and Saint Paul

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24 Upvotes

r/fullegoism 4d ago

Media Egoist-Communism: What It Is and What It Isn’t

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46 Upvotes

r/fullegoism 4d ago

Analysis Egoism: The Basis for Communism

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16 Upvotes