On Marx's Criticism Of Stirner's View Of History

The ideas of Max Stiner, which Karl Marx has criticized, have been overlooked by theoretical workers for a long time in the study on the history of Marxist philosophy, especially Marx's early thought, compared with the high regards for Feuerbach, who was considered to exert the last influence on Marx. In this essay, we try to demonstrate that this neglect, sometimes even ignorance, shows an imperfection of our study on the development of Marx's early thought, lacking some links. If we comb the history line of Marx's philosophy, the linear chain, Hegel- Feuerbach-Marx, could not be all-sided. Stiner, playing a very important role, is necessary between Feuerbach and Marx. This can be clearly known through Stiner's decisive criticism of the thought of Feuerbach. The criticism exposes the falsity of Feuerbach's humanity theory, which is metaphysical in essence. For the reason that Stiner himself doesn't educe a revolutionary theory from the criticism, going back, with knight dreams, to the jail of metaphysics, we can't overstate the significance of this criticism, but this criticism has influenced Marx indubitably. Stiner doesn't exert a positive influence on Marx, but he has exerted a negative influence, which exists indeed. The thought of Stiner starts from the criticism of metaphysics, but finally falls into the jail of metaphysics. This is an important teaching for Marx to radically get rid of the academic viewpoint and into practical stands. Stiner fabricates the whole human history, so his conception of history is a-historical speculatively abstract. This enlightens Marx to recognize the essence of the idealist conception of history as being abstract, to ponder the origin of consciousness and the relations between life world and consciousness, and so to integrate the history with human real life. Not only that, the egoism of Stiner's conception of history expresses the mythology of civil society, represents the general principle of modern society and modern people, and puzzles, even confuses burghers class and the working class. This will defy communism. If the general principle of modern society, that is egoism, wasn't being radically changed, the threat to communism would last, and the egoism of Stiner's thought, like a ghost, would be in a tangle with Marxism all along. Cleaning up Stiner's conception of history will help us to sweep the hindrance in the development of Marxism, and to reflect on the problems of modern society.To be specific, the paper will be mainly carried out in following aspects: The introduction, as a general programme, discusses the influence of Stiner in the development of Marx's thought as a whole, and draws a conclusion that this influence is not mainly in theory but in practice.The first chapter lays out the backgrounds of the history of thought. This chapter, demarcated by Hegelian philosophy, investigates the death of God and the decay of metaphysics from three aspects, which are the movement of enlightenment before Hegel, the expiry of idealism era in Hegel, and young Hegelians after Hegel.The second chapter discusses the different starting point and final result between Stiner and Marx in the criticism of metaphysics. Stiner proclaims the illusion of metaphysics through the criticism of Feuerbach's humanitarianism. But for Stiner's academic viewpoint on the criticism of metaphysics, he does not depart from metaphysics. However, the revolution of philosophy of Marx is outside the academic viewpoint from the starting point, which is in the practical stands. Marx considers the practice as sensual and objective activity, not the narrow relations between theory and practice. Therefore, Marx shows up the fundamental framework of metaphysics, and opens the whole new philosophy field.The third chapter is the explanation of the ego and its own. According to the framework of this book, which includes the logical prehistory of ego that is the history of humanity, the transition from the history of humanity to the history of ego that is about the criticism of three forms of liberalism, and the history of ego, this chapter investigate Stiner's conception of history about ego in detail.The forth chapter puts particular emphasis on Marx's criticism of Stiner's conception of history in theoretical aspect. This chapter is divided to three sections. The first section mainly discusses that Stiner's conception of history is a pale imitation of Hegelian dialectic, but failing to meet it, actually inferior to it. The second section mainly discusses that Stiner's conception of history is still a conception of religion, which does not research the real contradictions among the temporal world actually, beyond the theological criticism. The third section mainly discusses that Stiner's conception of history is an abstract fabrication about history. He attributes the history to the history of cavalier, ghost and weird, ridiculously drawing a conclusion, which indicates his ignorance of the life history.The fifth chapter puts particular emphasis on Marx's criticism of Stiner's conception of history in practical aspect. This chapter is also divided to three sections. The first section mainly discusses how to understand the reality, and points out that Marx's investigation on social reality is essentially related to Hegel. The second section mainly discusses how to understand the real man. Marx considers the real man as man in the relations between productive force and production relationship in some stage of historical development, after respectively criticizing the abstract intuition of Feuerbach's species and unilateral egoism of Stiner's ego. The third section mainly discusses how to understand the relations between individuals and society. The reason why Stiner splits the relations between individuals and society lies in his mad about private property. However, by analyzing the civil society, Marx points out that the relations between individuals and society is discriminatingly unitive.