The Anvil Review

Blumenfeld’s Stirner

From The Anvil Review

All Things Are Nothing to Me is one of the latest books to emerge from the ongoing revival of interest in the work of Max Stirner. The title is taken from the opening line of the first English translation of Stirner’s The Unique and its Property, which can also be translated literally but more prosaically as “I have based my affair on nothing.” In his introduction, the author, Jacob Blumenfeld, says that his intention is to “reconstruct” Stirner’s unique philosophy1 and show a “contemporary, critical, and useful Stirner”. This already makes the book ambitious, as Stirner is all too often reduced to merely a meme or a punchline by both his detractors and his champions. Blumenfeld acknowledges this, considering and rejecting Stirner as a precursor to the troll culture of the alt-right as well as a would-be accommodator of the neoliberal status quo. Instead, he prefers to see Stirner as a kindred spirit of the notorious Invisible Committee, as both offer critiques of ideology and alienation. As he wraps up his introduction, Blumenfeld says that in the first chapter of his book he “discover[s] something interesting, namely, that one does not need the concept of the ‘ego’ to understand Stirner at all. In fact, this might have been the biggest stumbling block toward understanding his philosophy.”

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