Sunday, February 10, 2019

The Source of Coercion Is for Max Stirner Not Only the State and Its Institutions but also Morality, Religion, Natural Law and Even Freedom Itself If It Is Understood as an “Idée Fixe”

Thus, Stirner doesn’t limit his conception of coercion to the objective, common-sense character of it, present i.e. in the formal authority of the State’s power. He finds sources of coercion much deeper, in a subjective plane of individual’s existence. The coercion is for Stirner everything, what limits an individual and subjects her or him to an external will, even if it is simply an objective vision of a proper conduct, which is inherent in social conventions, contracts or other social institutions. What’s more, according to Stirner the source of coercion can be even your own idea or opinion, if it is strong enough, that you can’t emancipate yourself from it when needed. Therefore, the source of coercion is for him not only the State and its institutions but also morality, religion, natural law - paradoxically – the freedom itself can become it, if it is understood as an “idée fixe”, the idea at implementation of which one should necessarily aim. In other words, all what gives you no possibility of change can be the source coercion.

--Maciej Chmieliński, "Self-ownership and Spontaneously-Evolved Order: The Core of Max Stirner's Individualist Anarchism," Res Publica: Revista de Historia de las Ideas Políticas 19, no. 2 (2016): 462.


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