Essencialismo e modernidade: a crítica de Max Stirner

Abstract

Max Stirner is undoubtedly a singular figure in the history of philosophy. In his central work, The Ego and it's Own (1844), the author rejects any idea that is to be independent of it, subject only, unique and corporeal. It follows, then, a critique of objectivist philosophical tradition, but also to subjectivism Hegelian too. To this adds up a direct criticism to post- Hegelian, also linked to the ghosts of an essentialist and sacralized philosophy. That study aims at the Stirner critical to modernity as a critical anti-essentialist, culminating in a new possibility to face the philosophy, politics and culture. The theme is developed mainly in the central work of the author, The Ego, a book written under the Young Hegelian movement, with direct references to aspects still conservatives of this movement, who wanted a revolution in nineteenth-century German thought. The Young Hegelians took a critique of traditional religion, but insufficient and circular for Stirner, who sees in the intellectual development of their age a space to overcome not only the beyond outside us, in God, but also beyond us, in Man (humanity). His contemporaries did well the first task, but not the second, incurring in the return in a sacredness, proclaiming, in place of a theological realm, a anthropological realm. Stirner criticizes expressions of an essentialism, present throughout the philosophical tradition Platonic-Hegelian that he intends to leave, in the distinctions between appearance and reality, substance and accident and traditional philosophical idea of Truth. These concepts can be associated with the central idea of Essence, and are weakened by the author at the time that he exposes his criticism, focused mainly for Modernity, even following a historic building. Key-words: