Max Stirner, ¹ a student of G.W.F. Hegel, found his niche not in the propagation of Hegelian thought or as a Young Hegelian, but as a progenitor of nihilist postmodernism and egoism, both of which represent rather lethal turn in Western thought following the critical turn of philosophy at the end of the nineteenth century, prompted by Immanuel Kant’s three critiques. In this essay, Stirner issues a sharp rebuke of humanist and realist education alike, emphasising the frivolity of the former and the haughtiness of the latter. Tracing the history of education in Northern Europe from the medieval to the modern period, Stirner examines in broad strokes the nature of education and its oscillations between these two paradigms, both of which he finds ultimately futile because they do not lead to the truth, which he defines solely as “man’s revelation of himself.”

While Stirner claims to attack both the realist and humanist paradigms of education equally, it is the latter that bears the brunt of his attacks. “The result of school life,” Stirner declares, “is philistinism.” For Stirner, the institutions of learning are the greatest hindrance in the development of a true and authentic knowledge, for “thoroughly true men are not supplied by school … they are there in spite of school.” Stirner’s contempt for authority and institutional learning arise from both his egoism and anarchism, deadly components that tango with each other to produce this vile diatribe that seeks to abnegate the roads and bridges of scholarly learning and achievement in favour of a Dionysian existence.

Stirner is correct insofar as he levels charges of elitism against humanists of all shades. A humanist education was incompatible with a universal educational programme because education led to a rise in one’s stature; however, “not everyone could be called to this command and authority.” The simple fact of the matter is that feudal and even modern societies such as ours cannot afford to support a majority of the population being involved in humanistic pursuits. The pursuit of philosophy or art history or political theory — serious humanistic disciplines — is economically unsuitable for all and must be restricted to a few. This is not to say that the humanities lack value, but they lend themselves to a select few, and only the select few can have truly extensive and revelatory humanistic educations in the manner that Stirner describes. The glut of humanities PhDs proves Stirner right on this front: supply truly outstrips demand by a long shot. ² While doctoral candidates from elite institutions are the crème de la crème of the academic system, those from lesser institutions find it much harder to find academic positions in a job market that simply does not require so many doctorates in the humanities.

Stirner’s criticism of education before the Enlightenment is a critique of the humanist tradition. He mocks pre-Enlightenment education by calling it “so called higher education [that] lay without protest,” akin to a dinosaur-like entity that was so rigid and uptight that change did not feature in its syllabus. What Stirner did get right was its basis: he recognised that humanist education was — and still is today — “based almost solely on the understanding of the old classics.” One would be served well by a knowledge of Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle, in his Politics, remarked that “almost everything has been discovered already; though some things have not been combined with one another, and others are not put into practice” (Politics, II.5, 1264^a1, Barker’s trans.). Studying the classics of political thought and philosophy embraces the mind for the most brutal realisation of all: nothing we can do is truly original and unthought of in the Greek world in its most fundamental state, and for that we must embrace not our individual, egotistical selves but rather understanding how trivial our existence is in the longue durée. This is the basis of ethical action and moral behaviour — if our circumstances are no different than the circumstances in which the classics were written, what gives us the ability to worship at the faux altar of progress? It is this sense of individual trivialness that deeply disturbs Stirner.

At this juncture, it is important to note that the humanist view of human nature and individual importance does not preclude the rise and propagation of great individuals. Thomas Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History, which is at present out of fashion, has some remarkable insights into what separates great men from the rest of us. But the point still stands — great men are great because they tower over the rest of us, contributing to society and culture in ways that we could not even imagine before them. However, Carlyle’s heroes are not a dime a dozen, for they are rare, freak accidents of history that change its course. What they do not do is change the human condition of which the student of the classics is prompted time and time again to master.

The purpose of humanistic education, then, is not just Stirner’s limited view of “an elegant education, a sensus omnis elgantiae, an education of taste and a sense of forms which finally threatened to sink completely into a grammatical education …”. A proper humanistic education starts with grammar, one may argue, only because the grammar of language lays down the rules for appropriate behaviour and proper action in the wielding of the linguistic sword. Only from precise and eloquent communication can argumentation and then philosophy follow. A grammatical education is at the root of a fine humanistic education. It is from this that the foundation of humanistic thought can be built, and the humanistic spirit engendered in those disposed to it. Yes, the education is formalistic insofar as it has a canon, a series of books and thinkers that are essential to its continued existence and propagation.

There is rigidity in this formal mode of education, but that which it seeks to truly inculcate is also rigid and unchanging. The art historian Johann Joachim Winkelmann recognised early on that Greek statues — now known to be Roman in origin — were the embodiment of the neoclassical spirit, of “noble simplicity and quiet grandeur.” Harold Bloom wrote persuasively in his The Western Canon of the essential nature of the canon; in his introduction he points out that he has “tried to confront greatness directly: to ask what makes the author and the works canonical.” While Bloom’s bent is certainly oriented toward the early Renaissance Humanists and their successors, peaking with Shakespeare, the two Homeric epics and a whole host of Classical literature finds its place in the sun within his book — it is understood that they are a priori requirements for anyone who seeks to understand anything written after it. Ask any student of philosophy — amateur or professional, good or bad — and you will most certainly hear a comment or two about the importance of Plato, even though the individual, such as myself, professes Aristotelean leanings. This humanism was expansive in its scope and thorough in its depth, and yet Stirner found it opportune to criticise it.

Stirner adds another important point to the failure of humanist education: that “it failed to urge mastery in school of a great deal of material which is thrust upon us by life.” On this front, Stirner is only mistaken on the nature of the charge he intends to level. Eschewing the virtues of gaining knowledge for its own sake, Stirner parrots a utilitarian approach tinged with socialistic tendencies — he does not believe that knowledge of the human condition is essential for any other knowledge, and for this he commits the grave error of the non sequitur. The humanist will always be a better learner and a thorough thinker because he has been gifted by the nature of his education and by the nurturing of his teachers the formal and proper ways of thinking, of recognising and dealing with axioms, and in the general application of logic, philosophy, and critical thought. The realist, on the other hand, suffers from the predilection of knowing only one, small area of knowledge with little desire to procure anything outside of it; consequently, the narrow scheme of mental exercise to which his brain is subjected to on a daily basis falls short of the exalted levels and hallowed halls of humanist thinking and institutions. Practical reason would follow on its own.

The most serious charges in Herr Stirner’s rap sheet on humanist education, however, are allegations of “empty elegance” and “dandyism.” Stirner wrongly conflates the linguistic sophistication that comes with a fine education with the emptiness of the egoistical paradigm of thought he advocates for. Stirner himself, as the proficient reader will recognise, has a significant role to play as an intellectual sage for the postmodernists, laying down the ground rules for the death of principled philosophy in furtherance of the Kantian critical turn. The fine young man who treats his peers with respect and admiration and can recite poetry at will and be a tour guide to the classics of Rome deserves to be called anything but a hollow dandy. The charges of dandyism arise when Stirner is able to falsely associate humanistic learning with a certain gendered view of the world: the implicit assumption being that realist learning is somehow more suited for the masculine disposition while the humanist mode of thought is best left to those who find themselves emasculated. Even if one were to admit the Muses to be feminine goddesses from the annals of Greek mythology, there would be nothing dandy-like for a man to pursue them. Aristotle, the ancient philosopher par excellence, pointed out that the effeminate would always subjugate reason to emotion in his Politics. Taking these two views into account, one could lean either way — toward Stirner’s ignorance or malice — without any bias against the other. In his polemicist haze, Stirner forgets the foremost principles of humanistic thought and learning, rendering his essay moot and not germane to a serious discussion of educational reform (whether or not we really need to change anything is a different matter altogether).

Stirner continues to betray his Romantic social life when he posits that “with philosophy, our past closes and the philosophers are the Raphaels of the era of thought with which the old principle perfects itself in a bright splendour of colours and through rejuvenation is changed from transient to eternal.” Stirner himself draws upon Raphael of Urbino, a peculiar choice for the German for his pastel colour palate is nothing like the drab colours of Albrecht Dürer or the chiaroscuro-rich and austerely Baroque Rembrandt, which were the hallmarks of taste at the time. Stirner’s infatuation with Raphael is a nod toward the movement that would later become the Pre-Raphaelites and embrace the medieval world with all its power and might, forgetting the moniker of ‘the Dark Ages’ that had been thrust upon their Gothic predecessors. In any case, Stirner’s analogy is rooted in some form of humanism, however perverse and misused even in this scenario; he cannot escape its orbit in the same way that any real student of history will find an escape from Livy, Plutarch, and Gibbon rather impossible.

To kill knowledge so it can “blossom forth again in death as will” is to render everything that one has learned from this tradition of civil existence and flourishing — more than two millennia of it, even — and throw it into the dustbin of history. Stirner adds that “the universal education of school is to be an education for freedom, not for subservience,” failing fully well to see that a life in service of the humanist tradition is the life of higher thought and contemplation that realist action and education simply cannot provide. Obedience to one’s superiors is a special virtue; in this case a recognition and articulation of the superiority of the humanist tradition is merely the first step in living a virtuous life. That Plato and Aristotle and Aquinas are superior to one’s trivial self is important — this acceptance, this sense of wonder and filial piety is the concrete that holds the Pantheon of Plato’s successors together to this day, and once the glue falls, the entire building falls apart. Harold Bloom, alluding rather snidely but strikingly to William Butler Yeat’s ‘The Second Coming’, remarks in The Western Canon that “Things have however fallen apart, the center has not held, and mere anarchy is in the process of being unleashed upon what used to be called ‘the learned world’.” While Bloom talks of the culture wars and the rise of insolence and the rampant disgust at the canon in the academic world, it is merely the logical end of Stirner’s attack on humanism.