ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the underlying philosophy of our culture has become nihilistic. Very few have dared to do this: Max Stirner, who published a book on this theme in 1845. Stirner's nihilism, then, is very different from existentialism and philosophical anarchism, which seek a new ethic beyond the present false or stale morality. Egoistical nihilism seeks no greater authenticity or better society as these do. Stirner simply seeks to reduce the world – the others – to objects for consumption. Stirner affords a challenge to the 'old' existentialism. He represents the total encounter with nothingness: 'the existentialists need to acknowledge – in his unique one — the one finished, historical instance of that total encounter with nothingness from which they themselves have in the end recoiled'. The existentialists have clutched and clutched at some metaphysical and moral transcendent, says Paterson, 'to provide a meaningful foundation for their personal world, lest it be consumed by its own insecurity'.
