Dimitri, Andrea;
(2024)
Max Stirner’s Early French Reception (1844-1892).
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
The focus of this dissertation is the French reception of German philosopher Max Stirner (1806-56) during the period spanning the release of his magnum opus, Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum, in Germany in 1844 to the appearance of its first partial French translations in the early 1890s. This phase of Stirner’s French reception has been widely overlooked by Stirner scholars, or at any rate approached in an unsystematic, somewhat dismissive manner. The prolonged lack of interest in this particular timeframe owes much to the uncritical acceptance of an old but still predominant narrative according to which, soon after the appearance of Der Einzige, Stirner ‘fell into oblivion’ and was only ‘rediscovered’ in the 1880s and 1890s. This study aims to show that, far from being a ‘forgotten’ figure, during the period 1844-1892 Stirner’s name was often invoked in French literary, political, philosophical, and religious discourse where he came to personify many of the worst features of a (perceived) German cultural and even military threat. This dissertation is conceived not only as a transnational reception history of Stirner (and, by extension, of Hegelianism) in France, but also as an intellectual history of France itself. As such, it will provide significant insights into French responses in the nineteenth century to a variety of radical philosophical ideas or traditions (such as materialism, sensualism, egoism, pantheism or atheism, and nihilism) which were commonly associated in France with German contemporary philosophy and of which Stirner became, for many, the archetype. This thesis seeks to explain why French intellectuals interpreted Stirner’s thought as they did, to understand what they were doing by engaging with it in the way they did and the effects that they hoped to produce by doing so.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Max Stirner’s Early French Reception (1844-1892) |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2024. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of History |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10196372 |
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