130 NietzscheMedieval nominalism had defended the boundless creative Almighty
against the kind of rationality that sought to ensnare him in a web of
concepts. Stirner, in turn, defended the boundless creative ego against
religious, humanistic, liberal, sociological, and other general concepts.
And just as for medieval nominalists God was that colossal power who
created himself and the wodd from the void and was free to stand above
any logic, even above truth, for Stirner the individuum ineffabile similady
constitutes a state of freedom emanating from a void. This ego is also
the colossal power, as God once was, because, according to Stirner, "I
am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but the creative nothing, the
nothing from which I myself as the creator create everything" (Stirner
5). With cheap derision, Marx was able to reproach the petty bourgeois
Schmidt/Stirner with his social situation, which did place narrow con-
straints on creativity. In doing so, however, Marx did not consider the
ancient Stoic maxim that we are not influenced by things themselves as
much as by our views of things. Marx's actions were ultimately guided
not by the proletariat but by his own visions. Stirner was therefore quite
right in emphasizing the creativity of the ego, because it is this vision
that produces the latitude to support it—at least hypothetically.
Stirner's philosophy was an ambitious maneuver, albeit peculiar and
ludicrous at times. It was also consistent in a very German sense.
Nietzsche quite likely appreciated Stirner's ambitiousness because he
was attempting to map out his own philosophy while pondering the
problem of knowledge and truth for the sake of life and figuring out
how "the goad of knowledge" could be turned against knowledge.
Nietzsche was certainly aware of one major area of disagreement with
Stirner. No matter how much Stirner emphasized the creative act, he was
still a petty bourgeois at heart, for whom property was everything, as was
obvious from his obstinacy in embracing the concept of property per se.
like Stirner, Nietzsche sought to liberate himself from phantoms and
use his thinking to do everything possible to "take true possession" (Β
6,290) of himself. But Nietzsche's actions were less defensive than
Stirner's. Nietzsche wanted to unleash himself on himself. Stirner was