The second-to-last chapter is titled “Other Libertarians” and this short bit from Walker is the last section in that chapter. It features two chapters culled from Walker’s book The Philosophy of Egoism that was serialized in the journal Egoism and wasn’t published in book form until 1915, two years after Liberty and the Great Libertarians was published.

While presented without distinction, the first paragraph is pulled from chapter 22 of The Philosophy of Egoism, but not the entirety, and the second paragraph is from chapter 5, but not the entirety. Even though the text is available in full elsewhere, they are god excerpts and I felt it was worth posting them here giving context that they were printed in the aformetioned book in 1913.

EGOISM
Dr. James L. Walker

What is good? What is evil? These words express only appreciations. A good fighter is a “good man” or a “bad man”! both words expressing the same idea of ability, but from different points of view. To the beggar a generous giver is a good man. To the master a servant is good when he cheerfully slaves for the master. A good subject is one obedient to his prince. A good citizen is one who gives no trouble to the State, but contributes to its revenues and stability. Evil is only what we do not find to our good, but what we have to combat. A horse is not good because strong and swift if he be “vicious” ; that is, if we find him hard to tame. A breed of dogs is good if readily susceptible of training to hunt all day or watch all night for the benefit of the owner. A wife is “good” if she will not be good to any man but her husband.

The love of money within reason is conspicuously an Egoistic manifestation, but when the passion gets the man, when money becomes his ideal, his god, we must class him as an Altruist. There is the characteristic of “devotion to another,” no matter that that other is neither a person nor the social welfare, nothing but the fascinating golden calf or a row of figures. We Egoists draw the line of distinction between the Egoist and the devotee. It is the same logically when a person becomes bewitched with another of the opposite sex so as to lose judgment and self-control, though this species of fascination is usually curable by experience, while the miser’s insanity cannot be reached. The love-sick man or woman has the illusion dispelled by contact with the particular person that caused it; but in certain cases absence or death prevents the remedy from being applied, and in some of these instances the mental malady is lifelong.

This article was in the archives of Egoist Archive. In an effort to get that material back on the web, if it cannot fit within the framework of the website somewhere else, it will be posted to the blog.

Note: William McCall’s 1947 book was titled Elements of Individualism.

Review of “‘Individualism’ in the Mid-Nineteenth Century”, by Koenrad W. Swart

Koenrad Swart states his thesis early on when he states: “The term ‘individualism’ with its perplexing varieties of meanings is responsible for many inconclusive debates in the history of ideas.” He goes on to identify three “highly dissimilar clusters of ideas”: individualism as 1) the idealistic doctrines with egalitarian implications, such as the “rights of man” made popular by/in the French Revolution; 2) the anti-statist utilitarian doctrine of laissez faire, economic liberalism; and 3) the aristocratic cult if individuality, Romantic individualism, such as put forth by Wilhelm von Humboldt and Fredrich Schlegel. This contingent was at odds especially with the egalitarian aspect of what had been termed individualism up to that time (c.1830), and stressed the diversity and inequality of talents and abilities. On the other hand, many thinkers at this time considered individualism, including laissez faire capitalism, to be the logical outgrowth of the ideas which spawned the French Revolution, pointing out that the founding fathers of this revolution were inspired more by self-interest than love of humanity.

Individualism as a positive term made its first strides toward acceptance in England in the work of William McCall, whose Principles of Individualism gained a fairly wide readership; one of his early enthusiasts was George Eliot. McCall was apparently influenced by J.S. Mill and Carlyle, but above all, by the German Romantic ideas by authors discussed above, and, although Swart does not explicitly say so, it would seem that Max Stirner may have figured into it as well; McCall’s book was published in 1847, two years after Stirner’s book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum.

Many of the writers, especially in Germany, stressed the long history of German independence as a widespread cultural trait; their love of freedom could be traced to the old Germanic tribes which had successfully resisted Roman domination and which later insinuated itself into medieval institutions such as the feudal system after the Germanic invasion of Roman territories. This love of liberty was considered a strong cultural trait until German unification in the 1870’s, with the rise of Prussianism.

The individualist tendency is seen by Swart as culminating with the thought of the Young Hegelians, in particular Max Stirner, in rejecting the claims of society upon the individual, in the 1840’s.

An interesting contrast between the individualism of laissez faire capitalism and what was termed “infinite individualism” was developed by Karl Bruggemann in 1842 in which he asserted that this infinite individualism was based in a German infinite self-confidence to be personally free in morals and truth.

Individualism gained a lasting impetus in the publication of Jacob Burckhardt’s Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy in 1860. From this moment on the term was a force to be reckoned with in the ongoing battle of ideas still being waged today.