Max Stirner’s egoism in ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ and other writings

Abstract

Throughout the decades scholars have studied James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses in a metaphysical manner. Yet, little attention had been garnered as to an analysis of Dedalus’s metamorphosis and of the qualitative changes in Joyce’s novel and style of writing itself. Only a minority have focused on the Nietzschean Philosophy of the Overman in relation to this novel and most have simply ignored the connection between Max Stirner’s book, The Ego and Its Own and Joyce’s writings. It is the mission of this dissertation to properly articulate Stirner’s philosophy and apply it to the novel in a variety of ways and to hopefully develop an understanding of Joyce's works in a unique way. In the Introduction, a historical overview of both Stirner and Joyce will be provided alongside an explanation of the relationship between Stirner’s philosophy and Joyce that extends beyond the similarities in literary style. The Introduction will connect both authors historically in relation to the publication of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man saved by Joyce’s sister, Eileen, and initially serialized in a London Journal called The Egoist. The Journal over the course of history had published Joyce’s work including many sections of Ulysses and indirectly carried the egoist philosophy of 1844 into the early ages of Modernism. The first chapter will highlight core aspects of the egoist philosophy such as the tripartite dialectical transformation of the individual. The phases of life commence with the childhood stage where we develop our physical senses. Our empirical senses commence a stage of realism which would come into contradiction with our reason. As a result, the stage of realism progresses towards its antithetical negation and commences the idealist stage of youth. The last stage of development commences when realism and idealism confront each other. As a conclusion of this dialectical battle, we arrive at the egoist stage of adulthood. The egoist learns how to free himself from both physical and spiritual constraints. Throughout these stages, Max Stirner mocks the Hegelian dialectic of becomingness through his own inversion of dialectical dissolving. The same can be said of Joyce's epiphanies that are used to mockingly transform Dedalus into something closer to an atheist rather than used for a religious purpose. The first chapter lays out the foundations of tripartite dialectical egoist method that are later applied on Dedalus in the duration of the novel. In the second chapter, I hope to analyze the notion of the Applied Aquinas as something that belongs particularly to the idealist phase of Dedalus’s transformation, while Applied Egoism as something that belongs throughout the novel as a whole as it is applied on Dedalus to carve out for himself a new existence. This practice of creating oneself out of oneself is in line with Stirner’s notion of the Creative Nothing. The third chapter will explore Dedalus’s transformation in Ulysses as a negation to the metamorphosis in A Portrait as a dissolvement of the self, rather than becomingness. This chapter will include passing references to Joyce’s literary accomplishment worthy of Stirner’s notion of uniqueness leading up to the conclusion and declaration of Joyce as Creator and Proprietor of his literature.