22-12-82
David Miller
P.O. Box 162
Ferntree Gully
Vic. 3156
Australia
Dear Syd,
Well, I’ve finally got around to forming a Stirner group. I took advantage of an offer by the Melbourne Anarchist Centre to use their premises. As some of the anarchists are vaguely interested in Stirner, and as some of the Free Marketeers are too, I thought I’d take the plunge.
We had about a dozen at the first meeting and about 25 at the talk on Nietzsche. Nietzsche is a drawcard numbers-wise. It was for this reason that I called the group the “Nihilists,” as this allowed me to include Nietzsche. I took advantage of Paterson’s labeling Stirner as a nihilist, and that Nietzsche is also often labeled as a nihilist. The additional reason was that I decided that very few would know the word “Egoist,” but many would be aware of the word “Nihilist.”
I have finished reading Robert Miller’s manuscript “Oneness: A Philosophy of Self-Enjoyment.” Although I don’t agree with it, I really enjoyed reading it. I would very much like it to be published. But Robert has no idea who he could get to publish it. Who do you think he could approach? A friend of Robert’s in London has a copy of the manuscript, if you’d like to read it—Stella Sims,
St. John’s Vicarage, 99 Highbury Park
London N5. Telephone 01 359 2542.
It seems to me that Robert has taken Paterson’s claim about Stirner’s supposed “metaphysical solipsism” and pushed it to an extreme where not only the world but also the Self is a creature of the Creative Nothing. Ironically, in an appendix to the manuscript, Robert defends Stirner against Paterson’s claim that he is a metaphysical solipsist, in that Stirner is one thing one moment and then something else the next moment—so he cannot be said to be this or that solipsist or otherwise.
When Robert gives his lecture to the Existentialists in March, I hope to get his notes.
David
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