Focusing on the issue of history and historicity, this study proposes an immanentist interpretation of Max Stirner’s philosophy. Looking into the polemic between Marx, Engels, and Stirner, the study argues that The Ego and Its Own frames the question of history as a conceptual problem that exposes the limitations of the dominant Western epistemology based on the hegemony of transcendent, abstract concepts over lived experience.
For Stirner, “the meaning of history”, “historicity”, or “universalism” are transcendent spooks – abstract concepts that discipline human bodies and minds instead of serving as tools. In the second plane, the study examines various interpretations of Stirner’s philosophy and explores the present-day possibilities of the Stirnerian immanentist onto-epistemological framing and the argument that, for the most part, the institutionalized Western scientific tradition and its methods are based on the dominance of transcendent concepts.
The final section of the study delves into the potential of immanent scientific methods in the anthropocene through an interpretation of Gabor Maté’s work, claiming that the “immanent science” is based on the refusal of conceptual realism and of any attempts at an absolute, transcendent conceptual system. It stems from a nominalist, contextual, and instrumental approach to abstract concepts and the realization that all concepts are embodied: they are merely individual cases of their usage.