The philosophical ideas of Tomas Hobbes and Max Stirner give us a guide to understand the problem and to propose, in addition, a third alternative.

Written and published by Nihilitus

Date of publication: March 11, 2023

Can the State survive in a modern society deeply affected by the division of its parts and the glorification of individualism? Is it necessary to recover the figure of the Hobbesian absolute State for society to survive? Or is social collapse inevitable due to the universalization of a self-destructive nihilism described in the ideas of Max Stirner?

To understand this problem, we must have a general conceptual framework to reveal the kind of society that is operating, under what system and find out what effects it has on individual perspectives. It is inevitable to address the problem of globalization and nationalism in this era.

The world today has no direction or meaning. Globalization remains in operation because all economies are linked, they are part of a world network that supplies food, energy, labor force and even criminality has become globalized. No nation can separate itself from this structure; to do so would imply economic collapse and massive impoverishment of the population. States, instead of adapting their policies to this new world model of coexistence, are assuming nationalistic and hermetic positions that are being formalized in their political systems. This is the case of Trump’s United States, or the nationalist explosion of some European countries such as Germany or Italy. What is paradoxical? That these countries were the forerunners of globalism.

Now let’s add up the problem variables that have global scope.

Criminality. There are states that are absorbed by powerful international mafias and their institutions operate as extensions of this power that do not represent the citizens. The complex global political reality has seen the emergence of narco-states that are replacing traditional states because their unity does not depend on culture, but on the imposition of a criminal power constituted by force and corruption. These structures do not participate in the formal dynamics of the international market, but do so through dark networks of global reach that involve billions of dollars from illicit businesses. This global counter-power operates with laws and principles totally opposed to the democratic vision of coexistence among different people, separation of powers. They are dark and vertical structures sustained by violence, therefore, they do not recognize rights and justice is an extension of them, that is why they operate with impunity. The new waves of massive migration of the 21st century come from these countries because their residents live in precarious conditions and have been abandoned by the State.

Environmental crisis. At this point it is absurd to deny climate change and it is evident that the effects of deforestation in Brazil, for example, is directly associated with extreme winters or heat waves that are more common and extensive. This means that the global effects of environmental deterioration will reach everyone or, in other words, no one is safe from environmental degradation that will have devastating effects on planetary life. This being so, environmental public policies no longer have any effect if they are only applied within the local jurisdiction of the states, it is necessary to apply a legal framework of global scope, but that supposes interconnecting the judicial systems of all countries, something quite difficult in these times where nationalism and localism are in vogue.

Identity crisis. Globalization has brought with it a crisis of values. Just as the need was forged to open markets in order to have more jobs and more opportunities for progress, the conviction of having a social and environmental responsibility had to be reinforced, and this implies discussing or questioning the structural dynamics of globalism, which is why the process has been developing without a deep awareness of the consequences of the process. Instead, other values such as respect for differences or tolerance, which were necessary for the expansion of markets and cultures, were exalted. Thus constituted, today’s society is very fragile, easily vulnerable to manipulation and, of course, can be led to processes of social engineering with devastating results.

This brief introduction allows us to analyze the problem in two directions. First, to understand that the negative effects of globalization have exceeded the capacity of states to control its consequences within the limits of their jurisdictions. If so, their legitimacy will begin to be questioned, as is indeed happening in different parts of the world. Second, in the face of this structural crisis, the role of citizens in making important decisions is crucial, but since they are unable to do so, there is little chance of a successful solution to the problem. In view of this, the consolidation of nationalism and the emergence of more hostile laws against migration are very realistic scenarios and are occurring. But within the states themselves, decomposition seems to be accelerating towards unsuspected levels. It is undeniable that societies are going through a process of decomposition that seems irreversible (with a fragile value system, the spread of a self-destructive relativism, vulnerability and social manipulation, lack of leadership and lack of ideals that promote a far-reaching collective project).

So, on the one hand, we have an increasingly weakened State and a more fragmented society, and if we add to this the structural problems of globalization, the scenario does not look very good. Jason Reza Jorjani analyzes this problem in his book “World State of Emergency” in greater depth and comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to establish a new world order, the constitution of a world government is necessary, which would be the next phase in the evolution of globalism, but something like this will not be easy to achieve. At least from the democratic approach of discussion and agreements it will not be achieved, and immediate action is necessary. So the states will have to armor themselves first, to organize themselves internally so that they do not disappear, and that will be a mortal struggle because in the midst of fragmentation there will naturally emerge resistance and collective opposition to being absorbed by a world government that clearly opposes the nationalist discourse and the defense of the sovereignty of the states.

Thus, in the coming years we are going to see this fierce struggle between models of social coexistence that will seek to impose themselves by force. It is not the first time that societies seek a sense, a direction for their survival based on force. That is why it seems appropriate to recover the ideas of Thomas Hobbes and Max Stirner, because both reflect in some way this opposition of collective and individual meanings in our time.

Hobbes’ sovereign power

Thomas Hobbes lived in a convulsive time and his thought reflects this reality. His main approach argues that man is evil by nature. He identifies him as essentially ambitious, distrustful, selfish, greedy for power, he who glorifies himself at the expense of his fellow men. Under these conditions his natural state is war. And the risk that the human race runs, in allowing itself to be carried away by this instinct, is to destroy itself.

Hobbes thus depicted human nature as profoundly marked by selfishness, by self-interest; happiness depended on the pursuit of this wellbeing materialized in the annihilation of the other (who also pursued the same purpose). In this basic state of nature there is no law, property, justice or “right”. Instead of coexistence there is a perpetual conflict of humans who fought each other for survival. The state of nature is based on competition between equals. Each man tries to outdo his neighbor. The result is open conflict, a war of all against all. For each man, surrounded by his enemies, death is more likely than happiness. Life is, in Hobbes’ famous phrase, “lonely, poor, nasty, brutish and short” (Rowlandson 1998).

Hobbes was deeply concerned about the future of society. Under these conditions it was evident that civilization would collapse. He tried to devise a way of organizing it so that the individual interest of its members would have the maximum freedom to act without encroaching on the “rights” of others. He proposed, then, that individual rights be ceded (i.e. that each individual renounce the pursuit of his own interest) to a single sovereign through a contract or social pact.

“The cession falls on a person who is called sovereign and all others are his subjects” (1998). By ceding rights to this figure, the power of authority is being attributed to him (to deliberate, will and act instead of the deliberation, will and action of each man separately). Here lies the essence of the pact, because it would be meaningless if the subjects did not comply with it and the sovereign would not enforce it. It is understood that the contract empowers the sovereign to do so. “Covenants, without the sword, are but words,” said Hobbes. Oakeshott (1960) comments, “This is the generation of the great Leviathan …. And its authority and power are intended not only to create and maintain the internal peace of a number of men living together and seeking happiness in proximity to one another, but also to protect this society as a whole against the attacks of the natural man and of other societies.”

The absolutist state (or great Leviathan) is part of the history of mankind, it was born, it emerged at a time when human collectives could not coexist, so it was necessary to apply a model of force, of pressure that would minimize differences. When these were diminished, liberalism was strengthened and matured to give shape to modern national states.

The extension of the values and principles of liberalism to daily coexistence in an overgrown society and the birth of democracy created a social atomization with political and cultural consequences that are visible throughout the world without exception. Globalism, liberalism and democracy face colossal challenges that they will have to resolve in order to survive in the immediate future. This crisis was announced by its opponents decades ago.

The founder of the American Nazi Party, Major George Lincoln Rockwell, analyzed with raw political realism the inconsistent nature of democracy and liberalism. In his magnum opus “White Power” he argues that force is the only condition that keeps societies united (Rowlandson 1998):

“The central fact which is being forgotten in today’s insane world is Force!
Liberalism and intellectualism have so blinded Western Man that the majority of us have forgotten the absolute and total primacy of force. Every grain of sand on every beach in the world is where it is because of a force which put it there. When superior force meets weaker force, superior force always conquers and annihilates the weaker. The liberals and mushheads wish it were otherwise, and today’s artificial world of machinery makes it appear possible to them that force can be replaced by ‘reason’.
But this is as irrational and superstitious a bit of jungle ‘thought’ as that of any witch doctor waving a lizard’s tail over a cannibal with a broken leg. If good men abandon and denigrate force, then bad men will take it up and beat us to death with it. When good men lay down their club, bad men will smash them with that club sooner or later.
If I get over only one single point in this book let it be this fact: that civilisation, peace, and order depend, not on ‘good will’, but force, policemen, armies, and weapons.
Hitler put it more succinctly and more poetically than I could hope to: ‘The gentle Goddess of Peace can walk Safely only at the side of the Fierce God of War’.”

We are not suggesting that Hobbes is the intellectual basis of Nazism. However, there are undeniable coincidences, and this is so because Nazism was a fascist regime sustained in tyranny. Every authoritarian state ends up reproducing the same structure that Hobbes conceived in his time. Hobbes’ social pact is not based on public inquiries but is imposed as the result of a structural crisis that threatens the unity of the national state. And that is the reality of today’s world. The trend of globalism and liberalism aimed at eliminating borders, creating institutions of global scope that would lead to a government of the same dimensions, but the result has been the opposite, and societies are running a serious risk of disintegrating in a process of regression in which forms of government based on tribalism and isolation will once again predominate.

At this point it is interesting to analyze what Hobbes had in mind about the dissenting forces, those who at some point wanted to break the social pact and subvert the order to take power away from the sovereign.

Textually he said: “For the greater part have declared to the sovereign with consenting voices; he that dissents must now consent with the rest; that is, be content to confess all the deeds he will do, or else he will be justly destroyed by the rest” (Rowlandson 1998).

Oakeshott (1960) in his analysis concludes: “To be a dissenter, that is, to reject the peace established between his neighbors by continuing to exercise his natural right intact, is to choose the worst of both worlds: to rely on his individual power against the concentrated power of everyone else, which is the action of a lunatic. And only similar madness would lead a man, who thought he had not been a part of the covenant, to stand up for his natural rights.” The destiny of the rebel is clearly marked by isolation and self-destruction. Opposing the will of the majority leads to an explicit contempt for society because the rebel insinuates in his attitude a contempt for the values and decisions shared by others.

According to Stirner, the individual is inalienable

Hobbes thought the concentration of power in a single sovereign was the only way out for the society of his time to survive, however, for Stirner it was the most repudiatory of forms because it nullified the nature of the individual. “I want to hold jealously to my property. Society has the propensity, stronger or weaker according to the fullness of its power, to become an authority for its members and to set limits for them; it asks, and must ask, for a “limited understanding of the subject,” it asks that those who belong to it submit to it, be its “subjects”; it exists only by subjection…. Society demands that those who belong to it do not go beyond and exalt themselves, but that they remain ‘within the limits of legality,’ that is, that they allow themselves only what society and its law allow them” (Rowlandson 1998).

If we dig into Stirner’s thought, we can understand that his rejection of the figure of the sovereign is based on the regressive implications it has for the individual and his nature.  In his philosophy he is the master of himself and in this condition, he is the “only one” who can create reality and, therefore, establish it. This gives him a unique property that materializes in his individuality as a special being with a physical constitution that distinguishes him from the rest. Thus, for Stirner the individual cannot be absorbed into any category more extensive, not even into the category of “human.” In other words, “we define ourselves by ourselves and must not let ourselves be defined by God, the state, culture or anything else” (Groothuis 2021).

Stirner’s individual is not categorizable because to do so would be to reify his nature. Even being absorbed by an ideology entailed a degradation because one ends up becoming a “slave of ghosts or spectres that do not exist”. Thus, the individual has the recognition of supreme deity in Stirner’s thought, and like God cannot be reduced to a lower form. “For anyone to pretend that there are objective abstract categories beyond the one, is to suffer alienation from one’s own power as a creator. That is, I am depriving myself of my legitimate power for something unreal” (2021).

This is where the controversy comes because if the individual is God, this means that he is beyond good and evil, therefore, he is not subject to any moral restriction in his actions. This is the intellectual basis that would allow, for example, to justify the irresponsible depredation of nature because it is incompatible with the needs and expectations of the individual or to kill because he sees in the adversary (another deity) a danger to his existence. “Therefore, to think that I have moral responsibilities – for example, not to murder a fellow human being simply because I am a human being – is a false reification of a mere idea into an objective (and absolute) reality. To love one’s neighbor as oneself “becomes doubly impossible: there is no “neighbor” (a phantom) and there are no demands of “love” (another phantom)” (2021).

There is no doubt that Stirner wanted to justify individual action without limits. This absolute autonomy would free the “only one” from any moral truth outside his own subjectivity, and thus justify any action, despicable from our moral sense, but acceptable from the subjective construction of the individual who sees himself as a deity. The Nazis, for example, still feel no remorse or regret for the genocide they committed against other human groups. And this is so because they do not share the same ethical and moral system of liberal and democratic societies, therefore, what Hitler did is acceptable to them and they would repeat it if they had that power again. This is where the extremist view of the moral autonomy of the “only one” in Stirner’s thought can lead us.

In opposition to Hobbes, Stirner proposed a “union of egoists,” a kind of voluntary association of conscious egoists. “The union will undoubtedly offer a greater measure of freedom; but, nevertheless, it will still contain a good deal of unfreedom and involuntariness. Because its purpose is not freedom (which, on the contrary, it sacrifices to possession) but only possession” (Rowlandson 1998). In this way Stirner’s society would become a conflicting terrain of plots temporarily united by immediate ends that assure possession and power over the others. On the contrary, each group (if they manage to coincide in a purpose beyond their limited selfishness) would fight among themselves not to be absorbed and ultimately to survive the yearnings of the other to destroy it.

As pointed out in the introduction, globalism is in crisis not only because of its poor performance and results, but also because the meanings that validated it are deeply questioned and this has led to the emergence of new socio-political semantics, even others that were believed to be extinct have risen again and are becoming political referents for action. And everything points to reinforcing the individual nature on the one hand and on the other to recovering the nationalist discourse and sovereignty with values and principles opposed to globalism, liberalism and democracy. At this point the nature of the “unique” is imposing itself and threatens to destroy modern societies.

A third alternative

It is true that Stirner’s philosophy reflects the reality of modern societies, but that does not mean that they will collapse, nor does it mean that a world authoritarian government will impose itself to avoid collapse. Although both can be imposed and become the world reference of coexistence, there is an alternative that we would like to explore. The proposal would be to unite both dimensions, but this implies a drastic change in the way we construct the semantics of social coexistence.  Conceptually we invoke the proposal of physicist and philosopher Danah Zohar.

Zohar analyzes sociality from a quantum approach, therefore, the first thing she questions is the epistemic origin of social thought. The problem lies in continuing to understand the individual and society from the classical causal closure of physics (CCCF). Recall that this approach emphasized the physicalism of social relations and phenomena, assuming that they can be explained as separable and predictable objects. Zohar’s contribution gives a quantum approach to individual and collective understanding using categories from quantum physics such as the wave-particle relationship.

At the epistemic basis of the classical causal closure of physics is atomism-reductionism as methods imported from the physical sciences to understand society. From this point of view, society, the collective, dissolves into the sum of its individual members. Technically speaking society is nothing more than a random collection of separate and fragmented “individuals”. Unity or community are illusions or emergent phenomena. This approach clearly privileged the position of the individual in society. Society was understood on the basis of the defense of the rights of the individual, which led to the exaltation of conflict as the central axis of the social relationship. It is important to understand that historical conditions determined this type of interpretation. For Hobbes, the conflictive human nature would lead society to a perpetual conflict of all against all.

The other essential element discovered by the classical causal closure of physics in social studies was the force understood as an external influence that allows the cohesion of the parts. Clearly this concept has physical references with a notable causal influence. Recall that, in Newtonian physics, atoms colliding in the natural world are bound together by forces, by push, pull and repulsion. In space this same principle is applied to understand the motion of stars and planets and why they are held together. Force, as a new instrument of causality, seemed to offer a secular explanation of how the physical world works.

One does not have to go very far to discover that social thought was notoriously influenced by the causal concept of force. In Hobbes’ thought itself there is a recognition of the natural aggressive state of the individual. Literally Hobbes argues that man is evil by nature and in that condition it is impossible to achieve a common association. But while distinguishing this natural weakness of the human being, a practical solution is proposed. To placate the individual forces with a repressive force. This interpretation would be the outline of the modern state. Hobbes recognizes it as a necessary power that must be coercive to restrain the impulses of the individual.

The problem with this approach based on the CCCF is that it is based on properties that are not a reflection of true human nature. Causality, force, individualism are natural properties of human beings, they are part of their reality, but by themselves they are not the whole reality. For example, we cannot build community bonds when we bring people into a forced relationship. We make a mistake by conceiving the individual as primary and separate (as an object) and the social whole as a construct.

The development of the social sciences made it possible to think about society from a different perspective. Although some fundamental aspects of the classical causal closure of physics were left aside, other aspects were nuanced, which together continued to address the problem in an incomplete manner. Thus, there was a shift from an atomistic-reductionist approach that exalted individuality to a collectivist one that promoted the group.

Collectivist philosophers emphasized the unity, the whole, the group, but minimizing or denying the importance of the multiplicity, the part or the individual. Unity is assumed as a superior reality that is above all individual differences. The origins of this conceptualization can be found in the classical thought of Rousseau when he recognized that the collective reality is inalienable and indivisible and exists beyond individual motivations and preferences. Rousseau called the collective “the general will”, saying that it requires “the total alienation of each associate, and all his rights, to the whole community”.

Of course, neither the individualist nor the collectivist approach has disappeared. The danger of all forms of collectivism is individual diversity (and therefore individual creativity) because it represents an obstacle to unity or collective “identity”. This in theory, in practice means that those individuals or groups that are not part of the collectivity are seen as chaotic and dangerous. They are to be repressed, “re-educated” (a practice that is widespread in communist movements, fascist governments and more commonly in religious cults), uprooted, discarded or even, in the most extreme cases, exterminated.

In conclusion, true community cannot be founded by creating a collection of intrinsically private beings. This is the individual model. But neither can community be based on the denial or exclusion of the private or the individual. Clearly, both approaches do not reflect the reality of our daily experience. In our daily lives we experience a more creative dialogue between ourselves as private individuals and ourselves as public persons, or as members of the community.

It is unrealistic to suggest that a society is made up only of private individuals or public persons, because reality itself puts us in both conditions that vary according to the context and the individual’s own interest. Thanks to this framework we can understand why any group is vulnerable to disruption when it becomes too restrictive or invasive (with private space, personal rights or individual expression). In such cases, a spontaneous response of the individual to break the system is natural.

It is therefore necessary to find a balance whereby the individual and the group coexist. Perhaps an adequate metaphor to understand this problem is the relationship of the individual with his family. We know that through this process the individual cooperates with his family group, not only because he is part of it, but also because there is a higher moral value that unites them. But this does not prevent the person from growing up with his own individual values and expectations. In this sense, it is necessary to formulate an understanding that captures the individual sense of the person and the group sense that links them through higher values.

On the one hand, the individual can no longer be understood separately from his or her community; the sense of individuality by nature is partially altered. Let us return to the context of the family. Due to superior physical conditions and moral values, whoever integrates a family inevitably loses part of his individuality, but is enriched by a group personality, that of his family. In doing so, each one sacrifices part of the indeterminate potential that he/she keeps within him/herself.

At the social level, it is more complex, but essentially the principle is the same. When we socialize, either being part of some specific group, or personally with other people, the dynamics of transformation of individuality is the same as that which operates in the family, the isolated self in this case, is diluted and mixed with others acquiring an additional personality.

Before proceeding further, the following should be noted. First, it is necessary to distance oneself from the collectivist model. In the new approach individuality is not excluded, it is preserved as an essential part and precondition for collectivity. Second, how is the individual self to be understood in this framework? What is proposed is to give it a creative property that marks not only the definition of its individuality, but is indispensable for society and the formation of the public personality.

In this approach, attention is focused not only on the processes of integration, but also on the creative part that is necessary for the individual to be complete, but prior to this, it is necessary for society to allow these conditions. In this sense the relationship would go in two directions. First, recognizing that the individual is essentially creative by the natural effects of his own will, therefore, it is impossible to have a society of mentally conditioned individuals. Will (which is an intrinsic part of consciousness) is disruptive to the forces of causal materialism. Second, a vital society with openness to growth in all possible directions does not restrict creativity, it cultivates and nurtures it, otherwise it would collapse.

The society-individual relationship is mutually beneficial, clarifying that neither party can exist without the other. This leads us to recognize that none of us achieves fulfillment in isolation. The community, on the other hand, needs individuals to preserve their own space that allows them to develop the creative potential they naturally possess. 

By allowing these areas to retain their autonomy, society is allowing the capacity for free “individual expression” to flow naturally, which is a natural property that every person has as a creative “belonging” of his or her own. At this point it is necessary to make a clarification due to the connotations of freedom associated with creativity. Zohar explains it by appealing to quantum reality. Thus she states that the human being will always have two naturally open frames: the partial potential of his individual characteristics and the wave potential of his relational characteristics. The former reflects his individual personality and the latter his public personality. Both are important and will recur in the theoretical discussion of society. Following Zohar’s argument, the human being can move between both personalities because of the inner freedom he possesses and which is natural.

This inner freedom to become is the basis of the self’s motivation to enter into a relationship or community or to have experience. It is through these relationships or experiences that we grow, that we realize our own potentialities.

The implications for a quantum society are that its members will exhibit the greatest degree of creative effectiveness (the least alienation) if they are not too constrained by rules and procedures. Limiting the creative potential to the members of a collectivity with bureaucratic rules deprives them of any agency or power over the outcome of their actions – hence “alienation.” The opposite is a flexible organization that allows and even encourages individual creativity because “group agency” or a sense of purpose emerges.

Zohar argues that this relationship is not accidental, but is deeply linked to essential patterns of nature, which is why the American scientist appeals to Von Foerster’s Theorem and the Uncertainty Principle as foundational principles of reality. Both explain an essential natural relationship observed in both microscopic and macroscopic realities: the less fixed or more uncertain the behavior of any element of a system, the greater its influence on the system as a whole.

Zohar proposes that uncertainty is a structural element in the formation of society because it allows us to construct social situations of indefinite potential. For example, whenever we gather together, or wherever we come together in groups, communities or nations, the indeterminacy inherent in the situation gives us the potential to correlate with one another, the potential for the emergent holism of the group to express itself.

So far it is clear that the basis of any simple or complex social grouping depends on the intertwining of the individual and public personality of each person, as well as on the conditions of freedom and creativity provided for such intertwining. These properties are deeply rooted in quantum reality, but they fail to explain the problem of intentionality. Human beings may share some properties with subatomic particles, but there are substantial differences that define the nature of both. And one of those characteristics is will or intention, which is an essential part of consciousness. In sociality we do not only relate because we are creative or have the freedom to do so, but because we want to do so, and not only that, but we decide to maintain the union whether it is simple or complex because we want to. We build a memory about it, that’s why the experience becomes semantic. The nature of subatomic particles is different. Once they separate from the collective they disassociate completely. They do not retain a memory of their previous shared state. This point is important because it allows us to understand human sociality from the framework of their intentions. This will allow us to understand why the complex societies we have remain relevant and have not self-destructed due to the conflict of individual interests.

To understand this context, Zohar focuses on the intentions of each person, on how they adjust to social relationships. He analyzes two scenarios subject to individual and group expectations. To do so, he takes some considerations from the philosophical thought of Thomas Nagel, who incorporated superposition in the treatment of social relations, thus connecting himself unwittingly with a fundamental property of the quantum world. According to Nagel human nature is uncertain in many respects. Essentially all people have within themselves two points of view, the personal and the impersonal. In the personal approach, the individual takes care of himself, away from his own interests. But from the impersonal point of view, he identifies with the needs and desires of others.

Zohar gives a quantum approach to Nagel’s interpretation. The personal point of view is the characteristic of the particle and the impersonal point of view is the wave. But their nature is not defined separately, but as a whole, so they coexist in superposition. Negel agrees with this, that is why he considers that both points of view are inseparable. Thus, without the impersonal point of view there would be no morality, only the collision, compromise and occasional convergence of individual perspectives. There would be no society in these terms and no community because alliances would be susceptible to the individual whims and expectations of each person. The other would exist only as a means to an end that can be emergent to the changing context.

If the individualistic mode prevailed there would be no society and if the collectivistic mode prevailed there would be no free and creative individuals. Neither model is universal. So the question is what society do we have? Appealing to the quantum approach where uncertainty, superposition, and the will that is permanently clashing with the limits of causal determinism operate, it is not difficult to perceive that first our societies have a high level of complexity which in turn means that they are increasingly difficult to predict, i.e. it is less effective to apply materialistic interpretative systems. Second, despite the uncertainty that derives from social complexity, social conglomerates have not disappeared. There is a crisis of legitimacy of political systems, democracies are increasingly questioned and globalization itself as a political, economic and cultural framework looks uncertain, but this has not translated into the dissolution of states nor has it led to a staggered world civil war. And here comes the novelty of the interpretation because at the same time that there is a movement towards disintegration, there immediately arises another force that exerts a restorative action that avoids collapse. This point is of utmost importance because it would show that human beings are naturally susceptible to the claims of others. Something like this is only possible when in the same universe coexist personal and impersonal points of view that are permanently clashing for a transformation of human coexistence.

This social reality of coexistence between personal (the particle manifestation) and impersonal (the wave manifestation) viewpoints defines integration and explains why societies exist as we know them. With our particle aspect we separate ourselves and experience life from our own point of view; with our wave aspect the individual self becomes collective, because it is intertwined with the self of others. It is this duality that allows us to “contain and be contained by others without our personal essence becoming completely isolated or exhausted.” It is this duality that makes us persons and members of a community.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Rowlandson, Paul. 1998. “Hobbes, Stirner & Authority”. Published in Philosophy Now. Issue 22: Winter 1998/99.

Groothuis. Douglas. 2018. All Things are Nothing To Me: The Unique Philosophy of Max Stirner. Zero Books.

Zohar, Danah. 1990. The Quantum Self: Human Nature and Consciousness Defined by the New Physics. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc.

Zohar, Danah e Ian Marshall. 1994. The Quantum Society: Mind, Physics and a New Social Vision. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc.