In today’s episode I discuss the tv series Severance and religious or cult mentality and Stirner’s ownness. I also review the 2024 book Max Stirner and the Political Theology of Fanaticism (find a link below).
Below you can also find various book suggestions and further reading regarding topics discussed on the podcast:
0:01 Part I Introduction
1:10 Part II Spook of the Week: Severance & Marxism
45:06 Part IV Living Ownness: Religion & Cult Mentality (Why do we need something more than ourselves?)
1:07:02 Part V Spotlight: Max Stirner and the Political Theology of Fanaticism by Jorn Janssen
1:14:51 Announcements
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SUGGESTED READING (if you use these links I receive a commission payment via the Amazon Affiliate Program)
Jorn Janssen: Max Stirner and the Political Theology of Fanaticism (2024): https://amzn.to/3XLvQ7x
Reddit Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/SeveranceAppleTVPlus/comments/1if2rw3/severance_is_a_modern_allegory_for_marxist_theory/
Max Stirner – The Ego and Its Own: https://amzn.to/4j75x3F
Sigmund Freud – Civilization and Its Discontents: https://amzn.to/4hUjbGm
Sigmund Freud - The Future of an Illusion:https://amzn.to/3DWlsDh
Karl Marx - The German Ideology: https://amzn.to/3DWlqv9
Karl Marx - Saint Max (deleted from most versions): https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch03a.htm
Ludwig Feuerbach – The Essence of Christianity: https://amzn.to/3RpR1IN
Max Weber – The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: https://amzn.to/3FQGkfx
Martin Heidegger – Being and Time (esp. Division 1, §§27-38): https://amzn.to/42olf3X
Jean Paul Sartre: Being and Nothingness: https://amzn.to/3XMnOv6
Friedrich Nietzsche - On the Genealogy of Morals: https://amzn.to/420FXYB
Other suggested reading:
Byung-Chul Han – The Burnout Society: https://amzn.to/43Hkxkr
Examines how the modern subject internalizes the “spook” of productivity and self-optimization. A short, brilliant, Stirnerian analysis of our neoliberal selves.
David Smail – The Origins of Unhappiness: https://amzn.to/3RCL4bg
Psychologist who argues that personal unhappiness comes from societal power structures—not individual choices. Pairs with a critique of ideology-as-coping.
David Loy – Lack and Transcendence: The Problem of Death and Life in Psychotherapy, Existentialism, and Buddhism: https://amzn.to/4jdcikG
Takes Freud, Heidegger, Lacan, and Buddhist thought to explain why humans feel incomplete—and how they cope. Ownness vibes all the way.
Eugene Thacker – In the Dust of This Planet: https://amzn.to/42nQEDy
Blends nihilism, occult philosophy, and horror—touches on the religious impulse to dissolve in the Outside. Very Stirnerian without naming Stirner.
Peter Sloterdijk – You Must Change Your Life: https://amzn.to/3YhBEWq
Critiques modern subjectivity and training of the self—ironically reinforcing how spooks of “self-improvement” haunt us.
Mark Epstein – The Trauma of Everyday Life: https://amzn.to/3XO0xsG
A Buddhist-informed Freudian take on the self’s illusion and the ego’s fear of its own dissolution. Connects surprisingly well to Stirner’s critique of the oceanic.
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