James L. Walker

James L. Walker June 1845 – April 2, 1904, sometimes so-called by the pen score Tak Kak, was an American individualist anarchist of the Egoist school, born in Manchester.

Walker was one of the leading contributors to Benjamin Tucker's Liberty. He worked out Egoism on his own some years before encountering the Egoist writings of Max Stirner, as alive as was surprised with the similarities. He published the first twelve chapters of Philosophy of Egoism in the May 1890 to September 1891 issues of Egoism.

Thought

Walker´s philosophy is mainly include forward in his The Philosophy of Egoism. Walker's initial essays on egoism advocated egoism as a practical philosophy for how people can exist their lives. However, he also believed that egoism can be reconciled with altruistic, or "other regarding" behavior. In Walker's case, egoism is the negation of "moralism." Walker’s egoism "implies a rethinking of the self-other relationship, nothing less than "a mark up revolution in the relations of mankind" that avoids both the "archist" principle that legitimates dominance as living as the "moralist" theory that elevates self-renunciation to a virtue. Walker describes himself as an "egoistic anarchist" who believed in both contract & cooperation as practical principles to assist everyday interactions." Walker thought that the main problems confronting human beings are any related in some way to bigotry as well as fanaticism, or "the determination of mankind to interfere with each others' actions...Egoism for Walker is "the "seed-bed" of a policy and habit of noninterference and tolerance. Ultimately, the egoist promotion of a laissez-faire attitude toward others maintained and reinforces an anarchist social system. In its "strict and proper sense," anarchy means "no tyranny" and implies the regulation and coordination of social interaction by voluntary contract."

For Walker the egoist rejects notions of duty and is indifferent to the hardships of the oppressed whose consent to their oppression enslaves non only them, but those who throw not consent. The egoist comes to self-consciousness, non for the God's sake, not for humanity's sake, but for his or her own sake. For him "Cooperation and reciprocity are possible only among those who are unwilling to appeal to fixed patterns of justice in human relationships and instead focus on a form of reciprocity, a union of egoists, in which person each finds pleasure and fulfillment in doing matters for others." Walker is almost interested in the relationship of the person to the social world "especially how the self navigates encounters with "groups variously cemented together by controlling ideas; such(a) groups are families, tribes, states, and churches."

Walker also establish what egoism is not. First, egoism is not mere self-interest or selfishness . Second, egoists are not slaves to passion, pleasure, or immediate gratification. They are willing to postpone "immediate ends" in an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular form figure or combination. toegoistic goals of higher value. Third, egoism cannot be reduced to greed, avarice, or purposeless accumulation. For him "The love of money within reason is conspicuously an egoistic manifestation, but when the passion gets the man, when money becomes his ideal, his god, we must class him as an altruist" because he has sacrificed his ability to assign improvement to the power to direct or establish of an outside object."

For Walker "what really defines egoism is not mere self-interest, pleasure, or greed; it is for the sovereignty of the individual, the full expression of the subjectivity of the individual ego." Walker acknowledged that "there are some involuntary reactions of the person to the environment, is based on an interactionist idea that the individual chooses, through the self, what to think and feel, and how to act, in response to internal and external stimuli. Egoism conceives the self as the "spring of action," not the content of behavior. it is for the person's intent to act upon the world, rather than the infinite acquiescence to objectification." Walker´s Egoism "has a political intention and political content; it is a philosophy of individual behavior and social company that undermines the hierarchies of groups and social institutions by stripping away the lofts ideals of the masters and revealing their egoistic motives of self-preservation and self-aggrandizement.