Der Einzige und sein Eigentum

by Max Stirner, Ahlrich Meyer (Editor)

Der Einzige und sein Eigentum

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, Psychology, Theory, German Literature, Classics

463 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1844

About the author

Johann Kaspar Schmidt, better known as Max Stirner (the nom de plume he adopted from a schoolyard nickname he had acquired as a child because of his high brow, in German 'Stirn'), was a German philosopher, who ranks as one of the literary grandfathers of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism and anarchism, especially of individualist anarchism. Stirner's main work is "The Ego and Its Own", also known as "The Ego and His Own" ("Der Einzige und sein Eigentum" in German, which translates literally as "The Only One and his Property"). This work was first published in 1844 in Leipzig, and has since appeared in numerous editions and translations.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Ego And His Own would be more properly titled The Unique And Its Property. Like a lot of German Philosophy books, the English translation does not do it justice.

Even though this book was written when Nietzsche was a child, Stirner goes far beyond anything Nietzsche could dream of. This may be the most underrated book in history. People are only now beginning to appreciate it.

The Ego And His Own destroys the foundations for the authority of the modern Secular State. The most important thing to remember when reading is Stirner never used the word "ego" himself. When he speaks of the "I" he means his non-reified, uniquely lived experience.

He brilliantly makes the case that one's interests are their own, and can only be their own regardless of what religious or secular authoritarians (including modern day Leftists like Noam Chomsky & Micheal Albert) say.

This book will go over most people's heads, but for those who can appreciate it, it is worth far more than its weight in gold.

[Marc Lamot]

“Nothing is more to me than myself!”
Let’s be honest: this is absolutely not an easy read: verbose, cumbersome, bombastic, incantatory and above all an incessant bombardment of propositions, edging unreadability. I understand the comparison with Nietzsche, that other iconoclast, certainly when it comes to the idiosyncratic character of Stirner’s thinking: you have to constantly switch your mindset, because he has the habit of filling in words and concepts very differently than we would do now, and probably also as one did in his time. Take for instance the ‘egoism’ that he so extols, with which he means something quite different than our negative connotation. Or the ‘spiritual’ by which he also means rationalism, and so on. So you have to keep your mind on it.

But if you succeed, then this turns out to be an exceptionally rich book, which constantly challenges obvious and generally accepted assumptions (there’s Nietzsche again). Provocative, and sometimes also annoying. In fact, he could be called one of the first critics of modernity (I will ignore Joseph De Maistre here, who belongs to a completely different trend); in this respect, I found his criticism of Protestantism particularly lucid (I suspect that Charles Taylor got his inspiration from this).

But what should we ultimately think of the era of the ego that he defended? I can see what he means, and also that it has been largely realized in our Western liberal society: the free-spirited individual who can achieve his maximum fulfillment through complete self-determination. Beautiful, at least on paper, only: at what cost? Just think of excessive individualism, amoral consumerism, or extreme inequality. Stirner's iconoclasm certainly has its merits, but he clearly remained blind to the downsides of his acclaimed egoism.

PS. I don't know if it was ever pointed out, but this book was published (1845) shortly before the first (not yet so extensive edition) of Leaves of Grassby Walt Whitman. Coincidence?

[Basma Abdallah Uraiqat · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've ever read! It has truly opened my eyes to many things and has changed me. I have always struggled with the issue of ego as I have always perceived in in the traditional sense. But now I see it differently and I have become more aware of the power of the self and freedom of mind.

This book can be the best book to read and the most dangerous at the same time. I believe that if one was not mature enough intellectually it might become an excuse to be irresponsible. However, if one has a relatively mature understanding of the conflicts of self and of the struggle with real freedom then it can be the most liberating.

It was a little bit difficult to keep up with the writer as he tends to change the subject and cut the flow of ideas sometimes. He also tends to repeat many ideas but in general it was all serving the idea and the repetition felt more like emphasis than boring repetition.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's Might is Right, but German. More perfidious, less violent. It's as if Ragnar Redbeard had traded in the steroids for an actual philosophical education. The introduction he wrote was a delight to read. At least at the time. Nowadays, I'm far less inclined to call myself an egoist, but would probably still admire the rhetorics. While Stirners sneering is occasionally entertaining, it gets boring fast, however. Worse, he either seems to have forgotten the actual argumentation, or it got lost in the sea of smug puns and will assertions. Probably a mix of both.

I guess there was a critique of capitalism hidden somewhere in there, but it's hard to take serious because, well, he basically asked us not to. What does a Stirnerite care about the plight of the workers when he has disavowed morality and basic human decency? Does the sight of them hurt his sensibilities, or is he just really enthusiastic about telling other people they're not egoistic enough? Especially the latter sounds quite like ethically motivated behavior to me, which reinforces my (not quite original) thesis that emotivists of all shades are not actually "unspooked", they just refuse to be introspective when it comes to moral judgements. In any case, Stirners critique of capitalism is of extremely limited value. Either it's baseless to begin with, or it isn't, but then Stirner w0uld have to deal with ethical justifications for the capitalist mode of production, which he doesn't.

Then there's Stirners atheism, which I don't think he really justified either. He doesn't have anything to say on scholastic metaphysics, and hence he also has nothing to say to religious philosophers. So if your faith is founded on something other than emotions - which it should be -, fear not the Stirner. Like most physicalists, he seeks to convince through the boldness of his assertions, not the soundness of his arguments.

Stirner, at the end of the day, seems to be just another product of a time that couldn't have been more confused about the nature of morality. After Virtue includes a very powerful critique of emotivism, and Ethica Thomistica has another. As I said above, Stirnerites have a serious problem: They claim to be nihilists, but still moralize as bad as everyone else. Could it be, then, that their position is impossible to implement in the actual world? Certainly, and if Saint Thomas Aquinas is to be believed, then it's absurd even in concept, because every action has a moral character, the question is only whether you do it right or wrong. Stirnerites, then, are playing the game like everyone else, they're just setting themselves up for failure.

[Atlas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author makes Ayn Rand look like a hippie compared to him.

[M · Rating 5 out of 5]

That Stirner has been read as a political philosopher is a disaster, though not unsurprising. Because Stirner dedicates so much of the text to a takedown of socio-political ideas, one can easily get the impression that spookbusting is the egoist raison d’etre, and that Stirner engages in this behaviour because he’s paving the way for a constructive substitution. This vulgarised Stirner is on a mission to rid the world of fixed ideas, of holy ghosts, of causes. This becomes his—cause. His ideal then is to rid the world of spooks. When read this way, the reader ends up putting more emphasis on the notion of the “union of egoists” than they should, missing much of the philosophical argument of the book, and if such a reader becomes a convinced Stirnerite, it’s not long before they’re loudly and irritatingly declaring everything to be a spook, or, as Landstreicher’s translation helpfully calls them (as I will from now on), a phantasm.

Landstreicher’s phantasm captures, much better than Byington’s “spook”, Stirner’s assertion that thought-as-spirit (Hegelian Geist) haunts the world, and that thoughts possess the unconscious egoist in a relationship of dominance. But if The Unique and Its Property is a manual for getting the upper hand, it is not because it teaches that one can use thought to defeat thought, that one can rid the world of phantasms through critique and find a ground of a-phantasmic (dispossessed) correctness. This belief in the power of criticism is precisely the ultimate object of Stirner’s critique: “Criticism is the fight of the possessed one against possession as such, against all possession; a fight that is founded in the consciousness that possession—or, as the critic calls it, a religious and theological attitude—exists everywhere. So he wants to break up thoughts by thinking—but I say, only thoughtlessness really saves me from thoughts. It isn't thinking, but my thoughtlessness, or I, the unthinkable, inconceivable, that frees me from possession.”

Still, that Stirner is misunderstood does not occur in spite of Stirner, but because of Stirner. Stirner is forever getting in the way of himself. This book is sloppy, somehow managing to be both repetititous to the point of pedantic, and vague to the point of frustration. His usage of the word “property” especially is clumsy and confusing; its meaning shifts and changes throughout the text, often within the same line of argument, and so its no wonder that self-proclaimed “egoists” often get the wrong end of the stick. There are several distinct senses of “property” at work in The Unique and Its Property, and to understand how they all fit together, it’s necessary to understand Stirner’s ontology, which is built up sporadically throughout the text, and requires careful reconstruction.

Before any distinction between subject and object arises in thought, there is only the Unique. The Unique, much like Heidegger’s Dasein, is a being who is always-already in a world, a world that shows up for it, whose world is constitutive of it, whose world makes it up, whose world is its property, in the sense of predicate, attribute, proprietas, that is—one’s own. “I” in this ontological sense does not refer to the “I” that thinks, the “doer” attached to the deed in post-production (that is, thought), but to the entire being that makes it up. Every thing in my world is mine, including my “self”, because every thing is a property or predicate by which the being that I am is defined. If a single thing was out of place, I would be other than I am, and that is the first sense in which every thing is my property. Let us call this predicate-property.

Next, there is the sense in which the Unique is my property. Heidegger says that Dasein is, in every case, mine. My view is not yours or anyone else’s but my own. I am the centre of my world. I look out through my eyes, I move with my body, this world-model is generated in my brain. I belong to someone, and by definition, that someone is me. This is property as “ownness”, which is not an idea, but “only a description of—the owner.” I stick to myself like gum to a shoe sole, and I can no sooner get up and leave myself behind and be someone else than I can take up a selfhood that is not my own. Freedom is not, in fact, what Stirner is striving for. Freedom is a childish dream. Freedom can only ever be a “getting rid”, a “longing, a romantic lament, a Christian hope for otherworldliness and the future…” If one is not careful, the thirst for freedom will even have you trying to get rid of yourself: the absurdity of the meditator trying to delete his own self. “Ownness calls you back to yourselves… As own you are actually rid of everything, and what clings to you you have accepted; it is your choice and your pleasure.” Of course the “ego” is an abstraction, an illusion, but I am born in a brain, and my body is mine. Since Stirner defines this sense of property as ownness, we can stick with his term.

Then there is property-as-relation. In this sense, property is anything that I can treat as I like. I can take it up or throw it away. I can obsess over it or be done with it. I can treat it with the deepest affection or the coldest and most distant contempt. It is mine, I own it, precisely because it does not possess me. “Your thoughts are my thoughts, which I dispose of as I will, and which I mercilessly beat down; they are my property, which I annihilate as I like… It doesn’t matter to me that you also call these thoughts yours; they nevertheless remain mine, and how I want to deal with them is my affair, not presumption.” Ownership, property, is here not a simple having and holding, but the right of disposal: “Property is the expression for unlimited control over something (thing, animal, human being) of which ‘I can dispose of as I see fit.’” This is property as potestas—authority, rule; power in the sense of rule or dominion. This sense of property takes on special significance in Stirner’s ontology when we consider the converse situation: possession, that is, when I am possessed by an external thing, by an idea, a phantasm.

We see then how the ontical (experientially conceptualisable) sense of property is based on the deeper, ontological ground on which anything can stand as property for me at all. First, the world and its objects show up for me as properties of myself—predicate-properties. These predicate-properties, in so far as they constitute me and show up in a world that has me at its center, show up in the flux that I create out of myself, a self whose only stable property is that it is owned. This property of self-belonging, of unity of self-and-world as belonging-to-myself, is ownness. Because I am the owner, and because the world is mine, I can then take up things in the world as I like, treat them as I like, be done with them, get rid of them, ignore them, resist them, dominate them, throw them away—in a word, relate to them. Your thoughts are not my property because I say so, but because they show up as predicate-properties of myself, and because they show up for me, I can conduct myself towards them as I like. This “as I like” is not a limitless possibility space, but rather, the simple recognition that I am always mine, that I always own my actions, and that I always may, if I do not allow myself to be possessed, test my might against theirs—or yours.

There are attempts to make Stirner say something constructive about politics, in the same way that there are attempts to make Marx say something constructive about economics—this is because the critical project is easily misunderstood. “What a shame that Marx didn’t tell us what the communist society would look like!” say the religious, but this is only because they put too much stock on thought. Likewise, when Stirner is accused of being a second-rate thinker with no political program, he is sometimes defended like so—“Actually, you haven’t read the book! Stirner wants us to have a union of egoists! A dissolvable-at-will association of free individuals!”—but this expresses no more content than Marx’s “let us finally imagine, for a change, an association of free men, working with the means of production held in common.” In fact, these two men are both aware (there are more similarities between Marx and Stirner than many like to imagine) that to speak in concrete terms of what the future will look like is foolish, that the only people who attempt to index the future in advance are precisely religious thinkers, sacred thinkers, thinkers who think that thought can order the irreducible chaos of world-becoming. “One will ask, but how will it be then, when the have-nots take courage? One might as well ask that I cast a child’s birth chart. To know what a slave will do once he’s broken his chains, one must—await.”

Stirner is a political-ontological pessimist, though “pessimist” implies a dreariness that is certainly no property of Stirner. Thought would like to put its stamp on the world of flux and becoming, to say “the state endures”, “progress endures”, “eternal human rights exist”, and so on, but it is clear enough that thought is not strong enough to contain the irrepressible dynamism of the senseless, formless, noumenal Real outside our brains. Sure, one can make a civilisation and prove that it is the greatest possible, the most stable, the most just, but Stirner shows how this proof always requires an arbitrary ground, a transcendental ideal, one which always falls before sufficient criticism. The proof, however, that thought itself is incomplete will not be forthcoming. Such a thing cannot be proved. Hence, the only way to escape thought is thoughtlessness. Though if we’re looking for evidence, rather than proof, we need only look at how—time and time again—really existing individuals, Uniques, escape the categorisation, stratification, oedipalisation of the state, and rise up, as criminals, insurrectionaries, escapees, delinquents. Meanwhile, beyond the human sphere, the environment, the climate, the natural world, resists being safely arranged by progress, the bastard God-child-ideal of sacred thought. Escape is truly revolutionary, as Deleuze and Guattari said. Over a hundred years before, Stirner tells us insurrection is not a confrontation with the state, but a walling-in and a building-over, a raising-oneself-up, drawing a line of flight, escaping to the outside, aiming at “new arrangements.”

As the temperatures rise, as progress loses its glory and appears as just another sacred idea, as the state intensifies its grip in some places and loses its grip in others, as industrial society breaks down, Stirner reminds us not to waste our time fighting against the established: “My aim is not the overthrow of the established order but my rising up above it, so my intention and action are not a political or social intention and action, but, since they are directed solely toward me and my ownness, an egoistic intention and action.” To let oneself be led into new arrangements even now, what else can motivate this but the religious desire for salvation? “From now on the question is not how a person can gain life, but how he can squander, can enjoy it; or not how he is to produce the true I in himself, but how he is to dissolve himself, to live his life to the full. What else would the ideal be but the sought-after, always distant? One seeks for himself, so he doesn’t yet have himself; he strives for what he should be, thus he is not this. He lives in longing, and lived for thousands of years in it, in hope. It’s something else altogether to live in—enjoyment.”

To live in enjoyment, and not in a haunted world of Panglossian falsehoods. Is it not enough to see clearly?

[Kevin Carson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Exactly the mixture of barrenness and adolescent bravado I anticipated, from my online interactions with the sort of people who have that little Stirner doodle as a social media avi.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stirner is a philosopher to whom nothing is sacred (indeed, not even himself) and maybe that's why he is so skilled at identifying abstract concepts and 'dissolving' them. In the introduction, he immediately offers the following argument as to why God is actually an egoist:


Has he, as is demanded of us, made an alien cause, the cause of truth or love, his own? You are shocked by this misunderstanding, and you instruct us that God’s cause is indeed the cause of truth and love, but that this cause cannot be called alien to him, because God is himself truth and love; you are shocked by the assumption that God could be like us poor worms in furthering an alien cause as his own. "Should God take up the cause of truth if he were not himself truth?" He cares only for his cause, but, because he is all in all, therefore all is his cause! But we, we are not all in all, and our cause is altogether little and contemptible; therefore we must "serve a higher cause." – Now it is clear, God cares only for what is his, busies himself only with himself, thinks only of himself, and has only himself before his eyes; woe to all that is not well-pleasing to him. He serves no higher person, and satisfies only himself. His cause is – a purely egoistic cause.

God demands of us that we serve Good, values like Truth, Kindness, Charity, but he himself is these values... while for us then, these values exist outside of us as objective ethical values that will exist whether we do or not, God himself is these values... and as such, to be ethical is to serve his egoistical cause.

This is his tone throughout the entire book: it doesn't matter whether God exists or not, but it matters that his interests are not my interests. This extends to other abstract principles. Yes, all men and women taken together are Mankind and serving the interests of future men and women thus means serving the interests of the wellbeing of Mankind as a whole: but Man's interest may not be my interest as a man. Man's interests are alien to mine, and therefore humanism as well. This serves as the foundation for the greatest rant against humanism I have ever witnessed and will probably ever witness.

The Humanist, Stirner says, is invested in Man, not people. The humanist is possessed by a 'spook', an idea that has rooted into his mind like a parasite. With this theory he has beaten the memetic theory by 150 years by identifying concepts as 'alien' and often against our particular self-interest. The humanist moralizes and ponders on the 'essence' of Man: Man becomes man through labour, capital, faith, ethics, etc, etc, and if one isn't a 'working man', a 'faithful man' one then isn't really a man at all?! Stirner argues that all these 'grounds' for demanding of people that they act according on one ideal of Man are delusional.

Because of Stirner's derision for formal structure, how he handles different concepts can be confusing, but the weirdness of the book is part of its charm.


To say that Stirner is a nihilist is incorrect: he simply doesn't care about good and evil, as they are outside of himself.

The moral man is necessarily narrow in that he knows no other enemy than the "immoral" man. "He who is not moral is immoral!" and accordingly reprobate, despicable, etc. Therefore the moral man can never comprehend the egoist. Is not unwedded cohabitation an immorality? The moral man may turn as he pleases, he will have to
stand by this verdict; Emilia Galotti gave up her life for this moral truth.
And it is true, it is an immorality. A virtuous girl may become an old maid; a virtuous man may pass the time in fighting his natural impulses till he has perhaps dulled them, he may castrate himself for the sake of virtue as St. Origen did for the sake of heaven: he
thereby honors sacred wedlock, sacred chastity, as inviolable; he is – moral. Unchastity can never become a moral act. However indulgently the moral man may judge and excuse him who committed it, it remains a transgression, a sin against a moral commandment; there clings to it an indelible stain. As chastity once belonged to the monastic vow, so it does to moral conduct. Chastity is a – good. – For the egoist, on the contrary, even chastity is not a good without which he could not get along; he cares nothing at all about it.

Stirner also demolishes the idea of self-interest as a narrow material interest. Who are these people that would claim the interest of the 'self' is in 'saving' oneself when, for example, he and a group of loved ones are in danger? Here's my take: if he or she saved himself and is a normal human being with natural moral and empathic urges, the guilt would literally kill him or drive him to suicide. Indeed, there is more self-interest, then, in proudly sacrificing yourself for the group than living a 'negative' life until eventual suicide. In this take, guilt is egoist: it 'forces' us to make certain desicions we would not make if we weren't feeling guilty or empathic. If normal people only follow a material (or, how Stirner would put it, 'narrow') self-interest it would actually make them unhappy because it would go against quite normal urges we all possess unless we're psychopaths. Indeed, if it makes you happy that others are happy and equal, left-wing egoism is very much in your own self-interest if you decide happiness if what you are 'interested' in. After all, to be interested in something is == to be invested in that thing, and only you are the self... nobody can dictate to you what your actual self-interest is but you!

He sniggers against christians as well:

Those who exhort men to "unselfishness" think they are saying an uncommon deal. What do they understand by it? Probably something like what they understand by "self-renunciation." But who is this self that is to be renounced and to have no benefit? It seems that you yourself are supposed to be it. And for whose benefit is unselfish self-renunciation recommended to you? Again for your benefit and behoof, only that through unselfishness you are procuring your "true benefit.",

Be moral, act against your own interest, and you shall be rewarded through Heaven, Paradise, Breaking the Cycle, etc, etc, etc. For Man, it's the same argument: make sacrifices so that 'Man' may prosper: but why should all sacrifice so that an ideal may prosper? Surely, Man should prosper because we are all men? But, if Man prospers, so that I prosper, for I am a man, why am I making sacrifices? Extend to 'Nation', or 'State' or 'Company' or any concept going through your head.

Although compatible with nihilism but not nihilist per se, this book is to be recommended for everyone that's interested in revolutionary ways of looking at philosophy. Unlike, for example, John Gray, Stirner won't let you sink into a deep depression, and indeed make you feel... excited? Stirner probably lived himself out as he pointed out: that's not my idea of how I want to live my life. But that's the beauty of it. In the entire work, nothing is dictated, at worst recommended. Sometimes it's impractical, sometimes you're barely able to understand it, but it's always funny and... dare I say it? Brilliant.

Man with the great M is only an ideal, the species only something thought of.

[Poncho González · Rating 2 out of 5]

Un libro demasiado largo que resulta complicado de leer y no por su dificultad, sino por su extensión, ya que utiliza mucho texto para dar a conocer ideas muy puntuales y que si son de gran interés.

“yo no me humillo ya ante ningún poder, yo reconozco que cualquier poder no es más que el mío, y que debo abatirlo en cuanto amenace oponerse a mí, o hacerse superior a mí. Todo poder no puede ser considerado sino como uno de mis medios para llegar a sus fines. A todos los poderes que fueron mis señores, los rebajo, pues, al papel de mis servidores. Los ídolos no existen más que por mí, basta que deje de crearlos para que desaparezcan. No hay poderes superiores sino porque yo los elevo y me pongo debajo de ellos.”

[Andrew]

A woman who recently broke my heart said Max Stirner was her god, and so being the masochist I am, I went and read The Ego and Its Own, a book I'd been meaning to read for years, knowing of Stirner as both a precursor to Nietzsche and the subject of a long-ass takedown by Marx in The German Ideology.

So... eh? It was alright, even if it was teenage edgelord philosophy (and some of the references to Jews made it seem more Kiwi Farms than Nietzsche), albeit with some real ideas about the crucial, radical rejection of what Nietzsche would later call slave morality, and even a few echoes of Marxian materialism. Basically Stirner was writing within the German idealist frame of reference, and he needed to find a grand totalizing system, which he called "egoism" (don't get it twisted, he may have used the word, but Ayn Rand and him would have despised one another). The thing is, everything he says is a reaction to something (Hegel, Feuerbach, German liberalism in general, probably someone else's Youtube response video), rather than a platform for further development. Which is why I say it's an edgelord attitude. Do I think that Stirner is right? Sometimes. Do I think that Stirner is an important footnote? Absolutely yes.

[Otto Lehto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book. One star deducted from the fact that, in the proper Hegelian fashion, the essay is needlessly long and repetitive. It would have been a better book at 200 pages, without literally losing a single idea. Now you get to hear everything (at least) twice.

Still, the message continues to inspire and provoke. Read it, I dare you!

[Szplug · Rating 4 out of 5]

PART FIRST completed, in which Max Stirner (Johann Kaspar Schmidt, aka Johann von Galt) casts his discerning and perceptive eye over the cumulative historical progress made by Mankind from that of the Ancients through to the impassioned rhetoric set alight by the Young Hegelians in lower-middle nineteenth century Berlin. In a translation by Steven T. Byington that announces Stirner as an equally exuberant, but slightly less literarily talented Nietzsche, Mad Max cuts into the cant and sophistry and theorizing that has engirt Western society, and finds the principal enslaving meme of the Spook dominating humanity and preventing it from ever realizing itself.

In ancient days Man had to struggle through his period of Negroidity—no, Max would most definitely not get away with such terminology were he miraculously still alive today—such exertions all made in an attempt to get behind Things, the material world, which imposed a natural law against humanity's desire to overcome its physical limitations. Even in religious matters—as occupied the Jews—the physical world was the prime realm of stuggle, one that needed to be mastered if Man was ever to gain manumission from His slavery.

The Ancient became the Modern when Christianity assumed its place of paramountcy—the age of Mongoloidity (Chineseness, where habit becomes morality and the past is held in a reverence over potentiality). The Christian religion deemed the physical world of no importance for Man—his salvation lay entirely within the realm of the Spirit. Because the spiritual is a non-corporeal dominion, it can only be held, shaped, and explored within the contours of the mind; thus, all efforts to get behind it required thinking in copious quantities. As the Modern moved toward (Stirner's) present-day, the Christian Heaven was continually stormed by forward thinkers who sought to replace the old manner of belief with a reformed and new mode, and one that continuously shifted the divine outside of God and interior to Things, the predicate into the subject; a key component being Protestantism, which hollowed out the heavenly idea by infusing the spirit into everything. As religion, at its core, is a binding, now the entire physical world was bound to religion, and the hierarchical apex of the Spirit was now the enslaving master of every manner of thought, the form in relation to which all earthly manifestations conceived (and were capable of conceiving) themselves. With every new storming of the heavens, though, with every new reformation the sacred flowed more strongly towards its creating servant—the end result being the full reversal from God is divine to the Divine is god—and the divine was now Man.

The inevitable result of this merging of the sacred with the flesh was the overthrow of Christianity by the new religion of Man; however, Stirner continually stresses how no Modern revolution has ever proved to be destructive or annihilative, but rather reformatory and ameliorative. There was always a Spook—a phantom, an illusion, a non-corporeality, that was superior to Man and held him in thrall to its laws which were, in the ultimate of ironies, conjured forth by the slave, who thus continually chained and re-chained himself. Stirner then progresses through the French Revolution to examine the emergence in Europe of Liberal Freedom. The latter, upholding liberty before the masses, declared that no more would there be servant and master, but all would be born into an equal terrain, one in which competition would determine winners and losers and dole out earned rewards in the form of possessions—money, property, etc. In short time, alas, master and servant were reincarnated in capital and labour which, under iron laws upheld by a police power that made former absolute kings appear as schoolmarms, again sacrificed Man and his self-realization upon the spook of liberty.

The answer to this? Yet another heavenly storming by the newly proclaimed Socialists, who wished to give everything to the State, which would then magnanimously dole out its booty, in equal portion, to all its citizens. In Stirner's analysis, under socialism all would be united in mediocrity, a nation of ragamuffins worshipping at the altar of the divine State, more enslaved to the newly regnant spook than every before. As the State required, so shall it order, and as it deemed, so shall it hold forth—and back. All would wallow in the servile mud with none lording it over another outside of the invisible idea held in common by all. Against these two freedoms, Liberal and Social, several of Stirner's Young Hegelian colleagues—the charmingly anti-semitic Bruno Bauer held pride of place—championed the idea of a Humane Liberalism, a reformed (naturally) socialist/liberal admixture in which all pursuits, all thoughts, all goals and all collectivities must throw off self-serving, egoistical ends and replace them with the goal of furthering the cause, and being in undying service towards, a complete Humanity. If egoistical ends are discarded in favor of this spirit, each individual will achieve self-fulfillment in the composite flowering of a fully mature Humanity. To our beloved Max, of course, this paleohippy ruminative ideal is another falsehood; he spares no blows of the axe in hewing it down, dismantling its pleasing, reasonable, and laudatory theory to reveal that, at its heart, it has stormed the liberal/socialist heavens and shattered the idols, only to replace them with its own shiny, newly elevated spook. In a way, this is the most inane emendation of all, as Humanity is but an ephemeral ideation of what is inherent to every individual from the second he is born. We all experience humanity in our own egoistical actions, we shape our humanity in how we progress as unique beings; any worshipping of Humanity would be either indistinguishable from that which we naturally do in a commonplace fashion, or else would impale every being on stationary sharp implements, would engender stasis as every layer of thought or action, determined by someone somewhere as being self-serving at heart, would be discarded, added to the immense mass of priorly rent garments in quickening manner until all were stark naked before the new Divinity whose grand designs could only be realized by doing nothing whatsoever. Ah, the humanity...

This first portion was superb—Byington endeavored to maintain Stirner's idiosyncratic, but precise, formulation of his enthusiastically and wittily expressed thought. While this means that each passage requires a close and deliberate reading in order to understand what Stirner is saying, it allows the observant author to powerfully deconstruct the meanings and methods with which Western European society has engirt itself from ancient times in order to expose the analogous delusions and misunderstandings that comprise a fundamental component of their substance. Stirner's purpose in PART FIRST is to expose these spook beholden forms to the reader, whilst barely touching upon his own philosophical creation of Der Einzige und sein Eigentum; presumably this will follow, along with an even more detailed exegesis of society's institutional structures and how they need to be dynamited at the root so that his new egoistical edifice can be constructed upon fresh ground, rather than merely plastered over as an ameliorative layer. I haven't yet got around to reading the Second Part—though finish it I shall—hopefully, this concluding section will boost Stirner into the five-star territory where he doubtlessly belongs, but hasn't quite managed to achieve so far.

[Sense of History]

Very idiosyncratic view on Western modernity, by a 19th century radical (this was published in 1845). Verbose and incessantly provocative. A real precursor of Nietzsche. More in my review in my general account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

[Marcelle Warren · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fine enough read to be sure, but Stirner is not exactly the most insightful political philosopher. That is a matter of course when one’s only position is “I am the only thing that matters and everything belongs to me.” This book is an exercise in stretching that phrase to its limits by asserting and reasserting itself in as many a domain as Stirner felt necessary. Is it readable? Absolutely. Stirner is a clever and endearing writer who anticipates Nietzsche with extreme closeness. His phrasing is often intentionally provocative and full to the brim with wordplay. For him, as he often states, this is a book that was written purely because he felt it deserved to be, and it shows. And for what it’s worth, I like a proud bastard.

The funny thing about my *particular* edition of this work is that it has the subheading “Roots of the Right”, and the editor clearly believed that Stirner’s ideology could lead to fascism. I am aware that Stirner is currently regarded as a leftist figure, and one could make a case for this quite easily as well. The core problem I have with this is that it signals to me a political philosophy lacking in substance. A union of egoists serving only themselves as individuals? Why, I could think of any number of arrangements for that from anarcho-communism to outright plutocracy. What that means to me is that his self-interested ideology may sound all well and good, but it leads to nothing coherent. No egoist revolution can take place because egoism can simply fit snuggly into any ideology that actually possesses its own motivations. My critique, therefore, is that one would be better off simply reading Nietzsche for the personal substance and just about anyone else for political substance.

[xDEAD ENDx · Rating 5 out of 5]

The 2017 Wolfi Landstreicher translation is absolutely worth reading, especially if you've read the 1907 Byington translation. In fact, I would go so far as to say that outside of some sort of scholarly pursuit, it's detrimental to read the old translation now.

"The Unique" is such a better translation than the Freud-laden "Ego", and overall the text flows so much smoother. Things actually make sense and ambiguity is eliminated. It's now possible to talk about this book in a way that isn't confusing and spiral down into mis-informed discussions.

[hanan al-herbish al-herbish · Rating 4 out of 5]

هذه إحدى القراءات المزعجة .. قد يدوش رأسك صوت المعاول و الهروات .. انه عمل يطمح الى تكسير الأصنام و الأوثان و النصب الفكرية .. عمل يهوي بالفأس ليكسز الجليد بحسب التعبير الكافكاوي ..

يقال بأن هذا العمل هو الترسانة الفكرية التي أوقدت فتيل نيتشة .. منه استقى معظم أفكاره ..
انه عمل مجرم و حارق .. عمل خطر بخطورة القنابل و الأحزمة الناسفة .

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a new English translation of Max Stirner’s "Der Einzige und sein Eigentum" by my roommate and old friend, Wolfi Landstreicher. The previous translation of the book was known in English under the title "The Ego and Its Own" and has often been mistaken for a kind of precursor to Ayn Rand-style economic Libertarianism, but Wolfi has re-titled it for this edition as "The Unique and Its Property." Anyone who reads it will soon see that Stirner is as uninterested in capitalist economics as he is in collectivism, and for essentially the same reasons: both require the individual to surrender personal autonomy to an abstract interest (or “phantasm”) outside of his or her personal pleasure and satisfaction.

What I think is most important about this book for are the concepts highlighted in the title-change. “Der Einzige” or “The Unique” is not a representation of “Ego,” in the Freudian sense. It is the unique, indivisible thing that makes the individual an individual and not any other individual. “Eigentum” or “property” is not meant in an economic sense either, but reflects the “own-ness” of those things which belong to the individual. Property might describe my attributes, or ideas, or also physical objects, but not because the law or social convention says that I “own” them, but because they are my own in the sense of my use of them and my personal sovereignty over them.

This is the first new translation of the text in over a hundred years, giving English-speaking readers a rare opportunity to interrogate a text that has profound things to say about the self. Stirner wrote in the context of (and largely as a criticism of) the Hegelian movement that also produced Feuerbach and Marx, providing a strong voice for the individual against the statist, collectivist, liberal and humanitarian theories of the time. Having a strong grounding in 19th-Century philosophy will help to understand some portions (especially the first chapter), but Stirner is so clear in his arguments that it is not really necessary. The new translation may also help by returning some of the force and wit of Stirner’s language to the English version.

[Sebastian · Rating 3 out of 5]

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 2 out of 5]

You own yourself. There is no outsourcing of truth beyond what your want it to be. Max Stirner seems to fully understand that sentiment.

People often misunderstand post-modernism as the worst of all sins. That’s only because it can be used to support any absurdity that the post-modernist wants to, but at its core post-modernism is nothing more than realizing that there is no meta-narrative, no story about the story for which uniquely explains the world. See Lyotard’s book which defines post-modernism and don’t blame Lyotard for describing the world for how it really is. The story you choose to believe is yours alone.

Feuerbach writes one of the most deliciously satisfying critiques of Christianity I have ever read in ‘The Essence of Christianity’ by using Hegelian dialectics, and concludes that ‘man creates God’. Stirner objects to that formulation and thinks the subject predicate formality needs to be inverted such that ‘a man’ is at the center of everything and that God distracts from a person’s ownmost being (note the use of the word ‘ownmost’, that’s a Heideggerian neologism, and Heidegger seems to have a lot of Stirner within him). Stirner makes the individual supreme, not humanity, downplaying that we are part of humanity, a person’s ego is all there is.

Stirner overall writes a book that I would have to insist is more aligned with my way of thinking about the world than any other book I’ve read, but that’s sort of the problem with this book. By stating what he does this book can easily be all things to all people. The truths that he reveals about the world have always been accessible to every 12-year-old on the planet. I know I had them when I was a child.

It doesn’t matter the correctness of his truths. We live in a world that makes us play by the world’s rules not our imaginary rules that reside only within our own head. I and my ego reside in the world with others.

There is no ultimate ground for any of our grounding. Stirner uses that fact often and resolves the subject/predicate by just prioritizing it with his preferred way.

MAGA hat morons will like this book for a whole lot of reasons. Stirner argues from the Right Hegelianism perspective in this book and it is mostly a long critique of the Left Hegelianism approach of Feuerbach. He does have an excessive pride in his potential German Nationalism, and he relies on Protestant religious arguments while making his points. For him, Luther did for the church what Descartes did for philosophy. Luther’s ‘sola scriptura’ is entwined within his only the self maters and he often oddly appeals to Bible quotations in making his points. I get the feeling that Stiner also embraces religion while showing the contradictions within beliefs but embracing his own eclectic brand of religion without dogma such that he really is being dogmatic.

The leader of the MAGA hat morons, Trump, understands that we really do live in a post-modern world, and he tells his moronic followers that truth is only what he says it is. Elon Musk plays that game too. To wit, he re-tweeted pseudo crap about the husband of Nancy Pelosi being attacked by his gay drunken lover. This book sets the ground work for fact free assertions controlling our reality, and for fascism (Right Hegelianism) to triumph the first requirement is to undermine reason, reality and knowledge and create substance free truths in their place supported only by feelings.

Nietzsche is light years more sophisticated than this book. Ayn Rand overlaps with Stirner such that 12-year-old children will think there is a hidden sophistication within the argumentation and there is not. Anarchists and socialist can read this book as if Stirner is talking directly to them (wiki points that out to me). Nihilists, Existentialists, and most other ‘ists’ can embrace this book because it tends to be all things to all people depending on what perspective the person starts with.

When I checked other books similar to this book on Goodreads, I probably had read 15 of the 20 mentioned. I’m drawn to this kind of thinking in a book. I know we are trapped in this world not of own making and it is up to us to find our own meaning. I just find Stirner juvenile in his writing and see this book easily fitting into the MAGA hat moron’s world view, while if I ignore the Right Hegelianism, I can honestly be able to say that I’m more in synch with his approach than any other single book that I’ve read, but overall, no book needs to tell me that I’m selfish and self-centered and the world doesn’t matter except for what I want to make of it. See, I already knew all that when I was 12 years old, and now as an adult I know this kind of thinking lays the foundation for Fascists like Trump.

[Vladivostok · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Ego and It's Own (Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum) is a manifesto of individualism and marks a pivotal schism in philosophic thought among the Young Hegelians. Set amidst the backdrop of a tumultuous 19th century Europe embroiled in revolution and rapid industrializaiton, Stirner's opus of Egoism stands in stark contrast to the idealism of his intellectual contemporaries.

Bruno Bauer and Ludwig Feuerbach receive the brunt of Stirner's whippings in the initial sections of the book, as he scathingly exposes their philosophic shortsightedness. Employing clever analogy, biblical passages, and carefully constructed logic alike, Stirner shows that these men, in their quest to free mankind from Godly dominion, have only mistakenly transferred the domineering otherwordliness of Spirit to a utopian conception of "Man" (capital M). But Stirner's warpath has just begun. Indeed, nothing is spared: Man, State, communism, liberalism, natural rights, rationality, and equality are felled without remorse. All of these demand respect on behalf of their preconceived sacredness and, by virtue of their placement "beyond man", necessarily subjugate the desires of corporeal individuals. Accordingly, Stirner advocates willful and direct opposition of the individual against these "spooks". Appeasement and the petitioning of rights presupposes Man, State, and/or Spirit as the giver, and one can only hope for some narrowly-defined permission. One must fight -- after all, might IS right.

If one has any criticism of Stirner, it is certainly not for lack of consistency -- he simply doesn't sway in his conviction and condemnation. However, the text does get a bit long-winded and Stirner at times falls prey to the binary, bourgeoisie versus proletarian line of thinking that made the belief systems of Marx and other class-theorists so toxic. Nevertheless, it is filled with absolute gems: the section on Liberalism as an offshoot of the Protestant Reformation is fascinating, the section on the absurdity of our "freedom" of the press is brilliant, and the section on egoistic love is profoundly beautiful.

Radical, thought-provoking, and worthy of your time.

4.5/5.0

[ايمان · Rating 4 out of 5]

من أكثر الكتب المجنونة التي قرأتها..ثرثرة عنه هنا
https://youtu.be/x7t2GYc6yDY

[Raed · Rating 3 out of 5]

rtc

[Laurent De Maertelaer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Het leven is al kort genoeg om te zitten kniezen, op voorgekauwde ideeën te zitten broeden of – veel erger nog – slechte boeken te lezen. Want ja, er moet gelezen worden, zoveel is zeker. En alweer omdat er zo weinig tijd is (horresco referens!), het liefst werken die er toe doen, die een wereld op zich zijn, waarvan het soortelijk gewicht een wezenlijk verschil uitmaakt. Een dergelijk boek is De enige en zijn eigendom van Max Stirner, de ‘bijbel van het anarchisme’. Ongetwijfeld het meest radicale en provocerende boek dat ik ooit las.

Toen het boek in 1844 verscheen, sloeg het in als een bom bij ‘die Freien’ ― een groep filosofen die ook bekend staat als de Berlijnse jonghegelianen. Hoewel het commercieel volledig flopte, werd het boek bij zijn verschijning heel druk becommentarieerd. Onder meer Karl Marx schreef een striemende kritiek, die uiteindelijk de beruchtheid van het boek alleen maar zou aanzwengelen. De invloed van Stirner op Marx en later ook op Nietzsche is volgens sommige commentatoren niet te onderschatten, maar het is vooral in artistieke en literaire milieus dat de filosofie van Stirner veel weerklank vond. Max Ernst bracht hulde aan de Duitse filosoof door een van zijn tekeningen L’unique et sa propriété (1925) te noemen. Marcel Duchamp, die het boek leerde kennen via Francis Picabia, noemde Stirner met naam en toenaam als belangrijke inspiratiebron voor onder andere Trois stoppages étalon (1913) en bij uitbreiding voor zijn gehele oeuvre. (Op zijn beurt fungeerde Duchamp dan weer als medium voor mijzelf, want via de lectuur van Arturo Schwarz’ standaardwerk én van de geweldige ‘gesprekken’ met Pierre Cabanne stiet ik op Stirners losgeslagen projectielboek)

In 1907 werd Der Einzige und sein Eigentum voor het eerst in het Nederlands vertaald, maar al snel bleek die vertaling gedateerd en te getuigen van een onvolledig begrip van de tekst. Het was dus de hoogste tijd voor een nieuwe, degelijke vertaling, die de originele Duitse tekst met alle ironische allusies en de specifieke hegeliaanse terminologie respecteert. Die vertaling verscheen in 2008 en staat geheel en al in de lijn van de anarchistische verwachtingen gewoon integraal online, gratis en voor niks. Voor een schamele 8 euro kunt u nog een andere, recentere vertaling online bestellen via www.max-stirner.be. Zij die er maar niet genoeg van krijgen, kunnen bovendien een weinig interessant boekje over leven en werk van Stirner kopen.

Stirner kreeg in zijn tijd, net als later, veel kritiek op zijn zogenaamde ‘egoïsme’. Kritiek die hij waanwijs afwimpelde als onvolledig, net als iedere andere vorm van kritiek. Immers, als je iets bekritiseert, geloof je zelf nog steeds in iets. En u, nu. Stirner en Willem van Ockham zouden het wel met elkaar gevonden hebben, vermoed ik. Fascinerend is hoe Stirner erin slaagt door zijn ironie de mens al zijn wereldbeelden af te nemen en meteen in één beweging de hele hegeliaanse filosofie van de tafel te vegen. Zijn frivole taal en spottende beeldspraak maken de ironie compleet en totaal. Om een komisch effect te sorteren gebruikt hij bijvoorbeeld veelvuldig een van de beproefde technieken van de ironie: de eindeloze opsomming (ach, leven we niet allemaal op van lijstjes?). Naar het einde van het boek toe declameert Stirner dat taal een ‘ramp’ is, een ‘catastrofe’ waar de mens niks mee aan kan. Om zich te bevrijden van het filosofische juk, dat op hem weegt en hem neerdrukt, kiest hij resoluut voor de ironie. De bevrijde taal, de taal als spel. Zich spelend bevrijden, in vrijheid spelen. Niet moeilijk dat een vrije geest als Duchamp zo gretig Stirners speeltuin binnen dartelde …

Letterlijk alles wordt met de grond gelijkgemaakt. Stirners boek gaat in essentie over het ‘ik’ ten aanzien van de buitenwereld. Hij problematiseert de eeuwenoude subject-objecttegenstelling en stelt de vraag over welke buitenwereld het nu eigenlijk gaat. Als ik mij die buitenwereld toe-eigen, is er dan überhaupt nog sprake van een wereld? Stirner zegt: ‘Het object is niet buiten mij, maar is van mij, het is eigendom.’

Marxisme, anarchisme, egoïsme of gebakkenlucht-isme, Stirners boek reikt verder dan welk ‘-isme’ ook.
Na lectuur van deze in vitriool gedrenkte tekst blijven we achter met een kale horizon, maar ook met een fijn monkellachje om de lippen. Want vanaf nu hebben we onze zaak op niets gesteld! Stirner biedt geen uitweg, geen hoop noch soelaas, maar hij reikt ons een levensbelangrijk inzicht aan en lijkt te zeggen: ‘Laat het vallen. Lach het weg. Bezit het, dan ben je er niet door bezeten.’

[Steven Peterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a most intriguing and quirky work; many will probably find it repellant. It may well be that this volume is the reason that Marx and Engels wrote "The German Ideology"; it may be that Stirner's magnum opus led to Marx fundamentally changing his philosophical perspective from more idealistic to materialistic. Nonetheless, it is a work that gets one's mind to working as one responds to the arguments being advanced. That alone makes this an interesting book to explore.

Max Stirner (born Johan Kaspar Schmidt) is one of the more interesting figures in 19th century political thought. The turgid prose of his one major work, "The Ego and His Own," stretches for several hundred pages and can be a formidable barrier to the reader. Stirner posits something like a war of each against all as the proper way of life and the proper way of allocating scarce resources. This competition with others is natural and ubiquitous. Stirner says: ". . .the egoistic man, who deals with things and thoughts according to his heart's pleasure. . .sets his personal interest above everything."

One major obstacle in the way of an individual's egoism is the existence of "spook notions" and coercive agencies, such as the state. "Spook notions" are concepts viewed as superior to the individual, largely due to dominant values of a society inculcated into the individual; these concepts subsequently become reified. Among examples that he adduces: truth, right, chastity, the law, the good cause, the state, mankind, love, duty, obligation. In each case, people will come to accept these concepts as absolutes and then subordinate their own behavior to these reifications. Stirner contends, to the contrary, that humans should not allow themselves to become subjects to such "spook notions." Stirner argues that most people prostrate themselves before such "spook notions." As a result, so Stirner asserts, such people are possessed, just as surely as madmen may be possessed by their delusions.

If cut adrift from reified moorings, what next? Stirner asserts that one should be guided by one's self-interest, however one might define this. This self-interest, though, should not become superior to the individual, must not be rigidified into a reification. One should leave ends as open questions--remaining, always, the final judge of the ends' utility, since one, in Stirner's view, owns these ends. If one choose to believe in God and follow that deity's word, good. But one must continually recall that this is a matter of choice and that decision may be revoked at any time. The egoist "never takes trouble about a thing for the sake of the thing, but for his sake: the thing must serve him."

The ego and its own are intimately related. One's own can be other people, property, or ideas. The only things that are sacred are those which one declares as "sacred." One keeps all ends open and leaves the option of ultimate rejection of those values. The individual alone, of course, may be deficient in power to accomplish all that he or she would wish. Thus, one would find it expedient to form unions with others. As a result, one becomes strengthened and may do things that were previously beyond one's individual power. It is a union of convenience, based upon the extent to which individuals in the union can benefit from one another. This society, this union of egoists as Stirner describes it, is itself based upon egoism. Stirner says that: "Therefore we two, the State and I, are enemies. I, the egoist, have not at heart the welfare of this 'human society.' I sacrifice nothing to it, I only utilize it; but to be able to utilize it completely I transform it rather into my own property and my creature; that is, I annihilate it and form in its place the Union of Egoists."

Most readers will reject Stirner's perspective, which departs from much of Western philosophical tradition. However, his ideas are thought-provoking and challenge us to look at sociality and ourselves in a very different way. Whether or not one might agree with him, these effects, in and of themselves, make this an interesting work to peruse. Being challenged can be very positive.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing.

One of the most penetrating books I've read in a long time, possibly ever. Anyone who has any opinion on politics, morality, or religion needs to pick this up. Banish the wheels from your head which have been put there by spooks! Live not for religious notions but for yourself!

All things are nothing to me!!

[Pavlogreen]

Lo primero que tengo que decir es que es un muy buen libro, escrito con soltura y sorprendente por su contenido rupturista y sin escrúpulos. Acto seguido, no se puede proseguir una reseña de Stirner sin mencionar a su callado discípulo, Nietzsche, así que allá va: Nietzsche. Hecho. Bromas aparte, a pesar de la indudable y descarada por nunca reconocida influencia de san Max en el bigotudo no deberíamos caer en el tópico que ve en él a un "pre-nietzsche" cuyo único valor es anticipar a este y ser vapuleado por Marx, aunque sin duda son dos de sus grandes funciones. Stirner tiene una fuerte personalidad filosófica propia y esta su única obra merece un lugar destacado en la historia de la filosofía por su tratamiento de temas como la libertad, el individio y sobre todo la propiedad. Su crítica a todas las ideologías del momento, aunque caiga en abundantes muñecos de paja, es honesta y ambiciosa y acierta al señalar los peligros de dar preponderancia la forma y la idea frente a lo concreto. Asimismo, ofrece una de las éticas egoístas más sofisticadas que se conocen, defendida con una vehemencia encomiable. Ciertamente estamos ante un autor sui generis e inclasificable cuyas ideas no deberían convencernos (a menos que seamos unos sociópatas), pero que vale la pena conocer y analizar como una importante aportación al pensamiento decimonónico.

[Joseph Andros · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nietzsche claims never to have read this book. I'm a little dubious.

Admittedly, I only picked it up myself because it was recommended to me by Marcel Duchamp, who called it, I believe, the most revolutionary book he'd ever read. Recall that Duchamp's the guy who created a sensation in modern art by overturning a urinal and signing it with false name. The guy knows from revolutionary.

The book is fantastic! A real delight. Stirner is a character, people. All he does is hold forth, and forth, and yet further forth, and you keep getting lost in where you are, having to go back and pick up the trail of destruction again. But you don't mind; it's quite a lively show: demolishing paradigms, social mores and constructs Left and Right, Stirner leaves you with the impression that all we're left with is, well, Stirner. He lays about with outlandish assertions all day, then illustrates them with such brash, imperious, rapier clarity and puissance that you're forced to admit: hey, I think he's got a point, there? Surely he must!

I try to read this book pretty often. Each time, by the end of it all I have no idea where this point of his is, or where it's pointing, exactly. Yet it's almost impossible to deny: he surely has a point there. He's very authoritative on that score. In a nutshell: apparently, he's an Egoist. Also an anarchist, but he harps considerably less on that, and it seems to be a consequence of his Egoism rather than its own deal. Basically, the whole universe and everything in it is his property. It is a property of his. And all through the book, Stirner seems to be slyly hinting that you, too, dear reader, can make the same claim! I understand he was a riot at those intellectual soirees back in the heady days of whenever it was all these guys used to do their duels. He was telling them about this dang magnum opus of his for years before it came out. When it finally did, Karl Marx was so hot he wrote either a three-hundred or a five-hundred page rebuttal to it! Longer than the book itself, depending on which edition. Then of course, Marx famously gave up on philosophy entirely, and went into economics.

A lot of people think it's because he couldn't hang.

So what happened to this Stirner guy, you ask - if he's so great? Why didn't he "make a name"?* What with all that self-touted ego, will and brilliance? Well, he got stung or bitten by a bee, or at any rate, by some kind of "winged insect." He then sickened, and lingered, and died. Pity!

*He was born Johann Caspar Schmidt. Max Stirner is an assumed name which means approximately "large forehead."
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Afternote 12 July 2024: It's occurred to me oh, a few days back WHY Stirner's "MAGNUM OPUS" (as he'd endlessly hailed it, bragging on how "forthcoming" it was, bemusing any and all comers to brinks of apoplexy as this done-nothing wannabe prim-ass schoolteacher of vain yet ineffably colossal erudition mixed hobnail and toothy maw with his fellow self-and-selves-alienated-and-alienating "Young Hegelians" crowd, in their erstwhile never-ending, ever-rending cafe and public house rundowns and gaffe-pulls) appealed to me so right off, and indeed, appeals to me still, betimes and (okay) withal:

It isn't because I agree with Stirner's premises or conclusions in any way. To do so would be unheimlich. Outré! Bizarre, as if one's agreement could be relevant! No touché to be had there, dearie. DEFINITELY none asked-for nor applied from his side.

It's sure, merely partially because of what I superabundantly geek out over above, in the main op/ed piece (called "Review"): how he lays such waste so roundly to the rampant, monolithic bases of all philosophies, fixed dogmatic thought-complexes and preset ways-of-life extant prior to Stirner, and so (by openly, flatly declaimed implication!) subsequent to yet not consequent-at-all from Stirner. I love it! He's ace marvelous at it. Yet that isn't why. It's:

Because at his best and worst, he reasons just as I do at my middling well! By 1) BOLD ASSERTION. And then 2-to-"sideways 8" as completely, increasingly needlessly: B) by EXAMPLE. EXAMPLE! EXAMPLE. BOOM ILLUSTRATION. ILLUSTRATION! ILL-YOU-STRATIFICATION BANG! POW! KER-PLUNKA-DUNK-OH! Long, lonnnng past any conceivable point of "oh. Yeah we 'get' it already. It's stupid to uphold a single 'fixed idea' above yourself as beyond critique. WE KNEW IT, STIRNER. WE KNEW IT THE FIRST TIME, you don't have to-HEY! NOT THAT ONE!" Ouch.

..and always building up to an uncrackable, uncase-able illusion of such irrefutably-laid and self-lauded "supports" that it becomes almost vain to attempt gainful gainsay of Stirner. His case! So (and by-gods THUS) "laid" in the vulgar sense: the reader is pretty much abjectly, dejectedly eff you see kay'd up the wazoo and beyond! And if they WANTED (for no conceivable reason: ASK MARX & ENGELS) to take Saint Max on at his own game (ineluctably Critique: Major Logic), the outcome's not in doubt: F.U. see K.O'd.

A TKO, perhaps? Only technical? Does it even matter, part so certain a point? No.

What a guy!

A guy's-guy. A true dude in the modern sense of an effete and pretty much inutile ass-bag, lazing around in the nearest patch of sea dirt overeducated to the point of near-self extinction by too much salty wave riding, in-between baiting the circling "big sharks" as if he were their only imaginable chum in the sea. Cowabunga? No.

Bulladonkus, or similar. The world lost a real one when Stirner expired.

[Vincent Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The birth of existentialism, that many overlook as such. This book is most often touted (or, more often, criticized) for its political content, that other reviewers have rightly pointed out is threadbare, and irrelevant to the meaning of the text. This work is an expansion on Hegel's statement that "man is the night of the world," that in lived, embodied experience there is an irreducible placeholder, a set of eyes-behind-eyes, something ambiguous that can't be put into words - something that, like birth itself, is never fully processed - only built upon by various stages of development that recompense for this breakaway from the Nothing. This fact hardly rains on Stirner's parade, however - for 'man' as such (a term that will become meaningful in its breakaway from 'I' early on, and once this confusion is cleared up, you'll be able to glide through a majority of the text) is the fruit of man's labor, full self-consciousness. The only problem is that, to Stirner, many others attempt to eat the menu instead of the food, taking "man" to be something that it is not - what is man? Me - what else could it be? "Man" as an ideal is vacuous - it is always outside of me, a bare particular that we attach many desirable attributes to, a thing we make a sacred word-cloud out of, a vocation. In short, a species - "Whom does the liberal look upon as his equal? Man! Be only man - and that you are anyway - and the liberal calls you his brother. He asks very little about your private opinions and private follies, if only he can espy 'man' in you."

Here it warrants mentioning that, as I stated above, this book is mistakenly read into as being inherently political. Yet, it reaches its peak when it criticizes political liberalism - that is because, to Stirner, political liberalism takes the form of a religion. His criticism of Feuerbach's position, that the problem of religion is that it alienates 'man' from his qualities by giving them over to God in an ideal, perfect form, is that 'man' itself might as well be God, since 'man' ≠ I. That said, I genuinely think much of this book's atheistic flair and scathing contempt of religion can be overlooked, since it was therefore one of the work's initial causes or assumptions rather than its fruit. The real insight lies in the fact that belief in 'the world,' in 'progress,' etc. is belief all the way down, properly understood. It has its basis in the adoption of and education in republican values and respect for others' property, of law. This breakaway from the Church in history (to Stirner, this is the completion of Christianity, since a total overlap between human and divine is achieved - though this is a point that can be disputed) marks the point where the state ceases to be a purely practical means of safeguarding the property of others - it becomes sacred, a thing to be protected and honored in-and-of-itself. One ought not to simply 'use' the state to their own ends, as a tool (as Stirner would recommend, and as those who hold power do without shame) but to be fully recognized by the state, by working to fulfill the category of 'man,' by being the ideal subject. So, there is of course political content in this book, but it all comes downstream from a kind of religious piety to the body politic as an abstract idea. The fight against it has not yet begun, and so the book offers no positive insight into what a "union of egoists" would look like, other than to say what it would not be.

"Our atheists are pious people."

This is a book that I would recommend to people of any religious or moral persuasion, since the bounds it covers in political philosophy and ethics is enormous. What is the "I" left to do once it has fully realized itself, and discarded all that is extrinsic to it? Maybe Stirner will tell us once he is an old man.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

What is egoism?

Contrary to popular notion it does not comprise of being selfish, and cut-throat all the time. Rather it means liberating oneself from the influence of spooks (as the author calls them), i.e. ideas, ideals, and abstract entities that the individual places above himself; e.g. the state, property, religion, society, etc.

Oddly enough, if one would dedicate their lives to being selfish, one would be considered under the guise of a spook as well, since by doing so the individual denies themselves the wholeness of human experience which necessarily comprises altruism, kindness, and a whole other myriad of traits. Same thing goes for extreme individualists (to read isolationists), and so on. Hopefully you understand the concept.

Stirner has a quirky way of criticizing everything, from the religious person to the scientist; from the liberal to the socialist, from the monarchist to the republican. All this critique rendered possible because of the key observation that each of these people put some ideal or other above themselves. Nonetheless, one can immediately spot where Stirner's sympathies lie. The author's critiques of religion, property, division of labour, and the state are utterly unrelenting, which is why most people would readily describe him as being an anarchist.

It is very difficult to espouse more on the views in this book, I urge people to read Stirner themselves. It is—unfortunately—quite a cumbersome read but much lighter than, say, Marx.

Everything's a spook!

[Coop · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this more and more as it went along. Stirner is a bit repetitive of his book's central premise, but it was creative enough that I liked revisiting it and rolling it around on my tongue. I think Stirner's thought falls prey to many of the problems with hedonism, but is still incredibly insightful as to the role of social constructs, contracts, and game theory in our lives. The new translation by Wolfi Landstreicher is very readable and does a good job of letting you in on the jokes. I definitely recommend it for anyone with a universalizing ethic, and especially those with a focus on the humanitarian or altruistic.