The Ego and Its Own

The only major book by Max Stirner, the pen name of Johann Caspar Schmidt, a Berlin teacher on the edge of the Young Hegelian circle. Published in 1844, it opens and closes with the line 'I have set my cause on nothing', borrowed from Goethe. Part One, 'Man', traces the stages of life from the child, ruled by things, to the youth, ruled by ideas, to the adult egoist, and argues that modern thinkers who rejected God simply put new masters in his place: Man, Humanity, the State, Society, Morality and Truth. Stirner calls these abstractions 'spooks' or fixed ideas, and treats political, social and humane liberalism, including Feuerbach's humanism and communism, as new religions. Part Two, 'I', describes 'ownness', in which the unique individual treats ideas, rights and property as his own to use, and proposes a voluntary 'union of egoists' in place of the state. Marx and Engels replied at great length; readers still dispute whether the book is nihilist, anarchist or proto-existentialist.

It is the most radical critique of abstract ideals in modern philosophy, and it forces readers to ask whether duty, humanity and even freedom are simply new masters.