Max Stirner
Anarchist · Europe · 1806 to 1856
German writer who held that the self owes nothing to the state, to morality or to any cause above it.
What it is
Max Stirner (1806 to 1856) was the pen name of Johann Caspar Schmidt, a German philosopher born in Bayreuth. "Stirner" began as a nickname, from his large forehead. He is known for a single book, Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum (1844), usually called The Ego and Its Own, a radical defence of the individual against every cause that claims authority over them.
The book brought him a short notoriety. By the time he died it had been out of print for several years. Since then it has been translated into many languages and has had over one hundred editions, and thinkers of very different kinds have claimed it, among them existentialists and individualist anarchists.
The main ideas
- The unique individual. The proper English title of his book, The Unique Individual and their Property, points to its theme: each person is unique and owns their own life.
- Modern thought is still religious. In the first part he argued that modernity has not really escaped religious ways of thinking. Causes such as humanity or the state can rule over a person as God once did.
- Liberation through egoism. In the second part he set out an egoistic alternative, in which people are freed from the tyranny of religion and of higher causes.
- Society as belonging. He treated non-egoistic society as made of ties of "belonging", which he saw as subjugating individuals, and he expected egoists to come into conflict with cherished institutions.
- A deliberately hard style. He wrote in aphorisms and word play and often avoided conventional argument, to unsettle readers' confidence in what they take for granted.
What it looks like in practice
Think of a duty that you feel but cannot explain, such as an obligation to "the nation" or "the cause". Stirner would ask who the duty serves, whether you chose it, and whether treating it as sacred means you serve it as a servant serves a master. This is an illustration of his line of questioning, not a passage from his writing.
Books and moments
- The Ego and Its Own (Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum, 1844) is his only major work, in two parts, one backward-looking and negative, the other forward-looking and positive.
Questions and criticism
- Hard to read. Both its form and its content are disconcerting, and it is hard to tell argument from word play.
- Extreme consequences. His egoism puts individuals in conflict with institutions as basic as the family, and it is fair to ask what a society of egoists could look like.
- Claimed by many. The book has been taken up by many different causes, which raises the question of what, if anything, it commits its readers to.
Close neighbours
Georg Hegel is the thinker whose notion of alienation and self-consciousness he dealt with. He is seen as a forerunner of nihilism and existentialism, so the pages on Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre show later thinkers in those currents.
Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 29 October 2026. The sources are listed below.
Who they connect to
Influenced by
- G. W. F. Hegel · He attended Hegel's lectures and belonged to the circle of his radical followers.
Reacted against
- Ludwig Feuerbach · He argued that Feuerbach's "humanity" was just another ghost set over the self.
Other Anarchist thinkers
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon · 1809 to 1865
- Mikhail Bakunin · 1814 to 1876
- Peter Kropotkin · 1842 to 1921
Sources we used
- Max Stirner · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 29 October 2026
- Max Stirner · Wikipedia, read on 29 October 2026