Max Stirner - The Ego and His Own - 1844

The Case Of The Individual Against Authority



Claimed repeatedly to be the most radical book ever written, The Ego And Its Own throws down a challenge to thousands of years of religious, philosophical and political depreciation of the individual. Criticising all doctrines and beliefs that demand the interests of the individual be subordinated to those of God, state, humanity, society, or some other fiction, Stirner declared war on all creeds that threatened individuality. In doing so, he championed a form of amoral egoism which still provokes cries of horror from moralists of right and left, religious and secular. The classic, from one of the founding fathers of anarchist thought, and a passionate defence of the individual against all forms of authority.



Nietsche plagerized Stirner; Max Stirner, a durable dissident (http://www.lsr-projekt.de/poly/eninnuce.html), 'How Marx and Nietzsche suppressed their colleague Max Stirner and why he has intellectually survived them' ; "The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination." ; The great are great only because we are on our knees. Let us rise! ; "I can have only so much freedom as I procure for myself by my oneness." ; "All freedom is essentially self-liberation." ; "The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime." ; "Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man's lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one's self." ; "It is possible that I can make little out of myself; but this little is everything, and is better than what I allow to be made of me by the might of others, by the training of custom, religion, the laws, the State."