All things are nothing to me: the unique philosophy of Max Stirner

Translated into English incorrectly as The Ego and Its Own, Stirner’s work is considered by some to be the worst book ever written. It combines the worst elements of philosophy, politics, history, psychology, and morality, and ties it all together with simple tautologies, fancy rhetoric, and militant declarations. That is the glory of Max Stirner’s unique footprint in the history of philosophy.

In exhuming this philosophical corpse, however, I have discovered Stirner’s spirit already living among us. I have thus conducted a forensic investigation into how his thought has stayed un-dead through time.

Stirner’s anti-moral, anti-political, and anti-social philosophy is especially in vogue today, in a hyperpolarized, post-crisis world where god, government and the good have all died, replaced by technology, markets and private interest. Stirner’s “egoistic” philosophy at first seems compatible with this neoliberal nightmare, and surely enough, his once-sketched face has been revived as a meme, popping up in the stranger corners of the Internet. As one of the first trolls to ridicule everything sacred in modern life, to praise the transgression of all social norms, values and customs, Stirner may even be seen as a harbinger of today’s edgy alt-right. But that is just one of many Stirners, a rather superficial one at best. What I hope to show is another Stirner—contemporary, critical, useful.