Max Stirner's The Ego and Its Otto1 has been called 'the most revolutionary [book] ever written' First published in 1844, Stirner's distinctive and powerful polemic sounded the death knell of left Hegelianism, with its attack on Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, Moses Hess, and others. It contains an enduring and strikingly written critique of both liberalism and socialism from the perspective of an extreme and eccentric individualism. Karl Marx was only one of many contemporaries provoked into a lengthy rebuttal of Stimer's argument. More recently, Stiruer has been variously portrayed as a nihilistic anarchist, a precursor of Nietzsche, and a forerunner of existentialism. This edition of Stimer's work comprises a revised version of Steven Byington's much-praised translation, together with an introduction and notes on the historical background to Stimer's text.

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Principal events in Stirner's life

Further reading

Note on the translation

The Ego and Its Own

All things are nothing to me

First Part: MAN

I A human life

II Men of the old time and the new

I The ancients

2 The modems

The spirit

The possessed

The hierarchy

3 The free

Political liberalism

Social liberalism

Humane liberalism

Postscript

Second Part: I

I Ownness

II The owner

1 My power

2 My intercourse

3 My self-enjoyment

III The unique one

Biographical and other notes on the text

Index of subjects

Index of proper names