Editing Max Stirner (section)

=== ''The Unique and Its Property'' ===
{{main|The Unique and Its Property}}
Stirner's main work, ''The Unique and Its Property'' (''Der Einzige und sein Eigentum''), appeared in [[Leipzig]] in October 1844, with as year of publication mentioned 1845. In ''The Unique and Its Property'', Stirner launches a radical [[anti-authoritarian]] and [[individualist]] critique of contemporary [[Prussia]]n society and modern western society as such. He offers an approach to human existence in which he depicts himself as "the unique one", a "creative nothing", beyond the ability of language to fully express, stating that "[i]f I concern myself for myself, the unique one, then my concern rests on its transitory, mortal creator, who consumes himself, and I may say: All things are nothing to me".<ref>''The Ego and Its Own'', p. 324.</ref>

The book proclaims that all religions and ideologies rest on empty concepts. The same holds true for society's institutions that claim authority over the individual, be it the state, legislation, the church, or the systems of education such as universities. Stirner's argument explores and extends the limits of criticism, aiming his critique especially at those of his contemporaries, particularly Ludwig Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer, also at popular ideologies, including communism, humanism (which he regarded as analogous to religion with the abstract Man or humanity as the supreme being), liberalism, and nationalism as well as capitalism, religion and [[statism]], arguing:
{{blockquote|In the time of spirits thoughts grew till they overtopped my head, whose offspring they yet were; they hovered about me and convulsed me like fever-phantasies—an awful power. The thoughts had become corporeal on their own account, were ghosts, e. g. God, Emperor, Pope, Fatherland, etc. If I destroy their corporeity, then I take them back into mine, and say: "I alone am corporeal." And now I take the world as what it is to me, as mine, as my property; I refer all to myself.<ref>''The Ego and Its Own'', p. 17.</ref>}}