Editing The Ego and Its Own

{{italic title}}
{{short description|1844 work by Max Stirner}}
[[File:Ein1844v2.png|thumb|''The Unique and Its Property'']]
'''''The Ego and Its Own''''' ({{langx|de|Der Einzige und sein Eigentum}}), also known as '''''The Unique and Its Property''''',<ref>{{Cite book |last=Blumenfeld |first=Jacob |title=All Things Are Nothing To Me |publisher=[[Zero Books]] |year=2018 |isbn=9781785358951 |edition=1st |pages=17}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Swain |first1=Dan |title=Unchaining Solidarity: On Mutual Aid and Anarchism with Catherine Malabou |last2=Urban |first2=Petr |last3=Malabou |first3=Catherine |last4=Kouba |first4=Petr |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield International |year=2021 |isbn=9781538157954 |edition=1st |pages=83–103}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Landstreicher |first=Wolfi |title=The Unique and Its Property |publisher=Underworld Amusements |year=2022 |isbn=978-1365308864 |edition=2nd}}</ref> is an 1844 work by German philosopher [[Max Stirner]]. It presents a post-Hegelian critique of [[Christianity]] and traditional morality on one hand; and on the other, [[humanism]], [[utilitarianism]], [[liberalism]], and much of the then-burgeoning [[Socialism|socialist]] movement, advocating instead an amoral (although importantly not inherently immoral or antisocial) [[egoism]]. It is considered a major influence on the development of [[anarchism]], [[existentialism]], [[nihilism]], and [[postmodernism]].<ref name="SEP-Stirner">{{cite SEP|url-id=max-stirner|title=Max Stirner|last=Leopold|first=David|date=2006-08-04}}</ref><ref name="Goodway, David 2006, p. 99">Goodway, David. ''[[Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow]]''. Liverpool University Press, 2006, p. 99.</ref>

In 2010, John F. Welsh coined the term ''dialectical egoism'' for the thoughts of Stirner expressed in this work, in order to emphasize the distinction from the negative and [[pejorative]] connotations from the common everyday use of ''[[egoism]]'' in the sense of [[egotism]].

The discussion that follows is based on the first known English translation, by Steven T. Byington, first published in 1907.<ref name="TheEgoAndItsOwn" /> A more recent translation by Apio Ludd ''aka'' Wolfi Landstreicher was published by Underworld Amusements in 2017 under the title ''The Unique and Its Property'', the translator noting that Stirner had not used the word ego.<ref>{{cite book|last=Stirner|first=Max|title=The Unique and Its Property|date=1844|editor=Apio Ludd ''aka'' Wolfi Landstreicher|publisher=Underworld Amusements |location=Baltimore |isbn=978-1-943687-90-9 |page=8 |url=https://archive.org/details/stirner-the-unique-and-its-property/page/7/mode/1up |access-date=12 September 2023}}</ref>

== Content ==
=== Part One ===
The first part of the text begins by setting out a tripartite [[dialectics|dialectical]] structure based on an individual's stages of life (Childhood, Youth and Adulthood).<ref name=Leopold>Leopold, David, [http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/max-stirner/ "Max Stirner"], The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).</ref><ref name="TheEgoAndItsOwn">
{{cite book |last=Stirner |first=Max |url=https://consciousegoism.6te.net/pdfs/stirner/EgoAndHisOwn.pdf |title=The Ego and His Own |date=1844 |editor=Byington |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201027160634/https://consciousegoism.6te.net/pdfs/stirner/EgoAndHisOwn.pdf |archive-date=27 October 2020 |url-status=usurped}}</ref> 

In the first ''realistic'' stage, children are restricted by external material forces. Upon reaching the stage of youth, they begin to learn how to overcome these restrictions by what Stirner calls the "self-discovery of mind". However, in the ''idealistic'' stage, a youth now becomes enslaved by internal forces such as conscience, reason and other "spooks" or "fixed ideas" of the mind (including [[religion]], [[nationalism]] and other ideologies). The final stage, "egoism", is the second self-discovery, in which one becomes self-conscious of oneself as more than his mind or body.

Throughout the book, Stirner applies this dialectical structure to human history. Part one is a sustained critique of the first two periods of human history and especially of the failure of the [[Modernity|modern world]] to escape from religious modes of thinking. Stirner's analysis is opposed to the belief that modern individuals are [[Social progress|progressively]] more free than their predecessors.<ref name=Leopold/> Stirner sees moderns as being possessed by ideological forces such as [[Christianity]] and the ideologies of the modern [[nation state]].

Stirner's critique of [[modernity]] is centred on the [[Protestant Reformation]]. According to Stirner, Reformation theology extended religious domination over individuals by blurring the distinction between the sensual and the spiritual (thus allowing priests to marry for example). The Reformation also strengthened and intensified religious belief and made it more personal, creating an internal conflict between natural desires and religious conscience. Thus the Reformation only served to further enslave Europeans under spiritual ideology.<ref name=Leopold/>

Stirner's critique of a progressive view of history is part of his attack on the philosophies of the [[Young Hegelians|left-Hegelians]], especially that of [[Ludwig Feuerbach]]. Stirner sees Feuerbach's philosophy as merely a continuation of religious ways of thinking. Feuerbach had argued that Christianity was mistaken in taking human qualities and projecting them into a transcendent God. But according to Stirner, Feuerbach's philosophy, while rejecting a God, left the Christian qualities intact. Feuerbach had taken a set of human qualities and deified them, making them the only prescriptive view of humanity. This became just another religion for Stirner, a "change of masters" over the individual.<ref name=Leopold /> Stirner criticizes other left-Hegelians for setting a conception of essential human nature as a goal to be striven for instead of one which is already achieved.<ref name="TheEgoAndItsOwn" /> So while liberals like [[Arnold Ruge]] found the essence of the human in citizenship, and social liberals like [[Moses Hess]] found it in labor, all of them made a similar error of ossifying an "essence" of the human and deifying it. For Stirner, "human nature" cannot provide any prescriptions on how one ought to live as one doesn't need to become his nature, but instead he already is ("Your nature is, once and for all, a human one; you are human natures, human beings. But, just because you already are so, you do not still need to become so").

=== Part Two ===
Part two is centered on the possibility of freedom from current ideological ways of thinking through a robust philosophical egoism. Stirner's egoism is centered on what he calls ''Eigenheit'' ('Ownness' or autonomy). This 'Ownness' is a feature of a more advanced stage of human personal and historical development. It is the groundwork for our world-view.

Stirner's Egoism is a descriptive [[Psychological egoism|psychological egoist]], though he differentiates between conscious and involuntary egoism.<ref name=TheEgoAndItsOwn/>{{rp|31}} Stirner does not advocate narrow selfishness of a "sensual man": 
<blockquote>Selfishness [...] in the Christian sense, means something like this: I look only to see whether anything is of use to me as a sensual man. But is sensuality then the whole of my ownness? Am I in my own senses when I am given up to sensuality?<ref name=TheEgoAndItsOwn/>{{rp|104}}</blockquote>

Stirner's conception of Ownness is a type of self-description:
<blockquote>Ownness includes in itself everything own, and brings to honor again what Christian language dishonored. But ownness has not any alien standard either, as it is not in any sense an idea like freedom, morality, humanity, etc.: it is only a description of the — owner.<ref name=TheEgoAndItsOwn/>{{rp|104}}</blockquote>

In Part II, Stirner discards the concept of freedom, as being of limited value, and replaces it with power and property.<ref name="TheEgoAndItsOwn" />{{rp|104}} In Chapter "My Power", Stirner explores the concept of human rights and their subsequent inherent separation from the self: "The right of 'all' is to go before my right."<ref name="TheEgoAndItsOwn" />{{rp|113}}

In the chapter "My Self-Enjoyment" Stirner discusses longing and "true life", discarding both of them preferring a "non-seeking" man: "Not till I am certain of myself, and no longer seeking for myself, am I really my property; I have myself, therefore I use and enjoy myself."<ref name=TheEgoAndItsOwn/>{{rp|187}} "A man is 'called' to nothing, and has no 'calling', no 'destiny', as little as a plant or a beast has a 'calling'".<ref name=TheEgoAndItsOwn/>{{rp|190}} Further he argues that "[t]he true man does not lie in the future, an object of longing, but lies, existent and real, in the present".<ref name=TheEgoAndItsOwn/>{{rp|191}}

In Part III of Part II, "The Unique One", Stirner gives a summary of the book and its ideas, and ends it as it began: "all things are nothing to me".<ref name=TheEgoAndItsOwn/>{{rp|212}}

== Style and structure<ref name=":0" /> ==
Stirner repeatedly quotes [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]], [[Friedrich Schiller]] and [[Bruno Bauer]] assuming that readers will be familiar with their works. He also paraphrases and makes word-plays and [[in-joke]]s on formulations found in [[Hegel]]'s works as well as in the works of his contemporaries such as [[Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach|Ludwig Feuerbach]]. This can make the book more demanding for contemporary readers.

== Reception and influence ==
Initially, ''The Unique and Its Property'' received much attention, though most reviews were negative critiques by left Hegelians such as [[Ludwig Feuerbach]] and [[Moses Hess]].<ref name="Welsh17">Welsh, John F. Max Stirner's Dialectical Egoism, A new interpretation; p. 17. Lexington Books, 2010.</ref> Feuerbach's critique, "''[[The Essence of Christianity]]'' in Relation to ''The Ego and Its Own''", called the work "ingenious" and "intelligent" but also criticizes it as "eccentric, one-sided and falsely defined".<ref name="Welsh17" /> Stirner responded to these critiques in an 1845 essay titled "Stirner's Critics".

''The Unique and Its Property'' also had a profound impact on [[Karl Marx|Marx]] and [[Friedrich Engels|Engels]]. In 1844 Engels sent a letter to Marx praising "the noble Stirner" and suggesting that his dialectical egoism can serve as a point of departure for communism: <blockquote>It is certainly true that we must first make a cause our own, egoistic cause, before we can do anything to further it. . . . [W]e are communists out of egoism also, and it is out of egoism that we wish to be human beings, not mere individuals...<ref name="Welsh20">Welsh, John F. Max Stirner's Dialectical Egoism, A new interpretation; p. 20. Lexington Books, 2010.</ref></blockquote>

However, Marx and Engels would later collaborate on a lengthy criticism of Stirner's book in ''[[The German Ideology]]'' (1845, published 1932). The critique is a polemical tirade filled with ''ad hominem'' attacks and insults against Stirner (Marx calls him a "petty bourgeois individualist intellectual").<ref name="Welsh2223">Welsh, John F. Max Stirner's Dialectical Egoism, A new interpretation; pp. 22–23. Lexington Books, 2010.</ref>

The argument in ''[[The German Ideology]]'' critiquing ''The Unique and Its Property'' is that Stirner's central concept is the same kind of "ghost" that Stirner argues does not exist. For Marx and Engels, Stirner's "egoism" simply presented a modern religiosity, that according to L. Dallman "stands in a privileged relationship to non-conceptual reality".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Dallman |first=Lawrence |date=2024-03-20 |title=Fallibilism and Givenness in Marx's Critique of Stirner |url=https://jmphil.org/article/id/1908/ |journal=Journal of Modern Philosophy |language=en-US |volume=6 |doi=10.25894/jmp.1908 |issn=2644-0652}}</ref> Therefore, Marx and Engels derisively and repetitively refer to Stirner as "Saint Max".

Stirner also had a lasting influence in the tradition of [[individualist anarchism]]. American individualist [[Benjamin R. Tucker]], editor of the journal ''[[Liberty (anarchist periodical)|Liberty]]'', adopted Stirner's egoism in 1886 while rejecting conceptions of [[natural rights]]. This led to a bitter split in American individualist anarchism between egoists such as [[James L. Walker]] and [[John Beverley Robinson (anarchist)|John Beverly Robinson]], and the proponents of natural rights anarchism such as that of [[Lysander Spooner]].<ref>McElroy, Wendy. [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/LiteratureOfLiberty0352/0353-15_1981v3.html Benjamin Tucker, Individualism, & Liberty: Not the Daughter but the Mother of Order] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070515023814/http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/LiteratureOfLiberty0352/0353-15_1981v3.html |date=2007-05-15 }}. Literature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought (1978–1982). Institute for Human Studies. Autumn 1981, VOL. IV, NO. 3</ref> Other individualist anarchists influenced by Stirner include [[Lev Chernyi]], [[Adolf Brand]], [[Renzo Novatore]], [[John Henry Mackay]], [[Enrico Arrigoni]], [[Miguel Giménez Igualada]], and [[Émile Armand]].

Although initially influenced by American individualist anarchist, [[Sidney Parker (anarchist)|S.E.P.]] was influenced more by European individualists<ref>{{Cite book|title=Enemies of Society|publisher=Ardent Press|year=2012|pages=57–62}}</ref> and eventually by Dora Marsden, which led to him discarding anarchism,<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Parker|first=Sidney E.|title=Archists, Anarchists and Egoists|url=http://consciousegoism.6te.net/pdfs/ego/08.pdf|journal=The Egoist}}</ref> as did [[Dora Marsden]] some 70 years before him,<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Marsden|first=Dora|date=1914|title=The Illusion of Anarchism|url=http://consciousegoism.6te.net/pdfs/TheIllusionOfAnarchism.pdf|journal=The Egoist|volume=1}}</ref> which would go on to influence others associated with him.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=MacLeod|first=Ken|date=1999|title=What Sid Did|url=http://consciousegoism.6te.net/pdfs/nonserviam/18.pdf|journal=Non-serviam}}</ref> Other egoists who rejected anarchism include Stephen Marletta, William J. Boyer,<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Parker|first=Sidney E.|title=Two Egoists: William J. Boyer and Stephen Marletta|url=http://consciousegoism.6te.net/pdfs/ego/12.jpg|journal=ONE}}</ref> [[Ragnar Redbeard]], [[Malfew Seklew]] and [https://web.archive.org/web/20160408143140/http://i-studies.com/ Svein Olav Nyberg], among others.

Recently, Stirner has been an influential source for [[post-left anarchy|post-left anarchist]] thinkers such as [[Jason McQuinn]], [[The Abolition of Work|Bob Black]] and [[Hakim Bey]].

===Other publications===
{{related|{{annotated link|Der Einzige|''Der Einzige''}}|{{annotated link|Der Eigene|''Der Eigene''}}}}

=={{anchor|Confusion of the censors}} Publication attempts ==
''He who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it selfe'', a 1955 exhibition by University of Kansas Library, noted the following regarding the book's initial publication: {{quote|Its frank espousal of anarchistic egoism led to the not unexpected announcement in the newspapers of Saxony that the book had been immediately confiscated in Leipzig. Anxious not to be outdone, where usually they were so far ahead, Prussia banned the book. Then, Berlin received more accurate news: the book had not been banned in Saxony at all. In fact, the book's farfetched overstatement was regarded at Dresden as its own best antidote. The small states of Germany fell into line, on one side or the other, often with considerable difficulty owing to the scarcity of copies to examine first.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://spencer.lib.ku.edu:80/exhibits/bannedbooks/germany.html|title=''He who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it selfe'', an exhibition of books which have survived Fire, the Sword and the Censors |publisher=University of Kansas Library |year=1955 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090829163041/http://spencer.lib.ku.edu:80/exhibits/bannedbooks/germany.html |archive-date=2009-08-29 }}</ref>}}

== See also ==
* ''[[Geschichte des Materialismus]]''
* [[Solipsism]]

== Notes ==
{{reflist|2}}

== References ==
* {{citation|last=Paterson|first=R. W. K.|title=The Nihilistic Egoist Max Stirner|location=London|publisher=Oxford University Press|orig-year=1971|edition=Reprint|year=1993|isbn=0-7512-0258-4}}.
* {{citation|last=Thomson|first=Ernie|title=The Discovery of the Materialist Conception of History in the Writings of the Young Karl Marx|location=Lewiston, NY|publisher=E. Mellen Press|year=2004|isbn=0-7734-6426-3}}.
* {{citation|url=http://www.lsr-projekt.de/nietzsche.html|last=Laska|year=2002|first=Bernd A.|title=Nietzsches initiale Krise|journal=Germanic Notes and Reviews|volume=33|issue=2|pages=109–133}}; engl. trans. [http://www.lsr-projekt.de/poly/ennietzsche.html ''Nietzsche's Initial Crisis''].

== External links ==
* ''[[gutenberg:34580|The Ego and His Own]]'' at Project Gutenberg
* {{librivox book | title=The Ego and His Own | author=Stirner}}
* ''[https://archive.org/details/StirnerTheEgoAndItsOwn/mode/2up?view=theater The Ego and Its Own] Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought edition'' (Cambridge University Press, 1995) ed. D. Leopold.
* ''[https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stirner/ego-and-its-own.htm The Ego and Its Own]'' from the Marxists Internet Archive.
* [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-stirner-stirner-s-critics ''Stirner's Critics'']. Stirner's reply to his critics, (addendum to ''The Unique'').
*[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-stirner-the-unique-and-its-property ''The Unique and Its Property''].

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