Philosophy of Max Stirner

The philosophy of Max Stirner (25 October 1806 - 26 June 1856), a German philosopher, is credited as a major influence in the development of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism, and anarchism (especially of egoist anarchism, individualist anarchism, postanarchism, and post-left anarchy). Stirner's main philosophical work was The Ego and Its Own, also known as The Ego and His Own (Der Einzige und sein Eigentum in German, which means, more accurately in German, The Individual and his Property).

Stirner's philosophy has been cited as an influence on both his contemporaries, most notably Karl Marx (who was strongly opposed to Stirner's views), as well as subsequent thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche,Enrico Arrigoni, Steven T. Byington, Benjamin R. Tucker, Emile Armand, Albert Camus, and Saul Newman.

Stirner argues that the concept of the self is something impossible to fully comprehend; a so-called 'creative nothing' he described as an "end-point of language".

The Unique One is the straightforward, sincere, plain-phrase. It is the end point of our phrase world, of this world in whose "beginning was the Word."

In order to understand this 'creative nothing', Stirner uses poetry and vivid imagery. The 'creative nothing' by its dialectical shortcomings creates the need for a description, for meaning.

What Stirner says is a word, a thought, a concept; what he means is no word, no thought, no concept. What he says is not what is meant, and what he means is unsayable.

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