Max Stirner

Max Stirner (1806-1856) was a German philosopher whose radical critique of religion and abstract ideals profoundly influenced atheist thought and existentialism. Born Johann Kaspar Schmidt in Bayreuth, he studied philosophy and theology at Berlin, Erlangen, and Königsberg universities, attending Hegel's lectures. His magnum opus, Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum (1845; The Ego and Its Own), rejected all abstract authorities including God, state, and morality as "spooks" that enslave the individual ego. Stirner argued that religious belief represents humanity's self-alienation, wherein individuals subordinate themselves to their own mental constructs. His philosophy of egoism posited that the unique individual, freed from all sacred ideas and moral systems, constitutes the only reality. Though initially obscure, his work later influenced Nietzsche's critique of Christianity and twentieth-century existentialist discussions of authentic existence versus religious bad faith.