Stirner Max, pseudonym of Kasper Schmidt (1805–56), German philosopher who proposed a theory of radical individualism. Born in Bayreuth, he taught in Gymnasiums and later at a Berlin academy for women. He translated what became a standard German version of Smith’s Wealth of Nations and contributed articles to the Rhenische Zeitung. His most important work was Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum (1845), translated by Steven T. Byington as The Ego and His Own (1907). His second book was Die Geschichte der Reaktion (1852).
Stirner was in reaction to Hegel and was for a time associated with the left Hegelians. He stressed the priority of will and instinct over reason and proposed a radical anarchic individualism. Each individual is unique, and the independent ego is the fundamental value and reality. Stirner attacked the state, religious ideas, and abstractions such as ‘humanity’ as ‘spectres’ that are deceptive illusions, remnants of erroneous hypostatizations. His defense of egoism is such that the individual is considered to have no obligations or duties, and especially not to the state. Encouraging an individual ‘rebellion’ against state domination and control, Stirner attracted a following among nineteenthand twentieth-century anarchists. The sole goal of life is the cultivation of ‘uniqueness’ or ‘ownness.’ Engels and Marx attacked his ideas at length (under the rubric ‘Saint Marx’) in The German Ideology. Insofar as his theory of radical individualism offers no clearly stated ethical requirements, it has been characterized as a form of nihilistic egoism.
See also HEGEL. G.J.S.