Stirner’s Critics by Max Stirner
summary of Stirner’s Critics by Max Stirner:
Max Stirner’s Stirner’s Critics is a polemical defense of his groundbreaking and controversial work The Ego and Its Own (1844), written in response to the criticisms he received from fellow Young Hegelians such as Ludwig Feuerbach, Moses Hess, and Szeliga (Franz Zychlinski). In this text, Stirner confronts their objections point by point, demonstrating both the radical nature of his philosophy of egoism and the misunderstandings or misrepresentations of his opponents. Feuerbach had argued that Stirner merely inverted his own “humanism” by replacing God with the individual ego, while Hess and Szeliga accused him of nihilism and moral irresponsibility. Stirner, however, insists that his philosophy does not exalt the ego as an abstract principle but instead affirms the concrete, living, unique individual who exists beyond the abstractions of “Man,” “Humanity,” or any higher cause. He exposes how even his critics, while claiming to overcome religious dogma, remain trapped in quasi-religious modes of thought by sacralizing ideas like humanity, morality, or species-being. Stirner argues that their humanist ideals are no less “spooks” (phantoms of the mind) than the theological concepts they seek to replace, and that true liberation lies not in serving such abstractions but in embracing one’s ownness (Eigenheit), the self-affirming power of the unique individual. With biting wit and a combative style, Stirner dismantles the criticisms leveled against him and clarifies that his egoism is not a doctrine of selfish isolation but a recognition of the individual’s creative freedom to shape associations and relations on their own terms. Stirner’s Critics thus serves both as a defense of his radical thought and as an extension of his attack on ideology, making it an essential companion to The Ego and Its Own and a key text in understanding the controversies that his philosophy provoked among his contemporaries.
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