Striner’s Ego and His Own was a surprisingly pleasant read. Before opening it I had some perverted idea that it must be nothing but page after page of a man denouncing all classical ideas and even thoughts as spooks. Luckily the whole text uses the word fewer times than Stirnerites use over the course of a single passing courtesy or greeting.
It is only fitting that I should have come into the text with such a emotionally-weighed down idea of my expectations for Stirner; just as fitting that his text forced me to not just throw this thought away but examine it as if it were staring me right in the mirror. Stirner forces us to take a look at arguments as they naturally come up within our minds, that is one set of contradictions followed by another. As we work through why each set of contradictions is even more damning than the last we come with him to the conclusion that these arguments not only lack sense, but are the essence of senselessness. It is only by examining ourselves and striving for what it is that we want that we are freed from the reigns of these senseless ideals or conversations.
The final contradiction of Stirner comes out most fully in his finale. As the conversation with Stirner’s psyche comes to a close we wonder to ourselves why a man would ever write such a work. After he has just told us that he only seeks to be unique in himself and not to persuade any other to follow his way of thinking we wonder why a man would ever take a break from such a full life to put any words on paper—and yet they exist on the page before us.
No matter how the egoism of Stirner seems to come off as the opposite, it is, in a sense, a call to action. Following in the tradition of anarchism by providing an example of intense reflection on reality—which Stirner demands is only the self—we find what some may find to be the exact “truths” which Stirner deems to be spooks. Stirner’s call to action is not directed at the reader, but at the egoist, whoever they may be. The reader gets the feeling that this person must be no other than Stirner himself.
It is within this context that we can understand the whole body of anarchist thought. Aside from the mainstream belief that anarchist literature is a medium for the active subversion of the non-anarchist or transitioning anarchist, Stirner places his work as a stand for what anarchism and all its works, is. In examining what we are, and what authority is in relation to ourselves, we are able to open ourselves to the possibility of not a new world, but a new self. The brilliance of Stirner and his ego is not that it asks us to think something in particular about our relation to authority, but in that he shows us that the only reality of something is in its relation to us.
The full text of The Ego and His Own by Max Stirner can be read for free at this webpage: The Anarchist Library - The Ego and his Own