Max Stirner

• No restrictions on the ego - all fixed ideas about the political, social and economic world must be cleared from our minds
• Individual freedom is the supreme value and end in itself . liberty is central to the timing and flourishing of each person
• spooks of the mind: authority, state, church, morality, private property and capitalism
• by throwing out the spooks of the mind, existing ideas will crumble into dust, taking the institutions with them
• this will leave a Union of Egoists, where individuals come together in voluntary arrangements that suit their own interests
• Book

  The Ego and His Own 1845
• Human nature

  self interested ego- everyone can express their individuality free from all constraints
• Absolute self autonomy:

  'Ownness' - egoism represents individual self autonomy and self mastery. individuals have to avoid becoming enslaved by personal appetites
• Controversial

  doesn't accept altruism
• Relationship between individual and the state

  compromise - a person exercises self mastery - fundamental opposition to the state hostility
• inherent nature of the state

  to limit an individual's freedom
• capitalism

  it rejects it- leads to alienation and exploitation. employment should be fulfilling and useful to the person
• union of Egoists

  voluntary cooperative groups- enable individuals to pursue their personal objectives in a mutual and orderly way
• disagrees with revolution

  movements seeking to overthrow oppressive states would end up creating new oppressive states
• individual rebel

  personal act of revolt# clearing out the fixed ideas so the existing state, society and economy perish and start to riot with it