Max Stirner

Max Stirner
Max Stirner sketches by Friedrich Engels
Born
Johann Kaspar Schmidt

(1806-10-25)25 October 1806
Died26 June 1856(1856-06-26) (aged 49)
Education
Education
Philosophical work
Era19th-century philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
School
Main interestsEgoism, ethics, ontology, pedagogy, philosophy of history, philosophy of religion, philosophy of education, property theory, psychology, value theory, philosophy of love, dialectic
Notable ideas
  • Personalism in education
  • Eigenheit (transl.ownness)
  • creative nothing
  • self-forgetfulness
  • insurrection
  • Der Einzige (The Unique)
  • "Property-worlds"
  • Union of egoists

Johann Kaspar Schmidt (German: [ʃmɪt]; 25 October 1806 – 26 June 1856), known professionally as Max Stirner (/ˈstɜːrnər/; German: [ˈʃtɪʁnɐ]), was a German post-Hegelian philosopher, dealing mainly with the Hegelian notion of social alienation and self-consciousness. Stirner is often seen as one of the forerunners of nihilism, existentialism, psychoanalytic theory, postmodernism, individualist anarchism, and egoism.

Stirner's main work, The Unique and Its Property (German: Der Einzige und sein Eigentum), was first published in 1844 in Leipzig and has since appeared in numerous editions and translations.