Jacques Élie Henri Ambroise Ner (7 December 1861 – 6 February 1938), also known by the pseudonym Han Ryner, was a French individualist anarchist philosopher and activist and a novelist.
He wrote for publications such as L'Art social, L'Humanité nouvelle, L'Ennemi du Peuple, L'Idée Libre de Lorulot; and L'En dehors and L'Unique of fellow anarchist individualist Émile Armand.
He was born in Nemours (now Ghazaouet, Tlemcen Province), Department of Orán, French Algeria in a modest religious family.
In 1896, he adopted the pseudonym "Han Ryner" and started writing for such magazines as L'Art social, L'Humanité nouvelle of Augustin Hamon, L'Ennemi du Peuple of Émile Janvion and L'Idée Libre.
By the 1920s his thought starts having an important influence in Spain within individualist anarchist circles especially through the translations of his work by Juan Elizalde.
[1] The Brazilian individualist anarchist Maria Lacerda de Moura took the task of making his philosophy and writing become known in the Portuguese-speaking world.
[2] With the First World War approaching, Han Ryner embraced pacifist and anti-war positions and promotes conscience objection.
[4] As models of individualists he names Socrates, Epicurus, Jesus and Epictetus[4] and so these persons exemplify what he defines as "harmonic individualism".
[4] He understood happiness as something that can only be reached through oneself and sees that "Society has stolen from all, in order to turn over to a few, that great instrument of natural labor, the earth."
"[4] In line with Stirner, he rejected sacrifices in the name of exterior "Idols" such as "In certain countries, the King or the Emperor, in others some fraud called the Will of the People.