The Ego and Its Own

It presents a post-Hegelian critique of Christianity and traditional morality on one hand; and on the other, humanism, utilitarianism, liberalism, and much of the then-burgeoning socialist movement, advocating instead an amoral (although importantly not inherently immoral or antisocial) egoism.

[7] The first part of the text begins by setting out a tripartite dialectical structure based on an individual's stages of life (Childhood, Youth and Adulthood).

However, in the idealistic stage, a youth now becomes enslaved by internal forces such as conscience, reason and other "spooks" or "fixed ideas" of the mind (including religion, nationalism and other ideologies).

According to Stirner, Reformation theology extended religious domination over individuals by blurring the distinction between the sensual and the spiritual (thus allowing priests to marry for example).

"[6]: 113 In the chapter "My Self-Enjoyment" Stirner discusses longing and "true life", discarding both of them preferring a "non-seeking" man: "Not till I am certain of myself, and no longer seeking for myself, am I really my property; I have myself, therefore I use and enjoy myself.

[6]: 212 Stirner repeatedly quotes Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller and Bruno Bauer assuming that readers will be familiar with their works.

Initially, The Unique and Its Property received much attention, though most reviews were negative critiques by left Hegelians such as Ludwig Feuerbach and Moses Hess.

[9] Feuerbach's critique, "The Essence of Christianity in Relation to The Ego and Its Own", called the work "ingenious" and "intelligent" but also criticizes it as "eccentric, one-sided and falsely defined".

In 1844 Engels sent a letter to Marx praising "the noble Stirner" and suggesting that his dialectical egoism can serve as a point of departure for communism: It is certainly true that we must first make a cause our own, egoistic cause, before we can do anything to further it.

The critique is a polemical tirade filled with ad hominem attacks and insults against Stirner (Marx calls him a "petty bourgeois individualist intellectual").

For Marx and Engels, Stirner's "egoism" simply presented a modern religiosity, that according to L. Dallman "stands in a privileged relationship to non-conceptual reality".

American individualist Benjamin R. Tucker, editor of the journal Liberty, adopted Stirner's egoism in 1886 while rejecting conceptions of natural rights.

[13] Other individualist anarchists influenced by Stirner include Lev Chernyi, Adolf Brand, Renzo Novatore, John Henry Mackay, Enrico Arrigoni, Miguel Giménez Igualada, and Émile Armand.

[17] Other egoists who rejected anarchism include Stephen Marletta, William J. Boyer,[18] Ragnar Redbeard, Malfew Seklew and Svein Olav Nyberg, among others.

Recently, Stirner has been an influential source for post-left anarchist thinkers such as Jason McQuinn, Bob Black and Hakim Bey.