STIRNER, MAX. — Pseudonym of the philosopher Johann Caspar Schmidt, b. 25 Oct. 1806 at Bayreuth, d. 25 June 1856 at Berlin. He studied (1826–28; 1832–34) philosophy, classical philology and theology in Berlin, a pupil of Hegel (v.) and Schleiermacher (v.), then in Erlangen and Königsberg. After living as a schoolmaster, private tutor and journalist, he spent his final years in poverty.
His principal work, by which he is widely known, is Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (Leipzig 1845; several editions after the 3rd, ibid. 1901; Italian trans. [L’Unico] with introduction by E. Zoccoli, Turin 1902). Also noteworthy are the Kleiner Schriften and the Entgegnungen auf die Kritik seines Werkes «Der Einz. u. s. Eig.» (ed. by J. H. Mackay, Berlin 1898; Italian trans. [Replies to his Critics] by A. Treves, Milan 1923), as well as Die Geschichte der Reaktion (2 vols., Berlin 1852) and Das unwahre Prinzip unserer Erziehung oder Der Humanismus und der Realismus (Leipzig–Charlottenburg 1911; Basel 1927).
S. belonged to the left wing of Hegelianism; he criticised Hegel’s dialectic while proclaiming, against every form of historicism (v.), the irreducible and unique status of the individual (v.), the source of all value, thought and action. Hence the radical critique that set him against the schemes of every religious, moral, historical and political ideology, which in his eyes were mere disguises for interests that must be abolished in the face of the new and radical principle of absolute individuation (v.). In striving, like Hegel, to realise the ideal, he exemplified the error of the modern world.
Stirner’s doctrine has therefore been regarded as the most rigorous form of immoralism and anarchism. Some existentialist motifs may not be excluded from his thought. Thus the “Unique” of Stirnerian doctrine would appear as the genuine existent, destined to emerge from nothingness only to be reabsorbed into II. Yet it must be observed that many existentialists, like Hegelianism itself, seek to place the moral problem on bases that Stirner utterly rejects. Studies of his thought have chiefly highlighted the political aspect of anarchism arising from the new premises of a radically and rigorously individualistic ideology.