The EGO and His Own

Credited with influencing the philosophies of Nietzsche and Ayn Rand and the development of libertarianism and existentialism, this prophetic 1844 work challenges the very notion of a common good as the driving force of civilization. Max Stirner chronicles the battle of the individual against the collective to show how the latter invariably leads to oppression. Nothing escapes his indictment: the ancient philosophers, Christianity, monarchism, and the bourgeois state. For students of political science and philosophy, this book is as essential as it is for those concerned about the encroachment of authority upon liberty. Translated from the 1845 German edition by Steven T. Byington.