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Max Stirner (/ˈstɜːrnər/; German: [ˈʃtɪʁnɐ]) 25 October 1806 – 26 June 1856), born Johann Kaspar Schmidt, 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. Born in 1806 in Bayreuth, Bavaria, he was a German philosopher whose life and work are known largely through the biography by John Henry Mackay. He was orphaned young and raised in West Prussia after his mother's remarriage. Stirner studied at the University of Berlin, where he attended Hegel's lectures. He then moved into teaching and became involved with the Young Hegelians in Berlin. Although he struggled to secure a permanent academic post, Stirner became a fixture in intellectual circles and wrote his most famous work, The Unique and Its Property (German: Der Einzige und sein Eigentum), while supporting himself as a teacher. He married twice, first to Agnes Burtz, who died in 1838, and later to Marie Dähnhardt. He attempted and failed at business before turning to translation and writing. Stirner died in Berlin in 1856, having spent his later years in relative obscurity despite the enduring influence of his radical individualist philosophy.
Where the world comes in my way—and it comes in my way everywhere—I consume it to quiet the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but—my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one relation to each other, that of usableness , of utility, of use. We owe each other nothing, for what I seem to owe you I owe at most to myself. If I show you a cheery air in order to cheer you likewise, then your cheeriness is of consequence to me , and my air serves my wish; to a thousand others, whom I do not aim to cheer, I do not show it.
Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man's lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one's self.
Where the world comes in my way—and it comes in my way everywhere—I consume it to quiet the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but—my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one relation to each other, that of usableness , of utility, of use. We owe each other nothing, for what I seem to owe you I owe at most to myself. If I show you a cheery air in order to cheer you likewise, then your cheeriness is of consequence to me , and my air serves my wish; to a thousand others, whom I do not aim to cheer, I do not show it.
