"John F. Welsh provides us with a superb distillation of the thought of Max Stirner and the dialecticalegoist paradigm he developed. Througth this brilliant study. Welsh demonstrates the power and breadth of dialectics as a radical mode of analysis and social transformation--Chris Matthew Sciabarra author of Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism.

Max Stirner was one of the most important and seminal thinkers of the mid-nineteenth century. He exposed the religiosity behind secular humanism and rationalism, and the domination of the individual behind liberal modes of politics. This edited collection explores Stirner's radical and contemporary importance as a political theorist.

This book is an existential study of romantic loving. It draws on five existential philosophers to offer insights into what is wrong with our everyday ideas about romantic loving, why reality often falls short of the ideal, sources of frustrations and disappointments, and possibilities for creating authentically meaningful relationships.

Max Stirner on the Path of Doubt examines Stirner's incisive criticism of his contemporaries during the period from the death of Hegel, in 1831, to the 1848 German Revolution. Stirner's work, mainly the Ego and His Own, considered each of the major figures within that German school known as “The Young Hegelians.” Lawrence S. Stepelevich argues that for Stirner, they were but “pious atheists,” and their common revolutionary ideology concealed an ancient religious ground – which Stirner set about to reveal. The central doctrine of this school, that Mankind was its own Savior, was initiated in 1835 by the theologian, David F. Strauss's in his Life of Jesus , and it progressed with August von Cieszkowski's mystical recasting of history, followed by Bruno Bauer's absolute atheism and Ludwig Feuerbach's statement that “Man is God.” This soon found reflection in the “Sacred History of Mankind” declared by Moses Hess. Within a decade, the result was the secular reformulation of this theological ideology into the “Scientific Socialism” of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Although linked to it, Max Stirner was the most relentless and feared critic of this school. His work, never out of print, but largely ignored by academics, has inspired countless “individualists” set upon rejecting any form of religious or political “causes,” and finding Stirner's assertion that he had “set his cause upon nothing” took this as their own cause.

This Handbook offers an authoritative, up-to-date introduction to the rich scholarly conversation about anarchy—about the possibility, dynamics, and appeal of social order without the state. Drawing on resources from philosophy, economics, law, history, politics, and religious studies, it is designed to deepen understanding of anarchy and the development of anarchist ideas at a time when those ideas have attracted increasing attention. The popular identification of anarchy with chaos makes sophisticated interpretations—which recognize anarchy as a kind of social order rather than an alternative to it—especially interesting. Strong, centralized governments have struggled to quell popular frustration even as doubts have continued to percolate about their legitimacy and long-term financial stability. Since the emergence of the modern state, concerns like these have driven scholars to wonder whether societies could flourish while abandoning monopolistic governance entirely. Standard treatments of political philosophy frequently assume the justifiability and desirability of states, focusing on such questions as, What is the best kind of state? and What laws and policies should states adopt?, without considering whether it is just or prudent for states to do anything at all. This Handbook encourages engagement with a provocative alternative that casts more conventional views in stark relief. Its 30 chapters, written specifically for this volume by an international team of leading scholars, are organized into four main parts: I. Concept and Significance II. Figures and Traditions III. Legitimacy and Order IV. Critique and Alternatives In addition, a comprehensive index makes the volume easy to navigate and an annotated bibliography points readers to the most promising avenues of future research.

Max Stirner’s The Unique and Its Property (1844) is the first ruthless critique of modern society. In All Things are Nothing to Me, Jacob Blumenfeld reconstructs the unique philosophy of Max Stirner (1806–1856), a figure that strongly influenced—for better or worse—Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Emma Goldman as well as numerous anarchists, feminists, surrealists, illegalists, existentialists, fascists, libertarians, dadaists, situationists, insurrectionists and nihilists of the last two centuries. Misunderstood, dismissed, and defamed, Stirner’s work is considered by some to be the worst book ever written. It combines the worst elements of philosophy, politics, history, psychology, and morality, and ties it all together with simple tautologies, fancy rhetoric, and militant declarations. That is the glory of Max Stirner’s unique footprint in the history of philosophy. Jacob Blumenfeld wanted to exhume this dead tome along with its dead philosopher, but discovered instead that, rather than deceased, their spirits are alive and quite well, floating in our presence. All Things are Nothing to Me is a forensic investigation into how Stirner has stayed alive throughout time.

The Chinese Tao and the Western Trinity have a fundamental unity of theme: the unity of opposites. Both are connected with problems as broad and diverse as how to describe the entire universe, how a system can talk about itself, the relationship between symbols and realities, and the nature of signs and sacraments.

From Karl Marx to Wyndham Lewis, this book examines Max Stirner's influence on the modern manifesto. Max Stirner has long proven to be an elusive figure at the fringes of 19th-century German idealism. He has been portrayed as the father of the philosophical dead end that was egoistic anarchism: a withered branch of an ineffectual movement, remembered largely because of its suggestion that crime was a valid form of revolutionary action. From this perspective, egoists subscribed to extreme forms of anarchism and defended acts of theft, assault, and even murder; egoism only held lasting appeal to rebels, nihilists, and criminals; and Stirner's ideas could – and should – be consigned to the dustbin of history accordingly. The Ego Made Manifest argues that many of the accepted truisms about Stirner and his reception are false and that his contribution to modernist and avant-garde manifesto-writing traditions has been overlooked. Beginning with his influence on Marx's Communist Manifesto, Wayne Bradshaw reinserts Stirner into the history of manifestos that not only rebelled against tradition but sought to take ownership of history, culture, and people's minds. This study documents the trajectory of Stirner's reception from mid-19th-century Germany to his rediscovery by German and American readers almost 50 years later, and from his popularity among manifesto writers in fin de siècle Paris to the birth of Italian Futurism. Finally, it considers how American and British interest in egoism helped inspire Vorticism's satirical approach to revolt, and how, in an age of extremism, Stirner's ideas continue to haunt the modern mind.

If art, science, and the humanities have shared one thing, it was their common engagement with constructions and representations of the human. Under the pressure of new contemporary concerns, however, we are experiencing a “posthuman condition”; the combination of new developments-such as the neoliberal economics of global capitalism, migration, technological advances, environmental destruction on a mass scale, the perpetual war on terror and extensive security systems- with a troublesome reiteration of old, unresolved problems that mean the concept of the human as we had previously known it has undergone dramatic transformations. The Posthuman Glossary is a volume providing an outline of the critical terms of posthumanity in present-day artistic and intellectual work. It builds on the broad thematic topics of Anthropocene/Capitalocene, eco-sophies, digital activism, algorithmic cultures and security and the inhuman. It outlines potential artistic, intellectual, and activist itineraries of working through the complex reality of the 'posthuman condition', and creates an understanding of the altered meanings of art vis-à-vis critical present-day developments. It bridges missing links across disciplines, terminologies, constituencies and critical communities. This original work will unlock the terms of the posthuman for students and researchers alike.

American Anarchism by Steve J. Shone is a work of political theory and history that focuses on nineteenth century American Anarchism, together with two European anarchists who influenced some of the Americans. The nine thinkers discussed are Alexander Berkman, Voltairine de Cleyre, Samuel Fielden, Luigi Galleani, Peter Kropotkin, Lucy Parsons, Max Stirner, William Graham Sumner, and Benjamin Tucker. Shone emphasizes the value of using ideas from nineteenth century American Anarchism to solve contemporary political problems.