Max Stirner

Max Stirner (1806–1856) radicalised Bauer’s pure criticism into absolute subjectivity in Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (1845). Not even self-consciousness may count as something universal, but only the concrete, unique I. Of Bauer and Feuerbach he wrote that their self-consciousness and their Man were just as much supreme beings as society is for the communists — they forgot the most important thing, the individual.

The difference from Hegel’s singularity is fundamental. Hegel’s singularity is concrete universality, mediated by universality and particularity. Stirner’s unique one is unmediated. He thereby exhibits something non-mediatable, whereas Hegel’s logic of mediation presupposes that everything can be mediated. Hegel’s spirit too counts for him as a spook.

The insight — that there is something which cannot be sublated without being annihilated — anticipates the philosophy of existence: Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre. The limit is that the unique I becomes void of content: it is precisely the absolutising of individuality that leads to its complete abstraction.