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MS
19th Century
Max Stirner
1806–1856 · Egoism
Nothing is sacred, least of all the state.
In their words
“I have set my affair on nothing.”
The Ego and Its Own, published in 1844, argued that creeds, institutions and moral obligations are phantoms we permit to rule us, and that the individual who refuses to worship any of them is already free. Marx and Engels answered him at book length, which shows how seriously the argument was taken. His radical nominalism remains the sharpest case available against rule as such.
Why it matters for freedom
He refused every authority that presents itself as a higher cause, including the ones wearing freedom's colors.
Who they stood against
the state, the church, and every abstraction that asked him to live for it