aka Johann Caspar Schmidt

Max Stirner (1806-56) is best known as the author of the idiosyncratic and provocative Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum (1844). Familiar in English as The Ego and Its Own (a more literal translation might be The Individual and his Property), both the form and content of Stirner's work are disconcerting. He challenges expectations about how political and philosophical argument should be conducted, and seeks to shake confidence in the superiority of contemporary civilisation. He provides a sweeping attack on the modern world as dominated by religious modes of thought and oppressive social institutions, together with a brief sketch of a radical ‘egoistic’ alternative in which individual autonomy might flourish. The historical impact of The Ego and Its Own is not easy to assess. However, Stirner's book can plausibly be claimed to have had a destructive impact on his left-Hegelian contemporaries, to have played a significant role in the intellectual development of Karl Marx (1818-1883), and to have influenced the tradition of individualist anarchism.


http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Stirner
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/max-stirner/