Is your sense of morality just a modern form of religious possession?
In short: In 1844, Max Stirner proposed a radical idea: that our most cherished values—like humanity, justice, and even liberty—are merely 'spooks' or fixed ideas. He argued that modern progress hasn't liberated us; it has simply replaced old gods with new, more subtle ideological masters.
In his seminal work, *The Ego and Its Own* (also known as *The Unique and Its Property*), German philosopher Max Stirner launched a post-Hegelian critique of the very foundations of modern identity. Stirner argued that while we believe we have escaped the religious domination of the past, we have actually fallen victim to a new era of internal enslavement. He identified a tripartite structure of development: childhood, where external forces restrict us; youth, where we learn to overcome these through 'self-discovery of mind'; and an idealistic stage, where we become possessed by 'spooks'—internalized ideologies like nationalism, liberalism, and even the concept of 'humanity' itself.
Stirner’s critique specifically targeted the Protestant Reformation, which he believed intensified religious control by making belief more personal and creating a conflict between natural desires and religious conscience. He even attacked contemporary left-Hegelians like Ludwig Feuerbach. While Feuerbach argued that we should stop projecting qualities onto a transcendent God, Stirner countered that Feuerbanck simply deified human qualities, creating a 'change of masters' rather than true liberation. To Stirner, 'human nature' is not a goal to be achieved through striving, but a reality we already inhabit.
Instead, Stirner advocated for 'egoism' and 'Ownness' (*Eigenheit*). This was not a call for narrow, sensual selfishness, but a descriptive psychological state of autonomy. He sought to move beyond the 'limited value' of freedom toward a state of power and property, where the individual is no longer seeking themselves but truly possesses themselves. His ideas profoundly influenced the development of anarchism, existentialism, and even the early works of Marx and Engels, despite the latter's eventual fierce, ad-hominem rejection of his 'Saint Max' persona.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: The Ego and Its Own
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