Against Every Other Conception of Property

Contrasting Stirner’s Egoist Concept of Property with the Entire Western Tradition

This essay examines Max Stirner’s radically singular conception of property as might (i.e. a lived capacity for appropriation). A conception that is very unique in contrast to every other major tradition in Western philosophy. This essay claims that liberalism grounds property in natural rights, socialism in justice, anarchism in freedom, Marxism in historical development, Hegelianism in recognition, Nietzscheanism in self-mastery, and phenomenology/existentialism in meaning - meaning that each tradition ultimately treats property as something that must be legitimated by a higher authority or ideal. In contrast to these traditions, this essay argues that Stirner alone desecrates the concept of property entirely. And he does so by removing all moral, political, metaphysical, historical, and existential foundations, thereby reducing property to a raw, immediate act of power. This essay attempts to offer a dense comparative analysis of Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and other anarchist and socialist thinkers. It also attempts to demonstrate that Stirner’s notion of property (as whatever one can use, take, or make one’s own) stands as a profound rupture within the history of philosophy. In Stirner’s hands, property ceases to be a right, entitlement, or ethical relation and becomes a purely egoistic event of appropriation. It is my claim that this places Stirner outside the entire tradition: He is the only thinker for whom property is unburdened by justification and grounded solely in personal power.

Property as Philosophy’s Oldest Mistake

For centuries, philosophers have treated property as if it were a moral riddle to be solved, a civil problem to be organized, or a sacred entitlement to be defended.

Liberalism imagines it as a right.

Socialism as an injustice.

Anarchism as a relation to be purified.

Marxism as a historical structure.

And even Nietzsche glimpses it only as an aspect of self-mastery.

Across the entire tradition, property is approached and discusssed with a kind of reverence. Meaning it is something bestowed, regulated, justified, or contested. And it’s always embedded in a system larger than the individual. It always belongs first to society, the community, the state, the people, or “man” as a moral being. The individual basically just receives it secondhand, and that’s it.

And, in my opinion, Max Stirner is having none of it!
He does what no other thinker dares to do: he removes property from the realm of morality and installs it directly in the realm of power. And this power is the lived, immediate intensity of the acting individual.

Property is an event: the moment in which a thing bends toward your power and becomes yours through use.

And this simple shift of property being appropriated rather than owed because of some bullshit delusion of entitlement, turns the entire philosophical history of ownership inside out.

Stirner’s answer is so beautifully brutal in its clarity:
Nothing is yours until you make it so.

So…this essay will trace that rupture by examining one tradition at a time.

I. Liberalism: Property as a Right vs. Property as Might

Liberal philosophy begins with a theological commitment it refuses to name: the belief that property has to be morally justified before it can be held. So…rather than treating ownership as a basic fact of human action, liberalism wraps possession in some kind of halo of legitimacy. From Locke onward, property is never simply taken. It is always deserved.

1. John Locke: Property as Natural Right through Labor

Locke’s Second Treatise of Government is the founding scripture.
There he declares:

“Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself.”
(Second Treatise, §27)

This single sentence basically binds property to personhood, and personhood to a kind of natural sanctity. Locke’s famous argument is that mixing one’s labor with objects in nature makes them one’s rightful possession. And this argument rests on a theological premise:

“Men being the workmanship of one omnipotent…wherein they are his property.”
(§6)

So basically: We are God’s property first, therefore we are entitled to property by analogy.

And Stirner dismantles this as a kind of spiritual tyranny disguised as political philosophy.
To him, Locke’s argument does nothing but spookify labor:

“Human rights are the most respectable spook which the human mind is possessed by.”

“The right which you accord to me, I accord to myself.”

Where Locke says labor gives legitimacy, Stirner replies that no labor, no effort, no sweat can transform a thing into “mine” except through my power over it.

So, in Stirner’s eyes, Lockean property is a metaphysics. For Stirner, property is a metabolism.

2. Rousseau: Property as Social Contract and the Birth of Inequality

But what about Rousseau? In Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau imagines the tragic birth of property:

“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, said ‘This is mine,’ and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.”

For Rousseau, property is the root of domination.
Yet even he concedes that rightful property emerges once society collectively assents to it.
So, in a way, the people legitimize the fence by recognizing the claim.

This is merely collectivized morality. It’s like a permission granted by the herd.

And, obviously, Stirner laughs at this simpering sentimentality.

“If the world belongs to the ‘people,’ it belongs to no one but the ghost of the people.”

He sees that Rousseau fears that property creates domination and says that domination exists before property, in the very idea that one needs approval to own. Huge contradiction exposed here!

3. Kant: Property as Rational, Universal, and Moral

Let’s move on to Kant. What Kant does is…he elevates property to a matter of universal law. In the Metaphysics of Morals, he asserts:

“A right to a thing is a moral relation between persons.”

He basically says that property is not about objects but about obligations between rational beings.
So…to own something is to enter into a network of mutual duties.

Conclusively, for Kant, freedom only exists under universalizable laws, and property is one of those laws.
So then…that makes ownership ethical.

In contrast, Stirner would likely regard Kantian duty as the most refined form of enslavement: like a palace of moral necessity.

His sentiment is this:

“What you have the power to be, you have the right to.”

So…under Kant, property is a structure of reciprocal obligation.
Under Stirner, obligation is a trap and property is whatever one can take without becoming beholden.

4. Mill: Property as Social Utility and Progressive Civilization

Now let’s not forget John Stuart Mill, because Mill does something unique: he justifies property on utilitarian grounds by saying the following:

“The institution of property is grounded on general expediency.”
(Principles of Political Economy)

So what he is saying is that society is improved when property is stable. And then individuals flourish because the institution benefits the whole.

So here property becomes a tool of social progress, meaning: not a natural right, but a civilizing force.

But for Stirner, this would simply be the state yapping. He once said:

“The State calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.”

So where Mill sees property as stabilizing, Stirner sees stability as submission.

In a very direct way, Mill wants property to uplift society through Daddy State. But Stirner wants property to uplift the individual before it does anything else.

The Liberal Legacy: Property as Legitimacy, Not Power

So let’s conclude the first chapter: Across the liberal tradition…including Locke’s natural rights, Rousseau’s moral community, Kant’s rational duty, and Mill’s utilitarian progress…one structure remains intact:

Property is something you are granted.
And it is never something you simply take.

It is given by God, nature, reason, law, or society.
It is secured by courts, police, and moral consensus.
And it requires recognition, justification, and approval.

But to Stirner, this is the purest form of ideological domestication.

He writes the line that detonates the entire liberal tradition:

“What I have in my power, that is my property.”

Not: what I can justify.
Not: what society will recognize.
Not: what law will protect.

What I can make mine through use, force, creation, or transformation: that is what belongs to me.

So where liberalism builds elaborate systems to legitimize property, Stirner demolishes the question of legitimacy altogether.
Property is not a right. Let’s get real: It is a capacity.

Liberal property is moral. Stirnerian property is elemental.
Liberal property is protected. Stirnerian property is enacted.
Liberal property is what one deserves. Stirnerian property is what one can appropriate.

This is the first and deepest fracture between Stirner and the entire tradition.

But let’s move on…

II. Socialism & Communism: Property as Collective Mandate vs. Property as Personal Use

If liberalism sanctifies property, then socialism seeks to redeem it. And this redemption ranges from the utopian socialists to Marx and Engels with the discourse around property shifting from the individual to the collective. This means that the question is no longer, “What belongs to me?” but “What belongs to us?” And the assumption shared by nearly all socialist thinkers is that the problem of property is a moral contradiction, or in other words, an injustice that demands rectification.

And let’s be clear about Stirner’s uniqueness within the canon.

Stirner is the only thinker who rejects not only bourgeois property, but the very idea that property should have a moral meaning at all.

Where socialists ask how property should be distributed, Stirner asks why property must be justified in the first place.

Do you guys understand how relevant that question actually is?

Let me try to show you…

1. Proudhon’s “Property is Theft” & The Moralization of Anti-Property

Let’s start with Proudhon. Proudhon’s famous declaration from What is Property? (1840) is:

“Property is theft.”

And, in the same text, it becomes:

“Property is impossible.”

But Proudhon can’t seem to escape the gravitational pull of moralism. So he ends up condemning private property because it is unjust, or in other words, because it violates an ethical principle of equality, and not because it is impractical.

And his solution is “possession” (use-based occupancy) but, unfortunately, still under the supervision of a communal moral order.
So he just replaces one sacred concept (property) with another (justice).

For Stirner it's more like…

What belongs to no one cannot be stolen; the water that one draws out of the sea he does not steal. Accordingly property is not theft, but a theft becomes possible only through property.

So what this means is…for Stirner, Proudhon’s slogan only reveals that he still believes property should be deserved, (meaning: earned through moral purity). So, in a way, he hates property for failing to be holy. In brief: Proudhon’s socialism wants property to be nice and Stirner wants property to be real.

2. Early Utopian Socialism: Property as Morality Regulated by the Collective

Then there are the utopians…Thinkers like Fourier, Owen, and Saint-Simon envisioned societies where property was reorganized for harmony, fairness, and collective flourishing. Fourier mentioned “passional attraction” harmonizing labor, Owen wanted cooperative communities, and Saint-Simon imagines some kind of industrial meritocracy that is supposed to make it all better.

So…they all share the same underlying belief:

Property has to serve the moral good of society.

But Stirner exposes the bullshit making this whole argument stink:

“The people is a ghost.”

To him, utopian socialism is literally just Christianity in secular form:
where community replaces God, cooperation replaces grace, and fairness replaces sin.

So…within utopian socialism, property is still evaluated through a moral lens.
The collective is still the authority.
And the individual is still secondary.

3. Marx & Engels: Private Property as Alienation and Historical Structure

Oh yes…the most famous Stirner critics: Marx and Engels. Marx also gives the most powerful critique of private property. And let’s give it to him. He does it well. Marx grounds private property in material relations, and completel moves on from moral claims. In The German Ideology, he and Engels write:

“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.”

So…property, for Marx, is a social relation produced by the mode of production. And private ownership of the means of production alienates the worker from his labor, himself, and others.

And what Marx does is he resolves this by abolishing private property in the means of production and vesting ownership in the collective proletariat.

However, Marx still treats property as something that has to be legitimated. And this time not by God, but by historical necessity. So, he does some replacing of his own: he replaces divine right with dialectical inevitability.

And Stirner sees through this with surgical precision.

It’s kind of nice that Marx relocates ownership from the bourgeoisie to the collective and all. Like that’s one step closer…
But, unfortunately, ownership is still property of an abstraction.

• The bourgeoisie = a class abstraction

• The proletariat = a class abstraction

• Humanity = a species abstraction

• Capital = a structural abstraction

• History = a metaphysical abstraction

And as we know…Stirner refuses all of them.

Because for him, property exists only in the immediacy of individual power, not in the spooky hands of “the collective.”

Communism as the Final Spook of Property

So, let’s summarize our little chapter on socialism / communism:

Marx famously mocks Stirner as “Saint Max,” and calls him a petty-bourgeois idealist who cannot grasp material conditions. But Stirner’s retort is pretty fucking devastating as well: he accuses communism of spiritualizing property even further and thereby kind of messing up its own game.

So…obviously Communism doesn’t abolish property (not that it wants to). It actually nationalizes it into a new abstraction. And as long as there is an abstraction…it won’t work.

The bourgeois says: “This factory is mine.”
The communist says: “This factory belongs to the people.”
And Stirner says: “This is a word game. Who is ‘the people’? Show him to me.”

To Stirner, the struggle over property between capitalism and socialism is merely the struggle over which spook should own the world.

Capital says: the market
Socialism says: the people
Communism says: history
Anarchism says: justice

But in all cases, property belongs to something other than the individual.

Stirner’s Reversal: Property Exists Only in Use, Not in Structure

So what is different about Stirner? Let’s have a brief look:

Stirner’s project is to empty property of moral content:
He empties it of economic structure and he empties it of collective meaning.

Here is the sentiment that neither liberals nor socialists can accept:

“Property exists only through might.”

Not through:

• rights

• justice

• equality

• historical necessity

• collective will

• rational duty

• distributional fairness

But through the immediate power to appropriate, shape, and use.

Socialists want property to be fair.
Liberals want property to be justified.
Communists want property to be historical.
Stirner wants property to be personal.

He is neither capitalist nor anti-capitalist.
He is neither pro-property nor anti-property.

Property is simply whatever one can make one’s own.

This can be a tool, a craft, a moment, a thought, a feeling…all become “property” when they enter the sphere of one’s power.

Consequently, this dissolves the entire moral and political debate and leaves property not as an institution, but as a continuum of force.

And this necessitates a discussion about anarchism.

So, let’s have a look there next:

III. Anarchism: Property as Freedom vs. Property as Creative Force

If liberalism moralizes property through rights, and socialism moralizes it through justice, anarchism moralizes property through freedom.

Classical anarchists oppose property not because it is theft, nor because it is unequal, but because it is a mechanism of domination. So…property, for them, is inseparable from authority: to abolish one is to undermine the other.

And even here Stirner is an anomaly because (and this is a big claim but I am going to make it) he is the only anarchist-adjacent thinker who does not treat property as a moral question at all. He neither abolishes it nor sanctifies it. He destroys the very premise that property needs to be justified, critiqued, or purified. He rips property out of the political register entirely and returns it to the sphere of personal force.

1. Godwin: Property as Rational Benevolence

Let’s start easy. William Godwin who is often considered the first modern anarchist, argues in Enquiry Concerning Political Justice that property persists only because people fail to act rationally. According to him:

“Every man is bound to contribute everything in his power to the benefit of all.”
(Political Justice, Book VIII)

So this means that property is illegitimate when it obstructs benevolence.
Godwin sees private ownership as irrational because it inhibits the general good.

And his alternative is………
Ownership mediated by rational morality.

Obviously for Stirner this as a covert tyranny.
Because: The “general good” is a spook.
Rational benevolence is a spook.
Obligation (even “rational”) is a spook.

In contrast, Stirner says:

“I do not step shyly back from what is yours;
I look upon everything as my property, in which I may have any interest.”

Godwin replaces private property with the duty to share.
Stirner rejects both property and duty as sacred.

2. Bakunin: Property as Authority and the Birth of the State

But what about everyone’s favorite anarchist? Mikhail Bakunin’s critique is more violent. You have to give him that.
In God and the State, he declares:

“Property… is the basis and root of all political power.”

For Bakunin:

• Property → class domination

• Class domination → the State

• The State → the enslavement of humanity

Thus the abolition of property becomes the abolition of political hierarchy.

But the problem is that Bakunin, like Proudhon, still moralizes property through justice, equality, and freedom.

He writes in Statism and Anarchy:

“Where liberty and equality do not exist, there can be no justice.”

I think Stirner would say Bakunin simply creates a bigger, angrier god.
Because he replaces private ownership with egalitarian necessity, which is a moral imperative.

In contrast, Stirner says:

“The State is not the cause of servitude, but servitude is the cause of the State.”
(paraphrased by many scholars)

Because property does not produce authority. What produces authority are sacred ideas.

So…Bakunin attacks property as a source of domination and Stirner attacks sacredness as the source of domination.

Thus Bakunin remains trapped in the political and property has to be abolished for the people.

And Stirner? Well…he abolishes the people.

3. Kropotkin: Property as Mutual Aid vs. Stirner’s Personal Power

In The Conquest of Bread, Kropotkin argues that property has to be collectivized so that everyone can enjoy the fruits of social labor:

“The day laborer has no property… everything he produces belongs to the capitalist.”
(Conquest of Bread, Ch. 1)

And I mean…there is truth to this. But the problem is always the alternative offered, isn’t it? His alternative is a system where property is dissolved into a communal pool of mutual aid. There, property becomes a matter of needs, care, and solidarity.

But Kropotkin never questions the idea that property should be judged morally. His standard is simply inverted: instead of protecting the owner, property must protect the community.

And Stirner very clearly rejects that premise of protection:

“ALL THINGS ARE NOTHING TO ME.”

Including the owner.
Including the community.
And including need, justice, and solidarity.

Basically…Kropotkin wants property to nourish everyone but Stirner wants property to nourish the one who uses it.

4. Benjamin Tucker and Mutualism: Property Through Contract and Consent

Now we are entering a very egoism-adjacent realm: Tucker’s Instead of a Book defines property as rightful possession based on:

• individual labor

• voluntary exchange

• mutual consent

With this concept of property, Tucker breaks from communism, but he unfortunately maintains a moral architecture: including contracts, fair exchange, and legitimate possession.

His motto is

“Liberty, not equality, is the primary demand of justice.”

But Stirner would say:
Why should I care about justice at all?

Tucker’s “non-aggression principle” is just another sacred standard, another external rule regulating ownership.

And Stirner refuses all such metaphysical regulators:

“Away, then, with all concern that isn’t my concern.”

This is the big different between individualism and egoism: Tucker abolishes coerced property and Stirner abolishes the moral meaning of property.

Stirner’s Break: Property Without Freedom, Contract, or Equality

Let’s sum up our chapter on Anarchism.

Classical anarchists like Godwin, Bakunin, Kropotkin, and even Tucker differ on the mechanics of ownership, but they all agree on one point:

Property has to be morally purified somehow.
It has to be compatible with liberty, equality, or mutual aid.

And Stirner rejects all three:

Stirner’s property:

• has no relation to justice

• has no relation to equality

• has no relation to contracts

• has no relation to freedom

It is simply the creative power of the individual.

Where anarchists want property to be ethical,
Stirner wants property to be mine.

Not in a legal sense.
Not in a moral sense.
Not in a social sense.

But in the only sense that matters to him:

Property is whatever I can take into my use, shape through my force, and hold through my will.

And this is why Stirner is not truly an anarchist.
And yet no anarchist can escape him.

IV. Hegel: Property as Recognition vs. Stirner’s Property Without Recognition

Now…let’s get into metaphysics. Hegel is the last great philosopher of sacred property, though he disguises the sacred as rational necessity. For Hegel, property is not just an external asset. It is actually the first stage in the realization of freedom itself. In the Philosophy of Right, property belongs to the sphere of “Abstract Right,” where the person externalizes their will into the world.

For Hegel:

“A person must give his freedom an external sphere in order to exist as Idea.”
(Philosophy of Right, §41)

To own something is to make one’s will real.
To have no property is to fail to actualize oneself.

Stirner detonates this entire metaphysical architecture.

Because he refuses the notion that “freedom” requires exteriorization.
And he refuses the idea that freedom has a rational form at all.
And above all, he refuses recognition. Which, to him, is the mechanism by which Hegel binds ownership to a social and ethical order.

1. Hegel’s Core Thesis: Property Requires Mutual Recognition

Hegel’s theory rests on a simple claim:

Property is legitimate only when recognized by others.

As he writes:

“Right is in essence the existence of freedom, and its basis is the mutual recognition of free persons.”
(Philosophy of Right, §36)

This is the foundation of Hegel’s entire system:

• recognition grounds personhood

• personhood grounds right

• right grounds property

• property grounds ethical life

• ethical life grounds the state

Property is thus an ontology of social existence.

So..for Hegel, no one can own anything meaningfully unless others identify them as its rightful owner.
Which means that property is part of a universal structure (Sittlichkeit) that transcends the individual.

And Stirner sees this as the purest form of spiritual domination.

2. Stirner’s Counter: Recognition is Enslavement

Stirner’s entire egoistic philosophy revolves around rejecting recognition as the foundation of anything. In The Ego and Its Own, he actually very harshly mocks the idea that personhood depends on social validation.

What he is saying is that recognition is nothing but an external standard you have to appeal to in order to justify your existence or your property.

Hegel: You own through recognition.
Stirner: Recognition is the first theft.

If I require others to validate my ownership, I am no longer an owner. I am a petitioner.

Stirner says:

“My power is my property.
And only so long as I retain it is the thing mine.”

So…nothing about recognition enters into this.

Basically:

For Hegel, ownership is a social contract.
For Stirner, ownership is an immediate event of appropriation.

3. Hegel: The Externalization of the Will

Something annoying Hegel does is he insists that property is where the will makes itself objective:

“The person must give himself external reality in order to be an actual will.”
(Philosophy of Right, §41 Addition)

This means:

• property is a rational necessity

• property is an expression of freedom

• property is part of the development of Spirit (Geist)

So this means that it is metaphysically required for selfhood.

But Stirner disagrees: For Stirner, this is delirious idealism dressed up as logic.

His response is brutal:

“I am owner of my might, and I am so only by being so.”

“I am not bound to any purpose, and I do not set anything above myself.”

So…Stirner refuses the teleology of the will.
Meaning: he refuses the Idea and he refuses the metaphysical narrative of “self-actualization.”

Because for him:

• Property is not self-expression

• Property is not freedom

• Property is not ethical necessity

Property is use.
The egoist does not externalize their will; they consume the world and make meaning as they go.

4. Hegel: Property as the Foundation of Ethical Life

In Hegel’s system, property is the basis of:

• contract

• civil society

• family inheritance

• economic relations

• the rule of law

• the rational state

It is the first brick in the architecture of Sittlichkeit (ethical life).

Without property, Hegel says, there can be no rational society.

Stirner rejects Sittlichkeit entirely:

“Away, then, with every concern that is not altogether my concern!”

This means that he refuses:

• duties

• obligations

• ethical life

• rational society

• universal norms

If property requires the state, as Hegel insists, then Stirner’s property requires only me.

5. The Master-Slave Dialectic: Recognition as the Birth of Selfhood

In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel describes selfhood emerging through the struggle for recognition:

“Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it exists for another.”
(Phenomenology, §178)

This means:

• the individual is constituted through social relations

• the subject becomes real through struggle and recognition

• property and personhood are co-emergent

Stirner annihilates this entire framework.

He states:

“I am owner of my might when I know myself as unique.”

This means the following:

• for Stirner the self does not emerge through struggle

• the self does not require acknowledgment

• and the self does not need mediation

So…Stirner’s Unique (Der Einzige) is anterior to all dialectics.
He is not the product of recognition.
He is not the product of struggle.
He is not the product of history.

He is unmediated selfhood.

The Fundamental Fracture: Universality vs. Unicity

Okay…let’s summarize what we learned here and conclude on what is the fundamental fracture:

Hegel’s thought is built on universals:

• Universal Will

• Universal Right

• Universal Reason

• Universal State

• Universal Recognition

And Stirner’s entire project is to demolish universality at the root.

He writes:

“Nothing is more to me than myself.”

For Hegel:

• the individual is a moment in the unfolding of Spirit

• property is rational because it is universal

• recognition binds individuals into ethical life

For Stirner:

• the individual is a singularity

• property is neither rational nor universal

• recognition is self-abdication

Hegel’s property is metaphysical.
Stirner’s property is metabolic.

Hegel constructs the most sophisticated justification of property in Western philosophy. Nice try, homie! Stirner saw right through that and responded by refusing justification altogether.

VI. Nietzsche: Property as Self-Mastery vs. Stirner’s Property as Appropriation

Now, let’s move on to the next thinker who NEEDS to be contrasted with Stirner, to really outline Stirner’s unique conception of property: Nietzsche.

Nietzsche never systematically theorizes “property,” but his entire philosophy is saturated with ownership metaphors: self-mastery, self-possession, self-overcoming, the creation of values, the incorporation of forces. These kind of form a subterranean “theory of property” grounded in power which should make him Stirner’s closest ally.

But the difference is profound.

Nietzsche constructs a heroic, aristocratic ideal of ownership of the sovereign individual who “keeps promises,” “commands himself,” and stands as a “master of a free will.” And Stirner, by contrast, despises the ideal. His egoist is not a type, not a project, not a destiny, but a singular force who appropriates whatever they can use.

Nietzsche’s property is self-mastery as an achievement.
Stirner’s property is appropriation as an act.

And, unfortunately, (because I love them both) this single difference widens into a philosophical abyss that simply cannot be ignored.

1. Nietzsche’s Starting Point: Property as Self-Ownership Through Discipline

In On the Genealogy of Morality II, Nietzsche describes the “sovereign individual”:

“The human being who can promise, who has his own independent, protracted will…
the master of a free will.”
(GM II:2)

This is Nietzsche’s notion of ownership:

• keeping one’s word

• mastering one’s impulses

• becoming accountable to oneself

• disciplining oneself into strength

Ownership is fundamentally self-control.

And Stirner rejects self-control as another spook.

For Stirner, “self-mastery” is a slave morality in disguise.
Anything that demands consistency or obedience (even obedience to oneself) is a chain.

2. Nietzsche’s Will to Power: Ownership as Incorporation

Nietzsche’s most Stirnerian concept is will to power. In The Will to Power, he writes:

“What is good? — All that heightens the feeling of power.”
(WP §2)

And:

“Life itself is will to power.”
(WP §689)

Nietzsche often describes life as a process of incorporation that makes external forces part of one’s own structure. In Beyond Good and Evil he says:

“To ‘incorporate’ something… means to want to take possession of it.”
(§259)

This sounds very close to Stirner’s view that property is whatever one can appropriate.

But Nietzsche sees incorporation as self-building, or as contributing to a project of becoming rather. But…becoming what? Well…stronger, more coherent, and a more powerful self.

But Stirner refuses this particular idea of “becoming.”
His egoist is not on a trajectory toward strength. There is no goal of power.

The Stirnerian egoist uses, consumes, and discards the following:

• experiences

• thoughts

• identities

• commitments

All these are temporary properties, and never components of a higher self.

Nietzsche’s ownership builds a self.
Stirner’s ownership dissolves the self into flux.

3. Eternal Recurrence vs. Stirner’s Moment

Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence forces one to confront the totality of one’s life as a single unified project:

“Do you want this again and again, times without number?”
(GS 341)

This pretty much binds life to a narrative unity, and a coherence across time (meaning: a metaphysical project of selfhood).

But Stirner explicitly denies the unity of the self across time.

So then…the Stirnerian egoist is not a life-project!
They are a momentary force, and not obligated to repeat or affirm anything.

Nietzsche = eternal.
Stirner = temporary.

The Fundamental Fracture: Hierarchy vs. Horizontal Might

Nietzsche believes in:

• higher and lower types

• nobility and baseness

• weak and strong wills

• natural hierarchies

In conclusion: His ethics is aristocratic.

Stirner believes in no metaphysical hierarchy whatsoever.
He only believes in the empirical fact of individual power.

Stirner’s world is horizontal:

• your might

• my might

• their might

No one has the right to rule.
No one has the duty to serve.

So: Nietzsche rejects equality philosophically.
And Stirner rejects it metaphysically.

So then…here is the fundamental fracture:

Nietzsche: Property is self-mastery, strength, and the incorporation of forces into a coherent becoming.
Stirner: Property is whatever I can appropriate in this moment. Full stop.

Nietzsche’s ownership:

• constructive

• future-oriented

• teleological

• hierarchical

• aesthetic

• self-building

Stirner’s ownership:

• opportunistic

• present

• non-teleological

• non-hierarchical

• consumptive

• self-dissolving

Nietzsche’s “sovereign individual” is an ideal human.
Stirner’s Unique is not a type of human at all, only the lived fact of one.

Nietzsche offers a philosophy of becoming.
Stirner offers a philosophy of appropriation.

Nietzsche sublimates property into greatness.
Stirner returns property to raw power.

This is why Stirner is not Nietzsche’s precursor.
He is Nietzsche’s unspoken anti-foundation / the one who refuses the heroic metaphysics Nietzsche builds atop the rubble of morality.

VII. Existentialism: Property as Meaning vs. Stirner’s Property as Use

We can’t get around existentialism, so let’s do it.

Existentialism is the first big tradition after Hegel to dismantle the metaphysical self, dissolve universals, and return philosophy to lived experience. One might expect Stirner to be at home here so we gotta have a thorough look.

So we are going to peek at Heidegger’s dissolution of the subject, Merleau-Ponty’s embodied perception, and Sartre’s radical freedom which all appear to resonate with Stirner’s rejection of fixed identity. And then we are going to find the fundamental fracture.

Let’s say right away: where these traditions locate meaning in experience, Stirner locates use. That is definitely the main fracture.
Where they search for the structure of being-in-the-world, Stirner sees only the play of power.
So…just like phenomenologists, existentialists turn the world into meaning whereas Stirner turns the world into property.

Phenomenologists want to understand the world.
Existentialists want to choose the world.
But Stirner wants to devour the world.

But let’s look at a few examples:

1. Heidegger’s Being-in-the-World vs. Stirner’s World-as-Material

Heidegger’s Being and Time breaks with the Cartesian ego and introduces Dasein, which is like a kind of “being thrown into the world:”

“Dasein is its world.”
(Being and Time, §53)

Heidegger denies that the self possesses the world and says, instead, that self is structured by it.
Worldhood is not owned…it is disclosed, and revealed through practical engagement (Zuhandenheit, readiness-to-hand).

So, in that way, property, for Heidegger, is irrelevant. Dasein does not “take” the world. It’s more like, the world is always already there as a field of significance.

In contrast, Stirner sees this “field of significance” as just another spook.

He writes:

“All things are nothing to me.”
(The Ego and Its Own)

So…

Heidegger: the world grants meaning.
Stirner: the world grants nothing and I take what I can use.

Heidegger’s Dasein is responsible to the call of Being.
Stirner’s egoist owes nothing to Being.

So, where phenomenology de-centers the subject,
Stirner deletes Being itself as an authority.

---

2. Merleau-Ponty’s Embodiment and Perception vs. Stirner’s Appropriation of Sensation

Another phenomenological account is that of Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception grounds meaning in embodied experience:

“I am not in front of my body, I am in my body.”
(PoP, Introduction)

So what that means is that the body is not owned, because it is the very condition of experience. In a way, the world “opens” to the body, and knowledge arises from this openness.

But Merleau-Ponty still conceives perception as a dialogue between self and world whereas Stirner abolishes dialogue.

For Stirner:

• sensation is material

• thoughts are material

• feelings are events

• and all can be appropriated

So…

He does not care what perception reveals.
He cares what perception offers to use.

If I had to summarize it, I would say: Merleau-Ponty’s world is communicative and Stirner’s world is edible.

3. Sartre’s Radical Freedom vs. Stirner’s Radical Use

But let’s get into existentialism’s core. Sartre’s existentialism insists that human beings are condemned to freedom:

“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”
(Existentialism Is a Humanism)

This means that freedom precedes essence, choice defines the self, and responsibility grounds authenticity.

But Stirner would likely see these as new chains, because, in essence, Sartre’s freedom is moralized: it’s a burden.
Every choice is a commitment.
Every action reflects one’s being-for-itself.

In contrast, Stirner’s egoist refuses the burden of responsibility.
He is not responsible for becoming anything, and he is not obligated to authenticity, coherence, or self-making.

Sartre’s world:

• full of possibilities

• demanding responsibility

• structured by anguish

Stirner’s world:

• full of objects

• demanding nothing

• structured by use

So, in a way the difference is that Sartre thinks the subject builds itself, and Stirner thinks the subject simply consumes.

Existentialist Meaning vs. Stirner’s Meaninglessness as Power

So let’s summarize. What is the difference between existentialism and egoism when it comes to meaning. Well…in brief: existentialists claim that meaning has to be created:

• Camus: rebellion

• Sartre: choice

• de Beauvoir: transcendence

• Heidegger: disclosure

So, for existentialism:
the world is neutral, but meaning is possible.

But for Stirner:
the world is nothing, and meaning is property.

So essentially…meaning is not discovered (Heidegger), nor chosen (Sartre), nor resisted (Camus).
Meaning is taken.

A thought becomes meaningful when I use it.
A feeling becomes meaningful when I appropriate it.
An idea becomes meaningful when I reshape it.

So the existentialists want to save meaning from nihilism.
And Stirner lets meaning fall into the abyss and then picks up whatever he likes from the rubble.

The Fundamental Fracture

Phenomenology and existentialism treat the world as:

• meaningful

• disclosive

• significant

• horizon-bound

• relational

Stirner treats the world as:

• material

• neutral

• consumable

• open to appropriation

• indifferent

Phenomenology:
being-in-the-world

Stirner:
using-the-world

Existentialism:
creating meaning

Stirner:
taking meaning

In essence: phenomenology and existentialism preserve a metaphysical seriousness, which is that experience matters, meaning matters, and selfhood matters.

In contrast, Stirner discards seriousness entirely, as he asserts the egoist’s right to remain unserious, opportunistic, playful, unstructured. So basically:
a self without a sacred project.

Phenomenology returns philosophy to lived experience.
Existentialism returns philosophy to personal meaning.
Stirner returns philosophy to use.

He is not interested in the structures of experience, nor the freedom of consciousness, nor the authenticity of being.

He is interested only in what he can take, transform, and call his property.

This is the break even phenomenology and existentialism cannot cross.

VIII. Property as Sacredness Across the Tradition vs. Stirner’s Desecration of Property

Now it is time to come to some kind of overarching conclusion.

And here it is:

Across the entire philosophical tradition, one assumption survives every revolution of thought:
that property has to be justified.
Even when property is condemned (as by Rousseau or Proudhon) the condemnation itself reveals a moral investment. Which means that property is always judged against a higher standard:

• God (Locke)

• Nature (liberalism)

• Justice (socialism)

• Equality (anarchism)

• Historical necessity (Marx)

• Reason (Kant)

• Ethical life (Hegel)

• Self-mastery (Nietzsche)

• Meaning (existentialism)

• Structure of worldhood (phenomenology)

Each tradition treats property as something that has to answer to an authority higher than the individual.

So then…a thing is mine because:

• I deserve it.

• I worked for it.

• I need it.

• I am recognized as owning it.

• I received it from society.

• It fits the rational order.

• It serves justice.

• It coheres with my life project.

• It appears as meaningful.

And Stirner’s critique is not that these standards are wrong but that they are superstitions.

He writes:

“Right is the spirit of society.
Might is the spirit of the individual.”

And:

“To whom do I owe what I have?
To no being in the world.”

In brief: For Stirner, every justification of property (even its socialist abolition) is a theological residue because it presupposes:

1. A universal standard, and

2. A moral community that adjudicates ownership.

This makes the entire conversation about property, from antiquity to modernity, haunted by a single, unspoken assumption which is that property is sacred, and must be protected or purified.

And Stirner desecrates the concept.

Because he does not create a new metaphysics or a new ethics.
Instead, he removes the metaphysical core from property entirely.

For him:

• Property is not moral

• Property is not political

• Property is not historical

• Property is not recognitive

• Property is not existential

• Property is not rational

• Property is not collective

Property is simply:

“What I have the power to make mine.”

And this desecrates the entire tradition of property theory, which has always tried to purify ownership through:

• labor

• rights

• justice

• dialectic

• recognition

• authenticity

• self-mastery

Stirner removes all purification.
He removes all moral alibis.
And he removes all sacredness.

So… For Stirner: Property is not a sign of legitimacy.
Property is the activity of appropriation.

IX. The Fundamental Fracture: Why Stirner Stands Alone

After surveying the entire philosophical landscape including liberal, socialist, anarchist, Marxist, Hegelian, Nietzschean, phenomenological, and existential - there seems to be a simple truth that is emerging: Stirner is the only thinker in the Western tradition (at least that I know of) who treats property as a matter of pure power rather than legitimacy.

Everyone else, without exception, is kind of trying to somehow smuggle sacredness into ownership.

Even those who attack property like Rousseau, Proudhon, and Marx do so on moral grounds. Even those who want to revolutionize it like Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Tucker do so on ethical grounds. Even those who claim to dissolve morality like Nietzsche, and Sartre seem to preserve a sacred kernel of value, authenticity, or becoming.
And even those who dissolve the subject like Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, preserve the sanctity of meaning.

Stirner alone desecrates everything.

He removes:

• moral justification (liberalism)

• distributive justice (socialism)

• natural freedom (anarchism)

• historical necessity (Marxism)

• rational universality (Hegel)

• heroic selfhood (Nietzsche)

• meaning as ground (phenomenology)

• authenticity as duty (existentialism)

So what remains is the only concept of property with no metaphysical residue:

“Property is what I have in my power.

Not what I deserve.
Not what I am allowed.
Not what society recognizes.
Not what history dictates.
Not what reason demands.
Not what my “true self” requires.
Not what the world reveals as meaningful.
Not what my labor produced.
Not what my class position implies.

Only what I can take and keep.

Why Stirner Stands Alone

So why does Stirner stand alone?

Because he:

• refuses to justify property

• refuses to purify property

• refuses to moralize property

• refuses to historicize property

• refuses to universalize property

• refuses to ground property in rights

• refuses to ground property in justice

• refuses to ground property in human nature

• refuses to ground property in selfhood

• refuses to ground property in meaning

• refuses to ground property in becoming

• refuses to ground property in society

• refuses to ground property in history

• refuses to ground property in Being

• refuses to ground property in value

He refuses all foundations.

And so he is the only thinker who can say, without contradiction or metaphysics:

“Property is nothing but what I can make my own.”

Not what I should make my own.
Not what I deserve to make my own.
Not what I ought to make my own.

Simply what I can.

This is why Stirner stands alone in intellectual history.
He is the only philosopher who truly desecrates property, and therefore the only philosopher who understands it at all.

Bibliography

• Stirner, Max. The Ego and Its Own. 1844. (Any standard translation: e.g., Cambridge University Press, trans. David Leopold.)

• Stirner, Max. Stirner’s Critics. 1845.

• Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich. The German Ideology. 1846.

• Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. What Is Property? 1840.

• Bakunin, Mikhail. Statism and Anarchy. 1873.

• Bakunin, Mikhail. God and the State. 1882.

• Kropotkin, Peter. The Conquest of Bread. 1892.

• Godwin, William. Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. 1793.

• Tucker, Benjamin. Instead of a Book. 1893.

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• Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men. 1755.

• Kant, Immanuel. The Metaphysics of Morals. 1797.

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• Feuerbach, Ludwig. The Essence of Christianity. 1841. (Influence on Stirner’s critique of sacredness.)

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• Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. 1886.

• Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 1883–85.

• Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. 1882.

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