Anarchism

Stirner was part of the Young Hegelians, a Berlin-based group of radical intellectuals arguing for social change, active in the early nineteenth century. Berlin at the time was in full expansion: a beacon of enlightenment and growing industrialisation within the increasingly powerful Kingdom of Prussia. Stirner resented all of the above. He problematised the prevailing dominance of a rational, dualistic, enlightened, humanistic worldview, and accused liberalism and rationalism of being deeply religious, whereby God was now replaced by the Human and everything human and rational was sacred. He opposed all ideologies, dogmas and meta-narratives and therefore has been regularly portrayed as the first poststructuralist.