Saul Newman - Max Stirner

Max Stirner

Critical Explorations in Contemporary Political Thought series

Series Editor: James Martin, Reader in Political Theory, Goldsmiths University, London, UK

The aim of this series is to provide authoritative guides to the work of contemporary political thinkers, or thinkers with a strong resonance in the present, in the form of an edited collection of scholarly essays. Each volume will offer a range of focused chapters by leading experts, surveying significant aspects of a key thinker of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and covering principal areas of debate, impact and enduring relevance. Providing greater content than a brief introduction but more accessible than a specialist monograph, the series offers a one-stop location for readers seeking critical exploration and thematic discussion around a significant contributor to contemporary political thought.

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Max Stirner

Edited by

Saul Newman

Reader in Political Theory, Department of Politics,
Goldsmiths College, University of London

Editorial matter, selection, introduction and chapter 8 Saul Newman 2011
All remaining chapters respective authors 2011

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First published 2011 by
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This book is dedicated to the class of the unstable, restless, changeable, of the proletariat, and, if they give voice to their unsettled nature, are called unruly heads.

Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge several people whose help and advice in the preparation of this book was invaluable. Thanks must go firstly to the Series Editor James Martin, who chose this title as the first in his Critical Explorations in Contemporary Thought Series. I would also like to thank Widukind De Ridder, one of the contributors to this volume, for his advice and help in including an original translation of one of Stirners essays in this book. The efforts of Bernd Laska in tracking down and confirming the provenance of this text must also be acknowledged.

Contributors

Riccardo Baldissone is Research Fellow at the Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin University, Australia. His last completed project was an attempt to rethink human rights discourse as well as the modern conceptual framework in which it is embedded. His published works range from labour history to education, sociology and the history of Western thought. In his genealogies of modern Western discourse he underlined Stirners theoretical contributions both as a radical development of the German Enlightenment and as an original anticipation of contemporary reassessment of modernities.

Widukind De Ridder is Researcher and Lecturer at the Centre for Social-Economic History at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium. He has written widely on Max Stirner and the Young Hegelians, including his book Max Stirner: De enige en zijn eigendom (2008), as well as articles in journals such as History of European Ideas and Vlaams Marxistisch Tijdschrift. He also co-translated and edited the Dutch translation of Stirners Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (1844), published by the Royal Library of Belgium. He is currently editing the criticisms of Stirners contemporaries, such as Bruno Bauer and Ludwig Feuerbach, as well as Stirners seminal replies.

Kathy E. Ferguson is Professor in the Department of Political Science and Womens Studies Program, at the University of Hawaii. She is writing a book entitled Goldman: Political Thinking in the Streets (forth-coming), and has published essays on Max Stirner and on other aspects of anarchism. She has also written on bureaucracy and militarism from an anarchist perspective.

Ruth Kinna is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics, History and International Relations at the University of Loughborough, Leicestershire, England. Her interests are late nineteenth and early twentieth century socialism and anarchism. Her current research is focused on the intersection of art and revolutionary politics and on the nature of anarchist violence. She is the author of A Beginners Guide to Anarchism (2005); co-editor (with Laurence Davis) of Anarchism and Utopianism (2009); and editor of Early Writings on Terrorism (2005).

David Leopold is Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Mansfield College, Oxford. He is the editor of Max Stirners The Ego and Its Own (1995), and has written articles about Stirner and anarchism. He is interested in both contemporary political philosophy and the history of political thought. His work includes The Young Karl Marx. German Philosophy, Modern Politics, and Human Flourishing (2007).

Saul Newman is Reader in Political Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London. His research is on continental and post-structuralist political thought, postanarchist theory and contemporary radical politics. He is the author of