Essay - The Ego and Its Own Conceptual Book Review: the Ego...

The Ego and its own

Conceptual Book Review: The Ego and ***** Own

You're such an egotist!" To fully comprehend the message of Max Stirner's philosophical classic The ***** and its Own, a reader must release him or herself from the negative associations of the word egotist. In fact, the author would argue that the reason the words ego and egotism have such negative assumptions in modern culture is the resulting influence ***** false ideologies, such as the Christian religion, totalitarian politics, and the conventional morality of ***** mob. ***** his 1907 philosophical meditation that Stirner urges the reader to shake off such fixed creeds and ideas in ***** name of his or her own humanity. Stirner does not advocate a larger political or ethical philosophy as such, because that ***** run counter to the ethics he advances ***** his work. However, over ***** over again, he urges his reader to fully claim his or ***** right enjoy ***** or her full, true freedom that is his ***** her only human birthright and responsibility.

According to Stirner, human beings in modernity all labor under ***** ideas about how they should be***** accord*****g to what other peoples say. But in fact, society would be better off if every individual instead celebrated their unique, responsive ********** rather than made that humanity subservient to *****. "What is it, then, that is called a 'fixed idea?' An idea that has subjected the man to itself." (56) A lover, a cleric, or a businessman who sacrifices himself for, respectively, ano*****r person, a religious dogma, or even for money, are all slaves, respectively, to *****s rather than ***** themselves as human beings. (98)

In the place of such slavery, Stirner calls for an egotistical morality in its *****. "Ide***** do not completely conquer till they ***** no longer hostile to personal **********, ***** they satisfy egoism." (99) As soon as a person subscribes to the idea that to sacrifice him or herself in the ***** of something higher than ***** or herself is good, this is when danger occurs, to both ***** self and ***** society. ***** use an example from contemporary society, one might argue that this is ***** soldiers defend their choice to go *****f to war to commit murders (they serve the state), or how *****s willingly commit suicide for religion in the name of God. From his own his*****rical vantage point, Stirner reminds ***** reader that Robespierre, the architect of ***** Revolutionary Terror in France, w***** an idealistic man ***** the sense that Robespierre put ideology before himself and his ***** life, and thus defended the sacrifice ***** the lives and self-interest of other citizens until the human element became ***** to the incorporeal ideal of *****.

***** ideologues prefer the abstraction ***** ********** ***** human beings themselves, and hence are ***** opposes these radicals with the creed of idealism. "He who is infatuated with Man leaves persons out of account so far as that infatuation extends, and floats in an ideal,