Max Stirner's main work "Der Einzige und sein Eigentum" or "Der Einzige" for short already reveals it with its title at the entrance: Stirner did not see himself as an anarchist, liberal, communist or the like, but as the Unique One. The Unique One stands here as a completely bare name, as the last placeholder for the unspeakable, as the very last thin shell of an empty word that is unable to touch Stirner's actual core.1 The Unique One is the unrepeatable. In unrepeatability, all identity, i.e. the possibility of finding something in space and time again, is impossible. And thus, in the final consequence, every reference, every name to address the real, the particular, is in vain. For Stirner, the particular is the only real, this-worldly and "incarnate" thing. The general is the holy spook.
When the actual as the unrepeatable is peeled off and removed (abstracted) by the concept caught up in the word, when it solidifies as a thing, the logical begins, and for Stirner this is synonymous with the theological. God and the sacred, for which we should develop reverence, are to be found in the identical that has been peeled away from the particular. Stirner liquidates this reverence for the untouchable again with the Unique One. The Unique One is the end result of Stirner's critique of language, which is so radical that Stirner is able to completely rid himself of language for a moment. It is in this stripping away of the sacred, in this detachment, that Stirner and der Einzige begin to unfold and grow.
And with speechlessness falls any possibility of exercising power. Because power can only be exercised at all through the act of speech. It is not the club that strikes the skull that exercises power, but - before that - the threat with the club, the threatening gesture as a credible sign of a possibility, exercises power, i.e. is able to change the decisions of the addressee.
This great, crude, bold dismissal of the sacred above us probably tempted some to misunderstand Stirner as an anarchist or a forerunner of the same, if one understands the anarchist to be a proponent of general powerlessness. Stirner has no objection to the exercise of power per se, nor does he advocate it per se. He is concerned with the particular power that serves and is useful to him and the alien power that stands in his way, which he wants to eliminate and dissolve. But not the power per se.
It is the reference that he wants to bring back from the othersideness of the beyond to his, this side, here and now, and take it into his own hands. In other words, he wants to cut off every external reference that is not his own. From now on, he relates everything to himself. He is the starting point of every reference. Nothing goes beyond him. In one moment, he frees language from any reference - and seemingly destroys it in the process - but only to create a new reference that is useful to him in the very next moment. A reference that starts with him. The outward shells of words remain largely intact, but the connections and links behind them are decomposed and - reset for his own purposes.
The words become Stirner's instrument, which he certainly does not want to play idiosyncratically for himself alone, but on the contrary, it should be effective, in the ear and mind of an audience, an addressee, an inferior, an equal, a friend or foe, but for his purpose, for his cause, which he has placed on nothing but himself.
He does not want to attain total freedom per se, but rather a concrete liberation from something that annoys him (bothers him, is a burden). He may want to get rid of the shackle around his foot. But he definitely wants to keep his foot and not get rid of it. He certainly wants to keep and pursue the dream of the cherry tree under which he could sit without the shackle on his foot.
For Stirner, liberation is only a first step and only reasonable and meaningful in relation to oneself. "What do you want to be free from?" Stirner asks repeatedly. The answer can and will never be a total one, i.e. freedom from "everything". In other words, you will not want to throw everything away, but only some things. And the choice of things and behaviors to get rid of is entirely up to a person. In other words: the Unique One wants to become an owner or proprietor. He wants to have and not just get rid of something.
Liberation as a purely technical aspect is not the end point of a life story, but always only a means to an end. What am I liberating myself for? That is the decisive question, not the question of what from. Where should my foot, freed from its shackles, take me? Without this end, the foot would also be free with and in the shackle, because it would be exactly where it is supposed to be, with or without the shackle. The shackle would be meaningless to me.
Strictly speaking, liberation and appropriation are not two separate movements, but merely two different perspectives on one and the same movement. For every movement is at the same time a movement away from something towards something. Even the richest person loses when he moves by necessarily moving away from something, i.e. by sacrificing and giving up something for something else. The gain lies solely in preference, in the priority of one thing over another. Therein lies all value and - the whole uniqueness of the person acting, in his decision through his own judgment from his own position and orientation.
Preference now also provides a lever for dissolving or questioning Stirner again before he threatens to become a mania again, a spook and a fixed idea, an obsessive Stirnerism that one follows as an alien ought. After all, the concept of preference as a pure descriptor without any further parts of ought cannot distinguish between an externally determined preference and one's own preference. I cannot make the peculiarity and uniqueness for myself. I am my own and unique, just as everyone else is. I can only make myself aware of it, i.e. view the decisions I make in the light of these concepts.
When I enter a battle of a war with a waving flag, am I completely with myself or am I a seduced man enthusiastically riding after an alien spook? Even less can I turn the innermost of my comrade next to me inside out, whether he is a possessed man in the maelstrom of an alien cause or whether he is waging his very own war, although outwardly he marches in rank and file and perhaps only cleverly camouflages his lively self-will under a uniform. Or perhaps the sacrificial death for a "greater cause" is the whole peculiarity of an individual who is as much a strong-willed owner as the deserter or defector. Willfulness goes its own way, it goes them all, lurching and wavering, with leaps and bounds or powerfully and unwaveringly straight ahead.
Everyone leaves their very own footprint. Many, if not most, without much notice by others, a few in the echoes of the remarks and memories of historians. Whether I rush forward for a cause or withdraw from it is always entirely up to my preference, my will. How I react to my environment is everything that defines me. And what defines me depends on my very own point of view, my perspective in space and time, my existence, my unrepeatable, unique thrownness into this world, which inevitably separates and distinguishes me from everyone else. This is my path, which no one can take away from me under any circumstances. And if I allow myself to be carried and pushed cheaply, it is because I am in the world as a cheaply carried person and have chosen this profession.
“Man sagt von Gott: »Namen nennen dich nicht«. Das gilt von mir: kein Begriff drückt mich aus, nichts, was man als mein Wesen angibt, erschöpft mich; es sind nur Namen.”
Max Stirner, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, Leipzig, 1845