‘Ownness created a new freedom’: Max Stirner’s alternative concept of liberty

Beyond “Glittering Hope”: Introducing Max Stirner’s Unique Possibilities to Social Work

“…Like other well-known 19thcentury German philosophers (e.g., Marx), Stirner was an ardent critic of the prevailing social and political order. However, unlike his contemporaries, his critiques of the state, causes (i.e., Communism and Humanism), and the subjugation of the individual by such fixed ideas anticipated the limitations of Modernism and its assumptions of reason, progress, and justice (Newman, 2019;Newman, 2003). At its core, Stirner's ontological standpoint is critical of Modernity (Welsh, 2010).…”

“…24, No. 2 thing that can be granted or taken away, but rather an ongoing practice without end (Newman, 2019). Ownness is a dynamic version of the "self [that is] contingent and [an] open field of possibilities" (Newman, 2019, p. 15).…”

“…For Stirner, freedom is an unending process of unbecoming and individual revolt, an ongoing negation of the imposition of identity categories and the constructed boundaries of the possible. He dubs this ontological state: ownness (Ferguson, 1982;Newman, 2019). Ownness is both a process and outcome that actively resists alienation and control through the confrontation and consumption of specters, or external constraints, discourses, and categorizations.…”

Freedom

“…Saul Newman sums it up like this: 'Freedom, for Stirner, should be a question of self-empowerment and the recognition and affirmation of one's own self as the condition and measure of freedom, rather than any external condition.' 45 But how can I be free in the absence of other people, and if there are other people, how do we regulate our coaction and our mutual attempts to be ourselves, without recognising needs and demands, or visions of the good, beyond ourselves? This isn't all.…”

“…It is in recognising this ontological freedom (and implied equality) that our "ownness", poorly translated as egoism, is to be found. 21 Where this takes us in terms of social order it is not clear, and I explore this below, because there is nothing in this account that permits of a vision of the good, but rather pulls us against the social. There are also clear links here with Godwin's ideas, specifically the notion that freedom is a cognitive or epistemic status, precisely because it is the understanding of a condition that leads to the status, not the social conditions of its collective realisation.…”