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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

I haven't read any Stirner but I appreciate these questions being asked.

Why is it important to know or correctly interpret what exactly Stirner himself said, btw? I imagine that egoism would be something separate from Stirner, that he might get elements of it wrong but still convey the basic idea that reified abstractions shouldn't mediate our lives.

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Kiwisandoranges OP wrote

For me what Stirner said is not the most important thing for sure. But it has some degree of importance.

I find he's theory quite elegant. The book is not an easy read, but, once the basic idea is grasped it's quite easy to apply to any relationship of domination, be it material or spiritual. It puts forward conception of freedom that is very explanatory of even the most contradictory aspects of freedom. And for me he is quite convincing to the point it gets scary.

I know several people who read the unique and his property and didn't get him because he flips language around. Many people think he is a trojan horse to fascism and I want to be completely sure about what they got wrong (or what they didn't get wrong if that's the case).

What he said exactly is more of a curiosity, that has a small amount of importance. What he meant by that is much more important, but of course, we can update the bad parts in his theory. Still, I have some concerns about the update disrupting the elegance.

Also another thing, we could compare him to Nietzsche, and say he wasn't an anarchist, but found stuff useful for anarchists. But I'm getting that, unlike Nietzsche, he was in fact an anarchist (even if he never said that), and I wan't to be sure of that, because if true, that fact is very powerful against the fascist appropriation.

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