The Ego and His Own: The Case of the Individual Against Authority (Dover Books on Western Philosophy)

Credited with influencing the philosophies of Nietzsche and Ayn Rand and the development of libertarianism and existentialism, this prophetic 1844 work challenges the very notion of a common good as the driving force of civilization. Stirner chronicles the battle of the individual against the collective to show how the latter invariably leads to oppression.