Max Stirner was a German philosopher who is often seen as one of the forerunners of nihilism, existentialism, post-modernism, and anarchism.
The most revolutionary book ever published... [Stirner] has left behind him a veritable Breviary of Destruction, a striking and dangerous book. It is dangerous in every sense of the word-to socialism, to politicians, to hypocrisy. But it asserts the dignity of the Individual, not his debasement. - New York Time You will have heard of Stirner's book, The Ego and His Own ... And it is certainly true that we must first make a cause our own, egoistic cause... we are communists out of egoism also, and it is out of egoism that we wish to be human beings, not mere individuals. --Friedrich Engels to Karl Marx, 19 November 1844