understandable. he does have that effect. we take offense at anyone who calls our deepest thoughts and most pressing philosophical concerns, a menagerie of nonsense and spooks. we want to take something seriously, want to believe we can find some cause external to us that might give us meaning so that we can temporarily lose ourselves as the ‘creative nothings’ that we really are (according to stirner), and escape the nihilism that consumes us.
there probably hasn’t ever been a thinker as honest as stirner; that’s what’s so offensive to the involuntary egoist, who on account of his fear of his own nothingess, cannot live without lying to himself and others. what’s so impressive about stirner is that he ‘called out’ everything philosophical that was to develop south of marx, long before it happened. he was the absolute antithesis of marx’s collectivity and morality, a kind of private eye that got a look behind all the individualisms and egoisms that would evolve and parade around as ‘moral’ systems. especially capitalism; the quintessential farce in this respect. so in a way stirner was like the priest that the capitalist must confess to if he is to come clean. the capitalist has everyone else fooled, but not stirner… not that master psychologist and magistrate of philosophical honesty.
somewhere else i talked about how stirner and marx represent the only two possible wings of political theory. and stirner is incredibly important because he is the shining symbol of conservatism (jakob had it backward in some comment elsewhere), which is nothing more than an anarchy of egoism with no view toward a collective and truly moral state. this being the case, the conservative is the epitome of the involuntary egoist; he covers his immorality up by telling himself he cares for something more than his pocket - humanity, freedom, liberty… spook narratives he occupies his head with, ‘causes’ he tells himself he is involved in so he can avoid having to face his own transparency.
in the end you might say there are only two types of people. nihilists-truthers, and nihilist-liars. the first type is the creator of morality precisely because he knows there isn’t any morality. he has to fill this void, and to do so honestly, properly and completely, he has to shift to the other side of that spectrum and embrace the marxist collectivity. the second type is immersed in a tripartite lie; the first, that there is morality, the second, that his cause (capitalism) is this morality, and the third, that he becomes moral in what he does when he takes up his cause.
so the capitalist is so perfectly nestled in this series of lies that he tells himself that to come out of it would scare him to death… and this is the condition of the involuntary egoist. the first step out is to come clean and get washed. then you can begin doing political philosophy proper. until then, one is a thug at best, or a worm at worst.
this is the wisdom of the grand master max; that deadly philosophical marksman sniper. dostoevsky and nietzsche were great existential soldiers, sure, but they couldn’t shoot like max. no sir.