Freedom in Itself Is an Unattainable Dream

Ownness is immediately contrasted with the idea of freedom. It is not the freedom of the individual as such, still less the freedom of the nation or humanity as a whole, that Stirner advocates. Freedom in itself is an ‘unattainable’ dream: ‘To be free is something that I cannot truly will, because I cannot make it, cannot create it: I can only wish it and – aspire toward it, for it remains an ideal, a spook.’

--Paul McLaughlin, Anarchism and Authority: A Philosophical Introduction to Classical Anarchism, Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Philosophy (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2007), 144.