The Fetishized Belief in Compulsory Morality of Any Kind Is Absurd for Those Who Refuse to Live As Slaves

Max Stirner’s critique of morality is one of the hardest things for his critics to stomach. Even when they seem to understand it in theory, his critics remain so wedded to the self-subordination of their own activities to moral rules in practice that they are for the most part unable to consistently step outside their own habitual commitments, even in their imaginations. This leads to a complete inability to understand why the fetishized belief in compulsory morality of any kind is absurd for those who refuse to live as slaves.

--Jason McQuinn, introduction to Stirner's Critics, by Max Stirner (Berkeley, CA: LBC Books, 2012), 43n46.