The Unique One Is Not an Isolated, Nihilistic Misanthrope

Society also arises and evolves through the interaction of individuals, of course. But relationships become organizations. Institutions acquire coercive authority structures that enforce norms and roles. Society degenerates into a “fixidity” in which the voluntary union of individuals comes to a “standstill.” Stirner differentiates between those social relationships or organizations that individuals are born into or coerced into, and those that they join consciously and willfully. This distinction clarifies that the egoist or the unique one is not the isolated, nihilistic misanthrope described by his harshest critics, including Marx, Paterson, and Löwith.

--John F. Welsh, Max Stirner's Dialectical Egoism: A New Interpretation (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010), 96.