of publication mentioned 1845. In The Ego and Its Own, Stirner launches a radical anti-authoritarian and individualist critique of contemporary Prussian society and modern western society as such. He offers an approach to human existence in which he depicts himself as "the unique one", a "creative nothing", beyond the ability of language to fully express, stating that "[i]f I concern myself for myself, the unique one, then my concern rests on its transitory, mortal creator, who consumes himself, and I may say: All things are nothing to me". The book proclaims that all religions and ideologies rest on empty concepts. The same holds true for society's institutions that claim authority over the individual, be it the state, legislation, the church, or the systems of education such as universities. Stirner's argument explores and extends the limits of criticism, aiming his critique especially at those of his contemporaries, particularly Ludwig Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer, also at popular ideologies, including communism, humanism (which he regarded as analogous to religion with the abstract Man or humanity as the supreme being), liberalism, and nationalism as well as capitalism, religion and statism, arguing: Stirner's Critics Stirner's Critics (Recensenten Stirners) was published in September 1845 in Wigands Vierteljahrsschrift. It is a response, in which Stirner refers to himself in the third-person, to three critical reviews of The Ego and its Own by Moses Hess in Die letzten Philosophen (The Last Philosophers), by a certain Szeliga (alias of an adherent of Bruno Bauer) in an article in the journal Norddeutsche Blätter, and by Ludwig Feuerbach anonymously in an article called On 'The Essence of Christianity' in Relation to Stirner's 'The Ego and its Own''' (Über 'Das Wesen des Christentums' in Beziehung auf Stirners 'Der Einzige und sein Eigentum) in Wigands Vierteljahrsschrift. The Philosophical Reactionaries The Philosophical Reactionaries (Die Philosophischen Reactionäre) was published in 1847 in Die Epigonen, a journal edited by Otto Wigand from Leipzig. At the time, Wigand had already published The Ego and Its Own and was about to finish the publication of Stirner's translations of Adam Smith and Jean-Baptiste Say. As the subtitle indicates, The Philosophical Reactionaries was written in response to a 1847 article by Kuno Fischer (1824–1907) entitled The Modern Sophists (Die Moderne Sophisten). The article was signed G. Edward and its authorship has been disputed ever since John Henry Mackay "cautiously" attributed it to Stirner and included it in his collection of