 Subsequent interpretations of Stirner have often followed contemporary intellectual fashion. For example, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Stirner was frequently portrayed as a precursor of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), as having anticipated, if not influenced — it is far from certain that Nietzsche had read Stirner’s work— both the style and substance of Nietzsche’s work.(Carus 1914: 74–99.) In the 1960s and early 1970s, Stirner was rediscovered as a forerunner of existentialism, whose anti-essentialist concept of the self as a ‘creative nothing’ had affinities with the notion of human nature employed by Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). (Paterson 1971.) More recently, Stirner has been identified as a nascent poststructuralist (linked not least with Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995)), rejecting the idea of a universal human nature, employing a genealogical critique of humanist discourses of power and identity, and opposing various forms of state-centric thought. (Newman 2009.) These parallels are often plausible and interesting, although the sceptic might suspect that they reveal changing historical enthusiasms as much as they illuminate aspects of Stirner’s philosophical and political thought.