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the tepid conclusions, self-avowedly unpartisan interpretation/motivation, meager scope, sloppy conceptual slippage, and bizarre gaps in literature familiarity made it painfully obvious that this was a phd thesis turned monograph.
i'd love to just attribute to a lack of confidence but it's apparent that's not the case. you cannot properly interpret an author such as stirner without consuming and appropriating him for yourself. unfortunately it's all too easy for one to fall prey to identification with the aggressor
asks boring questions are given more uninteresting answers. the criticisms of stirner feel pretty flat because of how crude and surface level the interpretation. it feels characteristically analytic, and the disappointing references and comparisons drawn upon don't lend any aid to this accusation
you can write about the historical figure, his scholarship, what intellectual resources he would have had available to him in his context and what limitations there may have been, but your interpretation of these is colored by your political positions, and dowdall's are uninspiring to say the least
at best this work is a collection of sparse biographical anecdotes and historical quotations constantly interrupted by offensively inoffensive reasoning