stirner was an important step towards the relinquishing of influence that did not serve me, nietzsche was one of the first authors i took very seriously that clearly had Bad Views TM, n0 was ambiguous for a while and required repeated exposure to understand his shtick, and that intermediate time

where i didn't have the comforting reassurance and had to sit with the ambiguity while being intently interested was an important emotional moment. and geuss really demonstrated practically how to go about engaging with these authors by example.

he took influence from a host of sources, illustrated how supposedly more similar thinkers were actually disastrous and worse than the supposed alternative (ex. rawls // nozick),

the shocking ways to find value in unexpected places, and how to tease out something meaningful from those who are held in high regard but regularly superficially engaged with, and the inversions and appropriations you can make out of dead-ends.

ooh i should add machiavelli to this list, i took an entire course dedicated exclusively him and it was probably one of the only courses that i think actually attempted a more serious reading. even if you approached tepidly, spending so much time familiarizing yourself with one work of one

individual (crucially it was fairly meticulously contextualized before and during!), you sort of can't refrain from enaging