The Ego and his Own - Max Stirner (ebook reader screen .TXT) 📗
- Author: Max Stirner
- Performer: -
Book online «The Ego and his Own - Max Stirner (ebook reader screen .TXT) 📗». Author Max Stirner
critic, viz., an opponent of the dogmatist, I should carry on the fight of
free thinking against the enthralling thought, I should defend thinking
against what was thought. But I am neither the champion of a thought nor the
champion of thinking; for "I," from whom I start, am not a thought, nor do I
consist in thinking. Against me, the unnameable, the realm of thoughts,
thinking, and mind is shattered.
Criticism is the possessed man's fight against possession as such, against all
possession: a fight which is founded in the consciousness that everywhere
possession, or, as the critic calls it, a religious and theological attitude,
is extant. He knows that people stand in a religious or believing attitude not
only toward God, but toward other ideas as well, like right, the State, law;
i.e. he recognizes possession in all places. So he wants to break up
thoughts by thinking; but I say, only thoughtlessness really saves me from
thoughts. It is not thinking, but my thoughtlessness, or I the unthinkable,
incomprehensible, that frees me from possession.
A jerk does me the service of the most anxious thinking, a stretching of the
limbs shakes off the torment of thoughts, a leap upward hurls from my breast
the nightmare of the religious world, a jubilant Hoopla throws off year-long
burdens. But the monstrous significance of unthinking jubilation could not be
recognized in the long night of thinking and believing.
"What clumsiness and frivolity, to want to solve the most difficult problems,
acquit yourself of the most comprehensive tasks, by a breaking off!"
But have you tasks if you do not set them to yourself? So long as you set
them, you will not give them up, and I certainly do not care if you think,
and, thinking, create a thousand thoughts. But you who have set the tasks, are
you not to be able to upset them again? Must you be bound to these tasks, and
must they become absolute tasks?
To cite only one thing, the government has been disparaged on account of its
resorting to forcible means against thoughts, interfering against the press by
means of the police power of the censorship, and making a personal fight out
of a literary one. As if it were solely a matter of thoughts, and as if one's
attitude toward thoughts must be unselfish, self-denying, and
self-sacrificing! Do not those thoughts attack the governing parties
themselves, and so call out egoism? And do the thinkers not set before the
attacked ones the religious demand to reverence the power of thought, of
ideas? They are to succumb voluntarily and resignedly, because the divine
power of thought, Minerva, fights on their enemies' side. Why, that would be
an act of possession, a religious sacrifice. To be sure, the governing parties
are themselves held fast in a religious bias, and follow the leading power of
an idea or a faith; but they are at the same time unconfessed egoists, and
right here, against the enemy, their pent-up egoism breaks loose: possessed in
their faith, they are at the same time unpossessed by their opponents' faith,
i.e. they are egoists toward this. If one wants to make them a reproach, it
could only be the converse -- to wit, that they are possessed by their ideas.
Against thoughts no egoistic power is to appear, no police power etc. So the
believers in thinking believe. But thinking and its thoughts are not sacred to
me, and I defend my skin against them as against other things. That may be
an unreasonable defense; but, if I am in duty bound to reason, then I, like
Abraham, must sacrifice my dearest to it!
In the kingdom of thought, which, like that of faith, is the kingdom of
heaven, every one is assuredly wrong who uses unthinking force, just as every
one is wrong who in the kingdom of love behaves unlovingly, or, although he is
a Christian and therefore lives in the kingdom of love, yet acts
un-Christianly; in these kingdoms, to which he supposes himself to belong
though he nevertheless throws off their laws, he is a "sinner" or "egoist."
But it is only when he becomes a criminal against these kingdoms that he can
throw off their dominion.
Here too the result is this, that the fight of the thinkers against the
government is indeed in the right, namely, in might -- so far as it is carried
on against the government's thoughts (the government is dumb, and does not
succeed in making any literary rejoinder to speak of), but is, on the other
hand, in the wrong, to wit, in impotence, so far as it does not succeed in
bringing into the field anything but thoughts against a personal power (the
egoistic power stops the mouths of the thinkers). The theoretical fight cannot
complete the victory, and the sacred power of thought succumbs to the might of
egoism. Only the egoistic fight, the fight of egoists on both sides, clears up
everything.
This last now, to make thinking an affair of egoistic option, an affair of the
single person,(96) a mere pastime or hobby as it were, and, to take from it
the importance of "being the last decisive power"; this degradation and
desecration of thinking; this equalization of the unthinking and thoughtful
ego; this clumsy but real "equality" -- criticism is not able to produce,
because it itself is only the priest of thinking, and sees nothing beyond
thinking but -- the deluge.
Criticism does indeed affirm, e. g. that free criticism may overcome the
State, but at the same time it defends itself against the reproach which is
laid upon it by the State government, that it is "self-will and impudence"; it
thinks, then, that "self-will and impudence" may not overcome, it alone may.
The truth is rather the reverse: the State can be really overcome only by
impudent self-will.
It may now, to conclude with this, be clear that in the critic's new change of
front he has not transformed himself, but only "made good an oversight,"
"disentangled a subject," and is saying too much when he speaks of "criticism
criticizing itself"; it, or rather he, has only criticized its "oversight" and
cleared it of its "inconsistencies." If he wanted to criticize criticism, he
would have to look and see if there was anything in its presupposition.
I on my part start from a presupposition in presupposing myself; but my
presupposition does not struggle for its perfection like "Man struggling for
his perfection," but only serves me to enjoy it and consume it. I consume my
presupposition, and nothing else, and exist only in consuming it. But that
presupposition is therefore not a presupposition at all: for, as I am the
Unique, I know nothing of the duality of a presupposing and a presupposed ego
(an "incomplete" and a "complete" ego or man); but this, that I consume
myself, means only that I am. I do not presuppose myself, because I am every
moment just positing or creating myself, and am I only by being not
presupposed but posited, and, again, posited only in the moment when I posit
myself; i. e., I am creator and creature in one.
If the presuppositions that have hitherto been current are to melt away in a
full dissolution, they must not be dissolved into a higher presupposition
again -- i.e. a thought, or thinking itself, criticism. For that dissolution
is to be for my good; otherwise it would belong only in the series of the
innumerable dissolutions which, in favor of others (e. g. this very Man,
God, the State, pure morality, etc.), declared old truths to be untruths and
did away with long-fostered presuppositions.
Footnotes:
(1) Heb. 11. 13.
(2) Mark 10. 29.
(3) Italicized in the original for the sake of its etymology, Scharfsinn --
"sharp-sense". Compare next paragraph.
(4) 2 Cor. 5. 17. [The words "new" and "modern" are the same in German.]
(5) [Title of a poem by Schiller]
(6) [The reader will remember (it is to be hoped has never forgotten) that
"mind" and "spirit" are one and the same word in German. For several pages
back the connection of the discourse has seemed to require the almost
exclusive use of the translation "spirit," but to complete the sense it has
often been necessary that the reader recall the thought of its identity with
"mind," as stated in a previous note.]
(7) "Essence of Christianity"
(8) [Or, "highest essence." The word Wesen, which means both "essence" and
"being," will be translated now one way and now the other in the following
pages. The reader must bear in mind that these two words are identical in
German; and so are "supreme" and "highest."]
(9) Cf. e. g. "Essence of Christianity", p. 402.
(10) [That is, the abstract conception of man, as in the preceding sentence.]
(11) E.g.Rom. 8. 9, 1 Cor. 3. 16, John 20. 22 and innumerable other
passages.
(12) [Heil]
(13) [heiling]
(14) [How the priests tinkle! how important they
Would make it out, that men should come their way
And babble, just as yesterday, today!
Oh, blame them not! They know man's need, I say!
For he takes all his happiness this way,
To babble just tomorrow as today.
Translated from Goethe's "Venetian Epigrams."]
(15) [fremd]
(16) [fremd]
(17) [einzig]
(18) ["the supreme being."]
(19) [heilig]
(20) [heilig]
(21) [einzig]
(22) [gefangen und befangen, literally "imprisoned and prepossessed."]
(23) [besessene]
(24) [versessen]
(25) "Achtzehntes Jahrhundert", II, 519.
(26) "De la Création de l'Ordre" etc., p. 36.
(27) "Anekdota, II, 64.
(28) [dieselbe Phantastin wie die Phantasie.]
(29) [The same word as "intellectual", as "mind" and "spirit" are the same.]
(30) "Essence of Christianity," second edition, p. 402.
(31) P. 403.
(32) P. 408.
(33) [Literally "the man."]
(34) [uneigennützigkeit, literally "un-self-benefitingness."]
(35) [vernünftig, derived from vernehmen, to hear.]
(36) [A German idiom for destructive radicalism.]
(37) [The same word that has been translated "custom" several times in this
section.]
(38) [Ehrfurcht]
(39) [gefürchtet]
(40) [geehrt]
(41) [Rousseau, the Philanthropists; and others were hostile to culture and
intelligence, but they overlooked the fact that this is present in allmen of
the Christian type, and assailed only learned and refined culture.]
(42) [Literally, "sacrificing"; the German word has not the prefix "self."]
(43) "Die Volksphilosophie unserer Tage", p. 22.
(44) [Muth]
(45) [Demuth]
(46) [Called in English theology "original sin."]
(47) [Goethe, "Faust".]
(48) "Anekdota, II, 152.
(49) [Schiller, "Die Worte des Glaubens".]
(50) [Parodied from the words of Mephistopheles in the witch's kitchen in
"Faust".]
(51) Matt. 10. 35.
(52) John 2. 4.
(53) [heilig]
(54) [heilig]
(55) [Geistlicher, literally "spiritual man."]
(56) "Essence of Christianity, p. 403.
(57) Mark. 9. 23.
(58) [Herrlichkeit, which, according to its derivation, means "lordliness."]
(59) [Or "citizenhood." The word [das Buergertum] means either the condition
of being a citizen, or citizen-like principles, of the body of citizens or of
the middle or business class, the bourgeoisie.]
(60) [Man hatte
Comments (0)