The Ego and his Own - Max Stirner (ebook reader screen .TXT) 📗
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you are so without any declaration of majority; if you do not behave
accordingly, you are not worthy of it, and would never be of age even by a
declaration of majority. When the Greeks were of age, they drove out their
tyrants, and, when the son is of age, he makes himself independent of his
father. If the Greeks had waited till their tyrants graciously allowed them
their majority, they might have waited long. A sensible father throws out a
son who will not come of age, and keeps the house to himself; it serves the
noodle right.
The man who is set free is nothing but a freed man, a libertinus, a dog
dragging a piece of chain with him: he is an unfree man in the garment of
freedom, like the ass in the lion's skin. Emancipated Jews are nothing
bettered in themselves, but only relieved as Jews, although he who relieves
their condition is certainly more than a churchly Christian, as the latter
cannot do this without inconsistency. But, emancipated or not emancipated, Jew
remains Jew; he who is not self-freed is merely an -- emancipated man. The
Protestant State can certainly set free (emancipate) the Catholics; but,
because they do not make themselves free, they remain simply -- Catholics.
Selfishness and unselfishness have already been spoken of. The friends of
freedom are exasperated against selfishness because in their religious
striving after freedom they cannot -- free themselves from that sublime thing,
"self-renunciation." The liberal's anger is directed against egoism, for the
egoist, you know, never takes trouble about a thing for the sake of the thing,
but for his sake: the thing must serve him. It is egoistic to ascribe to no
thing a value of its own, an "absolute" value, but to seek its value in me.
One often hears that pot-boiling study which is so common counted among the
most repulsive traits of egoistic behavior, because it manifests the most
shameful desecration of science; but what is science for but to be consumed?
If one does not know how to use it for anything better than to keep the pot
boiling, then his egoism is a petty one indeed, because this egoist's power is
a limited power; but the egoistic element in it, and the desecration of
science, only a possessed man can blame.
Because Christianity, incapable of letting the individual count as an ego,(8)
thought of him only as a dependent, and was properly nothing but a *social
theory --* a doctrine of living together, and that of man with God as well as
of man with man -- therefore in it everything "own" must fall into most woeful
disrepute: selfishness, self-will, ownness, self-love, etc. The Christian way
of looking at things has on all sides gradually re-stamped honourable words
into dishonorable; why should they not be brought into honor again? So
Schimpf (contumely) is in its old sense equivalent to jest, but for
Christian seriousness pastime became a dishonor,(9) for that seriousness
cannot take a joke; frech (impudent) formerly meant only bold, brave;
Frevel (wanton outrage) was only daring. It is well known how askance the
word "reason" was looked at for a long time.
Our language has settled itself pretty well to the Christian standpoint, and
the general consciousness is still too Christian not to shrink in terror from
everything un-Christian as from something incomplete or evil. Therefore
"selfishness" is in a bad way too.
Selfishness,(10) in the Christian sense, means something like this: I look
only to see whether anything is of use to me as a sensual man. But is
sensuality then the whole of my ownness? Am I in my own senses when I am given
up to sensuality? Do I follow myself, my own determination, when I follow
that? I am my own only when I am master of myself, instead of being mastered
either by sensuality or by anything else (God, man, authority, law, State,
Church, etc.); what is of use to me, this self-owned or self-appertaining one,
my selfishness pursues.
Besides, one sees himself every moment compelled to believe in that
constantly-blasphemed selfishness as an all-controlling power. In the session
of February 10, 1844, Welcker argues a motion on the dependence of the judges,
and sets forth in a detailed speech that removable, dismissable, transferable,
and pensionable judges -- in short, such members of a court of justice as can
by mere administrative process be damaged and endangered -- are wholly without
reliability, yes, lose all respect and all confidence among the people. The
whole bench, Welcker cries, is demoralized by this dependence! In blunt words
this means nothing else than that the judges find it more to their advantage
to give judgment as the ministers would have them than to give it as the law
would have them. How is that to be helped? Perhaps by bringing home to the
judges' hearts the ignominiousness of their venality, and then cherishing the
confidence that they will repent and henceforth prize justice more highly than
their selfishness? No, the people does not soar to this romantic confidence,
for it feels that selfishness is mightier than any other motive. Therefore the
same persons who have been judges hitherto may remain so, however thoroughly
one has convinced himself that they behaved as egoists; only they must not any
longer find their selfishness favored by the venality of justice, but must
stand so independent of the government that by a judgment in conformity with
the facts they do not throw into the shade their own cause, their
"well-understood interest," but rather secure a comfortable combination of a
good salary with respect among the citizens.
So Welcker and the commoners of Baden consider themselves secured only when
they can count on selfishness. What is one to think, then, of the countless
phrases of unselfishness with which their mouths overflow at other times?
To a cause which I am pushing selfishly I have another relation than to one
which I am serving unselfishly. The following criterion might be cited for it;
against the one I can sin or commit a sin, the other I can only *trifle
away, push from me, deprive myself of -- i.e.* commit an imprudence. Free
trade is looked at in both ways, being regarded partly as a freedom which may
under certain circumstances be granted or withdrawn, partly as one which is
to be held sacred under all circumstances.
If I am not concerned about a thing in and for itself, and do not desire it
for its own sake, then I desire it solely as a means to an end, for its
usefulness; for the sake of another end, e. g., oysters for a pleasant
flavor. Now will not every thing whose final end he himself is, serve the
egoist as means? And is he to protect a thing that serves him for nothing --
e. g., the proletarian to protect the State?
Ownness includes in itself everything own, and brings to honor again what
Christian language dishonored. But ownness has not any alien standard either,
as it is not in any sense an idea like freedom, morality, humanity, etc.: it
is only a description of the -- owner.
Footnotes:
(1) [This is a literal translation of the German word Eigenheit, which, with
its primitive eigen, "own," is used in this chapter in a way that the German
dictionaries do not quite recognize. The author's conception being new, he had
to make an innovation in the German language to express it. The translator is
under the like necessity. In most passages "self-ownership," or else
"personality," would translate the word, but there are some where the thought
is so eigen, i. e., so peculiar or so thoroughly the author's own, that no
English word I can think of would express it. It will explain itself to one
who has read Part First intelligently.]
(2) [Eigenheit]
(3) Rom. 6, 18.
(4) 1 Pet. 2. 16.
(5) James 2. 12.
(6) [See note, p. 112]
(7) [Meaning "German". Written in this form because of the censorship.]
(8) ["Einzige"]
(9) [I take Entbehrung, "destitution," to be a misprint for Entehrung.]
(10) [Eigennutz, literally "own-use."]
II.
THE OWNER
I -- do I come to myself and mine through liberalism? Whom does the liberal
look upon as his equal? Man! Be only man -- and that you are anyway -- and the
liberal calls you his brother. He asks very little about your private opinions
and private follies, if only he can espy "Man" in you.
But, as he takes little heed of what you are privatim -- nay, in a strict
following out of his principle sets no value at all on it -- he sees in you
only what you are generatim. In other words, he sees in you, not you, but
the species; not Tom or Jim, but Man; not the real or unique one,(1)but your
essence or your concept; not the bodily man, but the spirit.
As Tom you would not be his equal, because he is Jim, therefore not Tom; as
man you are the same that he is. And, since as Tom you virtually do not exist
at all for him (so far, to wit, as he is a liberal and not unconsciously an
egoist), he has really made "brother-love" very easy for himself: he loves in
you not Tom, of whom he knows nothing and wants to know nothing, but Man.
To see in you and me nothing further than "men," that is running the Christian
way of looking at things, according to which one is for the other nothing but
a concept (e. g. a man called to salvation, etc.), into the ground.
Christianity properly so called gathers us under a less utterly general
concept: there we are "sons of God" and "led by the Spirit of God."(2) Yet not
all can boast of being God's sons, but "the same Spirit which witnesses to our
spirit that we are sons of God reveals also who are the sons of the devil."(3)
Consequently, to be a son of God one must not be a son of the devil; the
sonship of God excluded certain men. To be sons of men -- i. e., men -- on
the contrary, we need nothing but to belong to the human species, need only
to be specimens of the same species. What I am as this I is no concern of
yours as a good liberal, but is my private affair alone; enough that we are
both sons of one and the same mother, to wit, the human species: as "a son of
man" I am your equal.
What am I now to you? Perhaps this bodily I as I walk and stand? Anything
but that. This bodily I, with its thoughts, decisions, and passions, is in
your eyes a "private affair" which is no concern of yours: it is an "affair by
itself." As an "affair for you" there exists only my
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