The Ego and his Own - Max Stirner (ebook reader screen .TXT) 📗
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when the State has carried its principle clear through, of presupposing in its
constituents nothing but that they are men (even the North Americans still
presuppose in theirs that they have religion, at least the religion of
integrity, of responsibility), then it has dug its grave. While it will fancy
that those whom it possesses are without exception men, these have meanwhile
become without exception egoists, each of whom utilizes it according to his
egoistic powers and ends. Against the egoists "human society" is wrecked; for
they no longer have to do with each other as men, but appear egoistically as
an I against a You altogether different from me and in opposition to me.
If the State must count on our humanity, it is the same if one says it must
count on our morality. Seeing Man in each other, and acting as men toward
each other, is called moral behavior. This is every whit the "spiritual love"
of Christianity. For, if I see Man in you, as in myself I see Man and nothing
but Man, then I care for you as I would care for myself; for we represent, you
see, nothing but the mathematical proposition: A = C and B = C, consequently A
= B -- i.e. I nothing but man and you nothing but man, consequently I and
you the same. Morality is incompatible with egoism, because the former does
not allow validity to me, but only to the Man in me. But, if the State is a
society of men, not a union of egos each of whom has only himself before his
eyes, then it cannot last without morality, and must insist on morality.
Therefore we two, the State and I, are enemies. I, the egoist, have not at
heart the welfare of this "human society," I sacrifice nothing to it, I only
utilize it; but to be able to utilize it completely I transform it rather into
my property and my creature; i. e., I annihilate it, and form in its place
the Union of Egoists.
So the State betrays its enmity to me by demanding that I be a man, which
presupposes that I may also not be a man, but rank for it as an "un- man"; it
imposes being a man upon me as a duty. Further, it desires me to do nothing
along with which it cannot last; so its permanence is to be sacred for me.
Then I am not to be an egoist, but a "respectable, upright," i.e. moral,
man. Enough: before it and its permanence I am to be impotent and respectful.
This State, not a present one indeed, but still in need of being first
created, is the ideal of advancing liberalism. There is to come into existence
a true "society of men," in which every "man" finds room. Liberalism means to
realize "Man," i.e. create a world for him; and this should be the human
world or the general (Communistic) society of men. It was said, "The Church
could regard only the spirit, the State is to regard the whole man."(8) But is
not "Man" "spirit"? The kernel of the State is simply "Man," this unreality,
and it itself is only a "society of men." The world which the believer
(believing spirit) creates is called Church, the world which the man (human or
humane spirit) creates is called State. But that is not my world. I never
execute anything human in the abstract, but always my own things; my
human act is diverse from every other human act, and only by this diversity is
it a real act belonging to me. The human in it is an abstraction, and, as
such, spirit, i.e. abstracted essence.
Bruno Bauer states (e. g. Judenfrage, p. 84) that the truth of criticism is
the final truth, and in fact the truth sought for by Christianity itself --to
wit, "Man." He says, "The history of the Christian world is the history of the
supreme fight for truth, for in it -- and in it only! -- the thing at issue is
the discovery of the final or the primal truth -- man and freedom."
All right, let us accept this gain, and let us take man as the ultimately
found result of Christian history and of the religious or ideal efforts of man
in general. Now, who is Man? I am! Man, the end and outcome of
Christianity, is, as I, the beginning and raw material of the new history, a
history of enjoyment after the history of sacrifices, a history not of man or
humanity, but of -- me. Man ranks as the general. Now then, I and the
egoistic are the really general, since every one is an egoist and of paramount
importance to himself. The Jewish is not the purely egoistic, because the Jew
still devotes himself to Jehovah; the Christian is not, because the
Christian lives on the grace of God and subjects himself to him. As Jew and
as Christian alike a man satisfies only certain of his wants, only a certain
need, not himself: a half-egoism, because the egoism of a half-man, who is
half he, half Jew, or half his own proprietor, half a slave. Therefore, too,
Jew and Christian always half-way exclude each other; i.e. as men they
recognize each other, as slaves they exclude each other, because they are
servants of two different masters. If they could be complete egoists, they
would exclude each other wholly and hold together so much the more firmly.
Their ignominy is not that they exclude each other, but that this is done only
half-way. Bruno Bauer, on the contrary, thinks Jews and Christians cannot
regard and treat each other as "men" till they give up the separate essence
which parts them and obligates them to eternal separation, recognize the
general essence of "Man," and regard this as their "true essence."
According to his representation the defect of the Jews and the Christians
alike lies in their wanting to be and have something "particular" instead of
only being men and endeavoring after what is human -- to wit, the "general
rights of man." He thinks their fundamental error consists in the belief that
they are "privileged," possess "prerogatives"; in general, in the belief in
prerogative.(9)In opposition to this he holds up to them the general rights
of man. The rights of man! --
Man is man in general, and in so far every one who is a man. Now every one
is to have the eternal rights of man, and, according to the opinion of
Communism, enjoy them in the complete "democracy," or, as it ought more
correctly to be called -- anthropocracy. But it is I alone who have everything
that I -- procure for myself; as man I have nothing. People would like to give
every man an affluence of all good, merely because he has the title "man." But
I put the accent on me, not on my being man.
Man is something only as my quality(10) (property(11)), like masculinity or
femininity. The ancients found the ideal in one's being male in the full
sense; their virtue is virtus and arete -- i.e. manliness. What is one
to think of a woman who should want only to be perfectly "woman?" That is not
given to all, and many a one would therein be fixing for herself an
unattainable goal. Feminine, on the other hand, she is anyhow, by nature;
femininity is her quality, and she does not need "true femininity." I am a man
just as the earth is a star. As ridiculous as it would be to set the earth the
task of being a "thorough star," so ridiculous it is to burden me with the
call to be a "thorough man."
When Fichte says, "The ego is all," this seems to harmonize perfectly with my
thesis. But it is not that the ego is all, but the ego destroys all, and
only the self-dissolving ego, the never-being ego, the -- finite ego is
really I. Fichte speaks of the "absolute" ego, but I speak of me, the
transitory ego.
How natural is the supposition that man and ego mean the same! And yet one
sees, e. g., by Feuerbach, that the expression "man" is to designate the
absolute ego, the species, not the transitory, individual ego. Egoism and
humanity (humaneness) ought to mean the same, but according to Feuerbach the
individual can "only lift himself above the limits of his individuality, but
not above the laws, the positive ordinances, of his species."(12) But the
species is nothing, and, if the individual lifts himself above the limits of
his individuality, this is rather his very self as an individual; he exists
only in raising himself, he exists only in not remaining what he is; otherwise
he would be done, dead. Man with the great M is only an ideal, the species
only something thought of. To be a man is not to realize the ideal of Man,
but to present oneself, the individual. It is not how I realize the
generally human that needs to be my task, but how I satisfy myself. I am my
species, am without norm, without law, without model, etc. It is possible that
I can make very little out of myself; but this little is everything, and is
better than what I allow to be made out of me by the might of others, by the
training of custom, religion, the laws, the State. Better -- if the talk is to
be of better at all -- better an unmannerly child than an old head on young
shoulders, better a mulish man than a man compliant in everything. The
unmannerly and mulish fellow is still on the way to form himself according to
his own will; the prematurely knowing and compliant one is determined by the
"species," the general demands -- the species is law to him. He is
determined(13) by it; for what else is the species to him but his
"destiny,"(14) his "calling"? Whether I look to "humanity," the species, in
order to strive toward this ideal, or to God and Christ with like endeavor,
where is the essential dissimilarity? At most the former is more washed-out
than the latter. As the individual is the whole of nature, so he is the whole
of the species too.
Everything that I do, think -- in short, my expression or manifestation -- is
indeed conditioned by what I am. The Jew e. g. can will only thus or thus,
can "present himself" only thus; the Christian can present and manifest
himself only Christianly, etc. If it were possible that you could be a Jew or
Christian, you would indeed bring out only what was Jewish or Christian; but
it is not possible; in
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