The Ego and his Own by Max Stirner (most read books txt) 📕

be known from it, while the work of a handicraftsman mirrors only

the handicraftsman, i.e. the skill in handicraft, not "the man?" In his

poems we have the whole Schiller; in so many hundred stoves, on the other

hand, we have before us only the stove-maker, not "the man."

But does this mean more than "in the one work you see me as completely as

possible, in the other only my skill?" Is it not me again that the act

expresses? And is it not more egoistic to offer oneself to the world in a

work, to work out and shape oneself, than to remain concealed behind one's

labor? You say, to be sure, that you are revealing Man. But the Man that you

reveal is you; you reveal only yourself, yet with this distinction from the

handicraftsman -- that he does not understand how to compress himself into one

labor, but, in order to be known as himself, must be searched out in his other

relations of life, and that your want, through whose satisfaction that work

came into being, was a -- theoretical want.

But you will reply that you reveal quite another man, a worthier, higher,

greater, a man that is more man than that other. I will assume that you

accomplish all that is possible to man, that you bring to pass what no other

succeeds in. Wherein, then, does your greatness consist? Precisely in this,

that you are more than other men (the "masses"), more than men ordinarily

are, more than "ordinary men"; precisely in your elevation above men. You are

distinguished beyond other men not by being man, but because you are a

"unique"(84) man. Doubtless you show what a man can do; but because you, a

man, do it, this by no means shows that others, also men, are able to do as

much; you have executed it only as a unique man, and are unique therein.

It is not man that makes up your greatness, but you create it, because you are

more than man, and mightier than other -- men.

It is believed that one cannot be more than man. Rather, one cannot be less!

It is believed further that whatever one attains is good for Man. In so far as

I remain at all times a man -- or, like Schiller, a Swabian; like Kant, a

Prussian; like Gustavus Adolfus, a near-sighted person -- I certainly become

by my superior qualities a notable man, Swabian, Prussian, or near-sighted

person. But the case is not much better with that than with Frederick the

Great's cane, which became famous for Frederick's sake.

To "Give God the glory" corresponds the modern "Give Man the glory." But I

mean to keep it for myself.

Criticism, issuing the summons to man to be "human," enunciates the necessary

condition of sociability; for only as a man among men is one companionable.

Herewith it makes known its social object, the establishment of "human

society."

Among social theories criticism is indisputably the most complete, because it

removes and deprives of value everything that separates man from man: all

prerogatives, down to the prerogative of faith. In it the love-principle of

Christianity, the true social principle, comes to the purest fulfillment, and

the last possible experiment is tried to take away exclusiveness and repulsion

from men: a fight against egoism in its simplest and therefore hardest form,

in the form of singleness,(85) exclusiveness, itself.

"How can you live a truly social life so long as even one exclusiveness still

exists between you?"

I ask conversely, How can you be truly single so long as even one connection

still exists between you? If you are connected, you cannot leave each other;

if a "tie" clasps you, you are something only with another, and twelve of

you make a dozen, thousands of you a people, millions of you humanity.

"Only when you are human can you keep company with each other as men, just as

you can understand each other as patriots only when you are patriotic!"

All right; then I answer, Only when you are single can you have intercourse

with each other as what you are.

It is precisely the keenest critic who is hit hardest by the curse of his

principle. Putting from him one exclusive thing after another, shaking off

churchliness, patriotism, etc., he undoes one tie after another and separates

himself from the churchly man, from the patriot, till at last, when all ties

are undone, he stands -- alone. He, of all men, must exclude all that have

anything exclusive or private; and, when you get to the bottom, what can be

more exclusive than the exclusive, single person himself!

Or does he perhaps think that the situation would be better if all became

"man" and gave up exclusiveness? Why, for the very reason that "all" means

"every individual" the most glaring contradiction is still maintained, for the

"individual" is exclusiveness itself. If the humane liberal no longer concedes

to the individual anything private or exclusive, any private thought, any

private folly; if he criticises everything away from him before his face,

since his hatred of the private is an absolute and fanatical hatred; if he

knows no tolerance toward what is private, because everything private is

unhuman -- yet he cannot criticize away the private person himself, since

the hardness of the individual person resists his criticism, and he must be

satisfied with declaring this person a "private person" and really leaving

everything private to him again.

What will the society that no longer cares about anything private do? Make the

private impossible? No, but "subordinate it to the interests of society, and,

e. g., leave it to private will to institute holidays as many as it chooses,

if only it does not come in collision with the general interest."(86)

Everything private is left free; i.e., it has no interest for society.

"By their raising barriers against science the church and religiousness have

declared that they are what they always were, only that this was hidden under

another semblance when they were proclaimed to be the basis and necessary

foundation of the State -- a matter of purely private concern. Even when they

were connected with the State and made it Christian, they were only the proof

that the State had not yet developed its general political idea, that it was

only instituting private rights -- they were only the highest expression for

the fact that the State was a private affair and had to do only with private

affairs. When the State shall at last have the courage and strength to fulfil

its general destiny and to be free; when, therefore, it is also able to give

separate interests and private concerns their true position -- then religion

and the church will be free as they have never been hitherto. As a matter of

the most purely private concern, and a satisfaction of purely personal want,

they will be left to themselves; and every individual, every congregation and

ecclesiastical communion, will be able to care for the blessedness of their

souls as they choose and as they think necessary. Every one will care for his

soul's blessedness so far as it is to him a personal want, and will accept and

pay as spiritual caretaker the one who seems to him to offer the best

guarantee for the satisfaction of his want. Science is at last left entirely

out of the game."(87)

What is to happen, though? Is social life to have an end, and all affability,

all fraternization, everything that is created by the love or society

principle, to disappear?

As if one will not always seek the other because he needs him; as if one

must accommodate himself to the other when he needs him. But the difference

is this, that then the individual really unites with the individual, while

formerly they were bound together by a tie; son and father are bound

together before majority, after it they can come together independently;

before it they belonged together as members of the family, after it they

unite as egoists; sonship and fatherhood remain, but son and father no longer

pin themselves down to these.

The last privilege, in truth, is "Man"; with it all are privileged or

invested. For, as Bruno Bauer himself says, "privilege remains even when it is

extended to all."(88)

Thus liberalism runs its course in the following transformations: "First, the

individual is not man, therefore his individual personality is of no account:

no personal will, no arbitrariness, no orders or mandates!

"Second, the individual has nothing human, therefore no mine and thine, or

property, is valid.

"Third, as the individual neither is man nor has anything human, he shall not

exist at all: he shall, as an egoist with his egoistic belongings, be

annihilated by criticism to make room for Man, 'Man, just discovered.'"

But, although the individual is not Man, Man is yet present in the individual,

and, like every spook and everything divine, has its existence in him. Hence

political liberalism awards to the individual everything that pertains to him

as "a man by birth," as a born man, among which there are counted liberty of

conscience, the possession of goods, etc. -- in short, the "rights of man";

Socialism grants to the individual what pertains to him as an active man, as

a "laboring" man; finally. humane liberalism gives the individual what he has

as "a man," i. e., everything that belongs to humanity. Accordingly the

single one(89) has nothing at all, humanity everything; and the necessity of

the "regeneration" preached in Christianity is demanded unambiguously and in

the completest measure. Become a new creature, become "man!"

One might even think himself reminded of the close of the Lord's Prayer. To

Man belongs the lordship (the "power" or dynamis); therefore no individual

may be lord, but Man is the lord of individuals; -- Man's is the kingdom,

i.e. the world, consequently the individual is not to be proprietor, but

Man, "all," command the world as property -- to Man is due renown,

glorification or "glory" (doxa) from all, for Man or humanity is the

individual's end, for which he labors, thinks, lives, and for whose

glorification he must become "man."

Hitherto men have always striven to find out a fellowship in which their

inequalities in other respects should become "nonessential"; they strove for

equalization, consequently for equality, and wanted to come all under one

hat, which means nothing less than that they were seeking for one lord, one

tie, one faith ("`Tis in one God we all believe"). There cannot be for men

anything more fellowly or more equal than Man himself, and in this fellowship

the love-craving has found its contentment: it did not rest till it had

brought on this last equalization, leveled all inequality, laid man on the

breast of man. But under this very fellowship decay and ruin become most

glaring. In a more limited fellowship the Frenchman still stood against the

German, the