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

Christian against the Mohammedan, etc. Now, on the contrary, man

stands against men, or, as men are not man, man stands against the un-man.

The sentence "God has become man" is now followed by the other, "Man has

become I." This is the human 1. But we invert it and say: I was not able to

find myself so long as I sought myself as Man. But, now that it appears that

Man is aspiring to become I and to gain a corporeity in me, I note that, after

all, everything depends on me, and Man is lost without me. But I do not care

to give myself up to be the shrine of this most holy thing, and shall not ask

henceforward whether I am man or un-man in what I set about; let this spirit

keep off my neck!

Humane liberalism goes to work radically. If you want to be or have anything

especial even in one point, if you want to retain for yourself even one

prerogative above others, to claim even one right that is not a "general right

of man," you are an egoist.

Very good! I do not want to have or be anything especial above others, I do

not want to claim any prerogative against them, but -- I do not measure myself

by others either, and do not want to have any right whatever. I want to be

all and have all that I can be and have. Whether others are and have anything

similar, what do I care? The equal, the same, they can neither be nor have.

I cause no detriment to them, as I cause no detriment to the rock by being

"ahead of it" in having motion. If they could have it, they would have it.

To cause other men no detriment is the point of the demand to possess no

prerogative; to renounce all "being ahead," the strictest theory of

renunciation. One is not to count himself as "anything especial," e. g. a

Jew or a Christian. Well, I do not count myself as anything especial, but as

unique.(90) Doubtless I have similarity with others; yet that holds good

only for comparison or reflection; in fact I am incomparable, unique. My flesh

is not their flesh, my mind is not their mind. If you bring them under the

generalities "flesh, mind," those are your thoughts, which have nothing to

do with my flesh, my mind, and can least of all issue a "call" to mine.

I do not want to recognize or respect in you any thing, neither the proprietor

nor the ragamuffin, nor even the man, but to use you. In salt I find that it

makes food palatable to me, therefore I dissolve it; in the fish I recognize

an aliment, therefore I eat it; in you I discover the gift of making my life

agreeable, therefore I choose you as a companion. Or, in salt I study

crystallization, in the fish animality, in you men, etc. But to me you are

only what you are for me -- to wit, my object; and, because my object,

therefore my property.

In humane liberalism ragamuffinhood is completed. We must first come down to

the most ragamuffin-like, most poverty-stricken condition if we want to arrive

at ownness, for we must strip off everything alien. But nothing seems more

ragamuffin-like than naked -- Man.

It is more than ragamuffinhood, however, when I throw away Man too because I

feel that he too is alien to me and that T can make no pretensions on that

basis. This is no longer mere ragamuffinhood: because even the last rag has

fallen off, here stands real nakedness, denudation of everything alien. The

ragamuffin has stripped off ragamuffinhood itself, and therewith has ceased to

be what he was, a ragamuffin.

I am no longer a ragamuffin, but have been one.

Up to this time the discord could not come to an outbreak, because properly

there is current only a contention of modern liberals with antiquated

liberals, a contention of those who understand "freedom" in a small measure

and those who want the "full measure" of freedom; of the moderate and

measureless, therefore. Everything turns on the question, how free must

man be? That man must be free, in this all believe; therefore all are

liberal too. But the un-man(91) who is somewhere in every individual, how is

he blocked? How can it be arranged not to leave the un-man free at the same

time with man?

Liberalism as a whole has a deadly enemy, an invincible opposite, as God has

the devil: by the side of man stands always the un-man, the individual, the

egoist. State, society, humanity, do not master this devil.

Humane liberalism has undertaken the task of showing the other liberals that

they still do not want "freedom."

If the other liberals had before their eyes only isolated egoism and were for

the most part blind, radical liberalism has against it egoism "in mass,"

throws among the masses all who do not make the cause of freedom their own as

it does, so that now man and un-man rigorously separated, stand over against

each other as enemies, to wit, the "masses" and "criticism";(92) namely,

"free, human criticism," as it is called (Judenfrage, p. 114), in opposition

to crude, that is, religious criticism.

Criticism expresses the hope that it will be victorious over all the masses

and "give them a general certificate of insolvency."(93) So it means finally

to make itself out in the right, and to represent all contention of the

"faint-hearted and timorous" as an egoistic stubbornness,(94) as pettiness,

paltriness. All wrangling loses significance, and petty dissensions are given

up, because in criticism a common enemy enters the field. "You are egoists

altogether, one no better than another!" Now the egoists stand together

against criticism. Really the egoists? No, they fight against criticism

precisely because it accuses them of egoism; they do not plead guilty of

egoism. Accordingly criticism and the masses stand on the same basis: both

fight against egoism, both repudiate it for themselves and charge it to each

other.

Criticism and the masses pursue the same goal, freedom from egoism, and

wrangle only over which of them approaches nearest to the goal or even attains

it.

The Jews, the Christians, the absolutists, the men of darkness and men of

light, politicians, Communists -- all, in short -- hold the reproach of egoism

far from them; and, as criticism brings against them this reproach in plain

terms and in the most extended sense, all justify themselves against the

accusation of egoism, and combat -- egoism, the same enemy with whom criticism

wages war.

Both, criticism and masses, are enemies of egoists, and both seek to liberate

themselves from egoism, as well by clearing or whitewashing themselves as by

ascribing it to the opposite party.

The critic is the true "spokesman of the masses" who gives them the "simple

concept and the phrase" of egoism, while the spokesmen to whom the triumph is

denied were only bunglers. He is their prince and general in the war against

egoism for freedom; what he fights against they fight against. But at the same

time he is their enemy too, only not the enemy before them, but the friendly

enemy who wields the knout behind the timorous to force courage into them.

Hereby the opposition of criticism and the masses is reduced to the following

contradiction: "You are egoists!" "No, we are not!" "I will prove it to you!"

"You shall have our justification!"

Let us then take both for what they give themselves out for, non-egoists, and

what they take each other for, egoists. They are egoists and are not.

Properly criticism says: You must liberate your ego from all limitedness so

entirely that it becomes a human ego. I say: Liberate yourself as far as you

can, and you have done your part; for it is not given to every one to break

through all limits, or, more expressively: not to every one is that a limit

which is a limit for the rest. Consequently, do not tire yourself with toiling

at the limits of others; enough if you tear down yours. Who has ever succeeded

in tearing down even one limit for all men? Are not countless persons today,

as at all times, running about with all the "limitations of humanity?" He who

overturns one of his limits may have shown others the way and the means; the

overturning of their limits remains their affair. Nobody does anything else

either. To demand of people that they become wholly men is to call on them to

cast down all human limits. That is impossible, because Man has no limits. I

have some indeed, but then it is only mine that concern me any, and only

they can be overcome by me. A human ego I cannot become, just because I am I

and not merely man.

Yet let us still see whether criticism has not taught us something that we can

lay to heart! I am not free if I am not without interests, not man if I am not

disinterested? Well, even if it makes little difference to me to be free or

man, yet I do not want to leave unused any occasion to realize myself or

make myself count. Criticism offers me this occasion by the teaching that, if

anything plants itself firmly in me, and becomes indissoluble, I become its

prisoner and servant, i.e. a possessed man. An interest, be it for what it

may, has kidnapped a slave in me if I cannot get away from it, and is no

longer my property, but I am its. Let us therefore accept criticism's lesson

to let no part of our property become stable, and to feel comfortable only in

-- dissolving it.

So, if criticism says: You are man only when you are restlessly criticizing

and dissolving! then we say: Man I am without that, and I am I likewise;

therefore I want only to be careful to secure my property to myself; and, in

order to secure it, I continually take it back into myself, annihilate in it

every movement toward independence, and swallow it before it can fix itself

and become a "fixed idea" or a "mania."

But I do that not for the sake of my "human calling," but because I call

myself to it. I do not strut about dissolving everything that it is possible

for a man to dissolve, and, e. g., while not yet ten years old I do not

criticize the nonsense of the Commandments, but I am man all the same, and act

humanly in just this -- that I still leave them uncriticized. In short, I have

no calling, and follow none, not even that to be a man.

Do I now reject what liberalism has won in its various exertions? Far be the

day that anything won should be lost! Only, after "Man" has become free

through