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

of thought. Conversely, if I were a

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