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

im Staate "die ungleiche Person angesehen," there had been

"respect of unequal persons" in the State.]

(61) [Gewalt, a word which is also commonly used like the English

"violence," denoting especially unlawful violence.]

(62) [Vorrechte]

(63) [Rechte]

(64) 1 Corinthians 8. 4.

(65) "Ein und zwanzig Bogen", p. 12

(66) Louis Blanc says ("Histoire des dix Ans", I, p. 138) of the time of the

Restoration: "Le protestantisme devint le fond des idées et des moeurs."

(67) [Sache, which commonly means thing].

(68) [Sache]

(69) [Or "righteous." German rechtlich].

(70) [gerecht]

(71) [das Geld gibt Geltung.]

(72) [ausgebeutet]

(73) [Kriegsbeute]

(74) [In German an exact quotation of Luke 10. 7.]

(75) Proudhon (Création de l'Ordre) cries out, p. 414, "In industry, as in

science, the publication of an invention is the first and *most sacred of

duties*!"

(76) [In his strictures on "criticism" Stirner refers to a special movement

known by that name in the early forties of the last century, of which Bruno

Bauer was the principal exponent. After his official separation from the

faculty of the university of Bonn on account of his views in regard to the

Bible, Bruno Bauer in 1843 settled near Berlin and founded the *Allgemeine

Literatur-Zeitung*, in which he and his friends, at war with their

surroundings, championed the "absolute emancipation" of the individual within

the limits of "pure humanity" and fought as their foe "the mass,"

comprehending in that term the radical aspirations of political liberalism and

the communistic demands of the rising Socialist movement of that time. For a

brief account of Bruno Bauer's movement of criticism, see John Henry Mackay,

Max Stirner. Sein Leben und sein Werk.]

(77) Br. Bauer, "Lit. Ztg." V, 18

(78) "Lit. Ztg." V, 26

(79) [Eigentum, "owndom"]

(80) [Eigenwille "own-will"]

(81) [Referring to minute subdivision of labor, whereby the single workman

produces, not a whole, but a part.]

(82) "Lit. Ztg." V, 34.

(83) "Lit. Ztg ibid.

(84) ["einziger"]

(85) ["Einzigkeit"]

(86) Br. Bauer, "Judenfrage," p. 66

(87) Br. Bauer, "Die gute Sache der Freiheit," pp. 62-63.

(88) Br. Bauer, "Judenfrage," p. 60.

(89) ["Einzige"]

(90) ["einzig"]

(91) [It should be remembered that to be an Unmensch["un-man"] one must be a

man. The word means an inhuman or unhuman man, a man who is not man. A tiger,

an avalanche, a drought, a cabbage, is not an un-man.]

(92) "Lit. Ztg., V, 23; as comment, V, 12ff.

(93) "Lit. Ztg, V 15.

(94) [Rechthaberei, literally the character of always insisting on making

one's self out to be in the right.]

(95) ["einzig"]

(96) ["des Einzigen"]

Part Second

I

---- * ----

At the entrance of the modern time stands the "God-man." At its exit will only

the God in the God-man evaporate? And can the God-man really die if only the

God in him dies? They did not think of this question, and thought they were

through when in our days they brought to a victorious end the work of the

Illumination, the vanquishing of God: they did not notice that Man has killed

God in order to become now -- "sole God on high." The other world outside us

is indeed brushed away, and the great undertaking of the Illuminators

completed; but the other world in ushas become a new heaven and calls us

forth to renewed heaven-storming: God has had to give place, yet not to us,

but to -- Man. How can you believe that the God-man is dead before the Man in

him, besides the God, is dead?

---- * ----

I.

OWNNESS(1)

"Does not the spirit thirst for freedom?" -- Alas, not my spirit alone, my

body too thirsts for it hourly! When before the odorous castle-kitchen my nose

tells my palate of the savory dishes that are being prepared therein, it feels

a fearful pining at its dry bread; when my eyes tell the hardened back about

soft down on which one may lie more delightfully than on its compressed straw,

a suppressed rage seizes it; when -- but let us not follow the pains further.

-- And you call that a longing for freedom? What do you want to become free

from, then? From your hardtack and your straw bed? Then throw them away! --

But that seems not to serve you: you want rather to have the freedom to enjoy

delicious foods and downy beds. Are men to give you this "freedom" -- are they

to permit it to you? You do not hope that from their philanthropy, because you

know they all think like you: each is the nearest to himself! How, therefore,

do you mean to come to the enjoyment of those foods and beds? Evidently not

otherwise than in making them your property!

If you think it over rightly, you do not want the freedom to have all these

fine things, for with this freedom you still do not have them; you want really

to have them, to call them yours and possess them as your property. Of

what use is a freedom to you, indeed, if it brings in nothing? And, if you

became free from everything, you would no longer have anything; for freedom is

empty of substance. Whoso knows not how to make use of it, for him it has no

value, this useless permission; but how I make use of it depends on my

personality.(2)

I have no objection to freedom, but I wish more than freedom for you: you

should not merely be rid of what you do not want; you should not only be a

"freeman," you should be an "owner" too.

Free -- from what? Oh! what is there that cannot be shaken off? The yoke of

serfdom, of sovereignty, of aristocracy and princes, the dominion of the

desires and passions; yes, even the dominion of one's own will, of self-will,

for the completest self-denial is nothing but freedom -- freedom, to wit, from

self-determination, from one's own self. And the craving for freedom as for

something absolute, worthy of every praise, deprived us of ownness: it created

self-denial. However, the freer I become, the more compulsion piles up before

my eyes; and the more impotent I feel myself. The unfree son of the wilderness

does not yet feel anything of all the limits that crowd a civilized man: he

seems to himself freer than this latter. In the measure that I conquer freedom

for myself I create for myself new bounds and new tasks: if I have invented

railroads, I feel myself weak again because I cannot yet sail through the

skies like the bird; and, if I have solved a problem whose obscurity disturbed

my mind, at once there await me innumerable others, whose perplexities impede

my progress, dim my free gaze, make the limits of my freedom painfully

sensible to me. "Now that you have become free from sin, you have become

servants of righteousness."(3) Republicans in their broad freedom, do they not

become servants of the law? How true Christian hearts at all times longed to

"become free," how they pined to see themselves delivered from the "bonds of

this earth-life"! They looked out toward the land of freedom. ("The Jerusalem

that is above is the freewoman; she is the mother of us all." Gal. 4. 26.)

Being free from anything -- means only being clear or rid. "He is free from

headache" is equal to "he is rid of it." "He is free from this prejudice" is

equal to "he has never conceived it" or "he has got rid of it." In "less" we

complete the freedom recommended by Christianity, in sinless, godless,

moralityless, etc.

Freedom is the doctrine of Christianity. "Ye, dear brethren, are called to

freedom."(4) "So speak and so do, as those who are to be judged by the law of

freedom."(5)

Must we then, because freedom betrays itself as a Christian ideal, give it up?

No, nothing is to be lost, freedom no more than the rest; but it is to become

our own, and in the form of freedom it cannot.

What a difference between freedom and ownness! One can get rid of a great

many things, one yet does not get rid of all; one becomes free from much, not

from everything. Inwardly one may be free in spite of the condition of

slavery, although, too, it is again only from all sorts of things, not from

everything; but from the whip, the domineering temper, of the master, one does

not as slave become free. "Freedom lives only in the realm of dreams!"

Ownness, on the contrary, is my whole being and existence, it is I myself. I

am free from what I am rid of, owner of what I have in my power or what I

control. My own I am at all times and under all circumstances, if I know how

to have myself and do not throw myself away on others. To be free is something

that I cannot truly will, because I cannot make it, cannot create it: I can

only wish it and -- aspire toward it, for it remains an ideal, a spook. The

fetters of reality cut the sharpest welts in my flesh every moment. But *my

own* I remain. Given up as serf to a master, I think only of myself and my

advantage; his blows strike me indeed, I am not free from them; but I endure

them only for my benefit, perhaps in order to deceive him and make him

secure by the semblance of patience, or, again, not to draw worse upon myself

by contumacy. But, as I keep my eye on myself and my selfishness, I take by

the forelock the first good opportunity to trample the slaveholder into the

dust. That I then become free from him and his whip is only the consequence

of my antecedent egoism. Here one perhaps says I was "free" even in the

condition of slavery -- to wit, "intrinsically" or "inwardly." But

"intrinsically free" is not "really free," and "inwardly" is not "outwardly."

I was own, on the other hand, my own, altogether, inwardly and outwardly.

Under the dominion of a cruel master my body is not "free" from torments and

lashes; but it is my bones that moan under the torture, my fibres that

quiver under the blows, and I moan because my body moans. That I sigh

and shiver proves that I have not yet lost myself, that I am still my own.

My leg is not "free" from the master's stick, but it is my leg and is

inseparable. Let him tear it off me and look and see if he still has my leg!

He retains in his hand nothing but the -- corpse of my leg, which is as little

my leg as a dead dog is still a dog: a dog has a pulsating heart, a so-called

dead dog has none and is therefore no longer a dog.

If one opines that