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

for a long time already been looked upon as the

creator of new productions that have a place in the history of the world.

If your efforts are ever to make "freedom" the issue, then exhaust freedom's

demands. Who is it that is to become free? You, I, we. Free from what? From

everything that is not you, not I, not we. I, therefore, am the kernel that is

to be delivered from all wrappings and -- freed from all cramping shells. What

is left when I have been freed from everything that is not I? Only I; nothing

but I. But freedom has nothing to offer to this I himself. As to what is now

to happen further after I have become free, freedom is silent -- as our

governments, when the prisoner's time is up, merely let him go, thrusting him

out into abandonment.

Now why, if freedom is striven after for love of the I after all -- why not

choose the I himself as beginning, middle, and end? Am I not worth more than

freedom? Is it not I that make myself free, am not I the first? Even unfree,

even laid in a thousand fetters, I yet am; and I am not, like freedom, extant

only in the future and in hopes, but even as the most abject of slaves I am --

present.

Think that over well, and decide whether you will place on your banner the

dream of "freedom" or the resolution of "egoism," of "ownness." "Freedom"

awakens your rage against everything that is not you; "egoism" calls you to

joy over yourselves, to self-enjoyment; "freedom" is and remains a longing

, a romantic plaint, a Christian hope for unearthliness and futurity;

"ownness" is a reality, which of itself removes just so much unfreedom as by

barring your own way hinders you. What does not disturb you, you will not want

to renounce; and, if it begins to disturb you, why, you know that "you must

obey yourselves rather than men!"

Freedom teaches only: Get yourselves rid, relieve yourselves, of everything

burdensome; it does not teach you who you yourselves are. Rid, rid! So call,

get rid even of yourselves, "deny yourselves." But ownness calls you back to

yourselves, it says "Come to yourself!" Under the aegis of freedom you get rid

of many kinds of things, but something new pinches you again: "you are rid of

the Evil One; evil is left."(6) As own you are really rid of everything,

and what clings to you you have accepted; it is your choice and your

pleasure. The own man is the free-born, the man free to begin with; the

free man, on the contrary, is only the eleutheromaniac, the dreamer and

enthusiast.

The former is originally free, because he recognizes nothing but himself; he

does not need to free himself first, because at the start he rejects

everything outside himself, because he prizes nothing more than himself, rates

nothing higher, because, in short, he starts from himself and "comes to

himself." Constrained by childish respect, he is nevertheless already working

at "freeing" himself from this constraint. Ownness works in the little egoist,

and procures him the desired -- freedom.

Thousands of years of civilization have obscured to you what you are, have

made you believe you are not egoists but are called to be idealists ("good

men"). Shake that off! Do not seek for freedom, which does precisely deprive

you of yourselves, in "self-denial"; but seek for yourselves, become

egoists, become each of you an almighty ego. Or, more clearly: Just

recognize yourselves again, just recognize what you really are, and let go

your hypocritical endeavors, your foolish mania to be something else than you

are. Hypocritical I call them because you have yet remained egoists all these

thousands of years, but sleeping, self-deceiving, crazy egoists, you

Heautontimorumenoses, you self- tormentors. Never yet has a religion been

able to dispense with "promises," whether they referred us to the other world

or to this ("long life," etc.); for man is mercenary and does nothing

"gratis." But how about that "doing the good for the good's sake" without

prospect of reward? As if here too the pay was not contained in the

satisfaction that it is to afford. Even religion, therefore, is founded on our

egoism and -- exploits it; calculated for our desires, it stifles many

others for the sake of one. This then gives the phenomenon of cheated

egoism, where I satisfy, not myself, but one of my desires, e. g. the

impulse toward blessedness. Religion promises me the -- "supreme good"; to

gain this I no longer regard any other of my desires, and do not slake them.

-- All your doings are unconfessed , secret, covert, and concealed egoism.

But because they are egoism that you are unwilling to confess to yourselves,

that you keep secret from yourselves, hence not manifest and public egoism,

consequently unconscious egoism -- therefore they are not egoism, but

thraldom, service, self-renunciation; you are egoists, and you are not, since

you renounce egoism. Where you seem most to be such, you have drawn upon the

word "egoist" -- loathing and contempt.

I secure my freedom with regard to the world in the degree that I make the

world my own, i.e. "gain it and take possession of it" for myself, by

whatever might, by that of persuasion, of petition, of categorical demand,

yes, even by hypocrisy, cheating, etc.; for the means that I use for it are

determined by what I am. If I am weak, I have only weak means, like the

aforesaid, which yet are good enough for a considerable part of the world.

Besides, cheating, hypocrisy, lying, look worse than they are. Who has not

cheated the police, the law? Who has not quickly taken on an air of honourable

loyalty before the sheriff's officer who meets him, in order to conceal an

illegality that may have been committed, etc.? He who has not done it has

simply let violence be done to him; he was a weakling from -- conscience. I

know that my freedom is diminished even by my not being able to carry out my

will on another object, be this other something without will, like a rock, or

something with will, like a government, an individual; I deny my ownness when

-- in presence of another -- I give myself up, i.e. give way, desist,

submit; therefore by loyalty, submission. For it is one thing when I give up

my previous course because it does not lead to the goal, and therefore turn

out of a wrong road; it is another when I yield myself a prisoner. I get

around a rock that stands in my way, till I have powder enough to blast it; I

get around the laws of a people, till I have gathered strength to overthrow

them. Because I cannot grasp the moon, is it therefore to be "sacred" to me,

an Astarte? If I only could grasp you, I surely would, and, if I only find a

means to get up to you, you shall not frighten me! You inapprehensible one,

you shall remain inapprehensible to me only till I have acquired the might for

apprehension and call you my own; I do not give myself up before you, but

only bide my time. Even if for the present I put up with my inability to touch

you, I yet remember it against you.

Vigorous men have always done so. When the "loyal" had exalted an unsubdued

power to be their master and had adored it, when they had demanded adoration

from all, then there came some such son of nature who would not loyally

submit, and drove the adored power from its inaccessible Olympus. He cried his

"Stand still" to the rolling sun, and made the earth go round; the loyal had

to make the best of it; he laid his axe to the sacred oaks, and the "loyal"

were astonished that no heavenly fire consumed him; he threw the pope off

Peter's chair, and the "loyal" had no way to hinder it; he is tearing down the

divine-right business, and the "loyal" croak in vain, and at last are silent.

My freedom becomes complete only when it is my -- might; but by this I cease

to be a merely free man, and become an own man. Why is the freedom of the

peoples a "hollow word"? Because the peoples have no might! With a breath of

the living ego I blow peoples over, be it the breath of a Nero, a Chinese

emperor, or a poor writer. Why is it that the G.....(7) legislatures pine in

vain for freedom, and are lectured for it by the cabinet ministers? Because

they are not of the "mighty"! Might is a fine thing, and useful for many

purposes; for "one goes further with a handful of might than with a bagful of

right." You long for freedom? You fools! If you took might, freedom would come

of itself. See, he who has might "stands above the law." How does this

prospect taste to you, you "law-abiding" people? But you have no taste!

The cry for "freedom" rings loudly all around. But is it felt and known what a

donated or chartered freedom must mean? It is not recognized in the full

amplitude of the word that all freedom is essentially -- self-liberation --

i.e. that I can have only so much freedom as I procure for myself by my

ownness. Of what use is it to sheep that no one abridges their freedom of

speech? They stick to bleating. Give one who is inwardly a Mohammedan, a Jew,

or a Christian, permission to speak what he likes: he will yet utter only

narrow-minded stuff. If, on the contrary, certain others rob you of the

freedom of speaking and hearing, they know quite rightly wherein lies their

temporary advantage, as you would perhaps be able to say and hear something

whereby those "certain" persons would lose their credit.

If they nevertheless give you freedom, they are simply knaves who give more

than they have. For then they give you nothing of their own, but stolen wares:

they give you your own freedom, the freedom that you must take for yourselves;

and they give it to you only that you may not take it and call the thieves

and cheats to an account to boot. In their slyness they know well that given

(chartered) freedom is no freedom, since only the freedom one takes for

himself, therefore the egoist's freedom, rides with full sails. Donated

freedom strikes its sails as soon as there comes a storm -- or calm; it

requires always a -- gentle and moderate breeze.

Here lies the difference between self-liberation and emancipation

(manumission, setting free). Those who today "stand in the opposition" are

thirsting and screaming to be "set free." The princes are to "declare their

peoples of age," i. e., emancipate