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

them! Behave as if you were of age, and

you are so without any declaration of majority; if you do not behave

accordingly, you are not worthy of it, and would never be of age even by a

declaration of majority. When the Greeks were of age, they drove out their

tyrants, and, when the son is of age, he makes himself independent of his

father. If the Greeks had waited till their tyrants graciously allowed them

their majority, they might have waited long. A sensible father throws out a

son who will not come of age, and keeps the house to himself; it serves the

noodle right.

The man who is set free is nothing but a freed man, a libertinus, a dog

dragging a piece of chain with him: he is an unfree man in the garment of

freedom, like the ass in the lion's skin. Emancipated Jews are nothing

bettered in themselves, but only relieved as Jews, although he who relieves

their condition is certainly more than a churchly Christian, as the latter

cannot do this without inconsistency. But, emancipated or not emancipated, Jew

remains Jew; he who is not self-freed is merely an -- emancipated man. The

Protestant State can certainly set free (emancipate) the Catholics; but,

because they do not make themselves free, they remain simply -- Catholics.

Selfishness and unselfishness have already been spoken of. The friends of

freedom are exasperated against selfishness because in their religious

striving after freedom they cannot -- free themselves from that sublime thing,

"self-renunciation." The liberal's anger is directed against egoism, for the

egoist, you know, never takes trouble about a thing for the sake of the thing,

but for his sake: the thing must serve him. It is egoistic to ascribe to no

thing a value of its own, an "absolute" value, but to seek its value in me.

One often hears that pot-boiling study which is so common counted among the

most repulsive traits of egoistic behavior, because it manifests the most

shameful desecration of science; but what is science for but to be consumed?

If one does not know how to use it for anything better than to keep the pot

boiling, then his egoism is a petty one indeed, because this egoist's power is

a limited power; but the egoistic element in it, and the desecration of

science, only a possessed man can blame.

Because Christianity, incapable of letting the individual count as an ego,(8)

thought of him only as a dependent, and was properly nothing but a *social

theory --* a doctrine of living together, and that of man with God as well as

of man with man -- therefore in it everything "own" must fall into most woeful

disrepute: selfishness, self-will, ownness, self-love, etc. The Christian way

of looking at things has on all sides gradually re-stamped honourable words

into dishonorable; why should they not be brought into honor again? So

Schimpf (contumely) is in its old sense equivalent to jest, but for

Christian seriousness pastime became a dishonor,(9) for that seriousness

cannot take a joke; frech (impudent) formerly meant only bold, brave;

Frevel (wanton outrage) was only daring. It is well known how askance the

word "reason" was looked at for a long time.

Our language has settled itself pretty well to the Christian standpoint, and

the general consciousness is still too Christian not to shrink in terror from

everything un-Christian as from something incomplete or evil. Therefore

"selfishness" is in a bad way too.

Selfishness,(10) in the Christian sense, means something like this: I look

only to see whether anything is of use to me as a sensual man. But is

sensuality then the whole of my ownness? Am I in my own senses when I am given

up to sensuality? Do I follow myself, my own determination, when I follow

that? I am my own only when I am master of myself, instead of being mastered

either by sensuality or by anything else (God, man, authority, law, State,

Church, etc.); what is of use to me, this self-owned or self-appertaining one,

my selfishness pursues.

Besides, one sees himself every moment compelled to believe in that

constantly-blasphemed selfishness as an all-controlling power. In the session

of February 10, 1844, Welcker argues a motion on the dependence of the judges,

and sets forth in a detailed speech that removable, dismissable, transferable,

and pensionable judges -- in short, such members of a court of justice as can

by mere administrative process be damaged and endangered -- are wholly without

reliability, yes, lose all respect and all confidence among the people. The

whole bench, Welcker cries, is demoralized by this dependence! In blunt words

this means nothing else than that the judges find it more to their advantage

to give judgment as the ministers would have them than to give it as the law

would have them. How is that to be helped? Perhaps by bringing home to the

judges' hearts the ignominiousness of their venality, and then cherishing the

confidence that they will repent and henceforth prize justice more highly than

their selfishness? No, the people does not soar to this romantic confidence,

for it feels that selfishness is mightier than any other motive. Therefore the

same persons who have been judges hitherto may remain so, however thoroughly

one has convinced himself that they behaved as egoists; only they must not any

longer find their selfishness favored by the venality of justice, but must

stand so independent of the government that by a judgment in conformity with

the facts they do not throw into the shade their own cause, their

"well-understood interest," but rather secure a comfortable combination of a

good salary with respect among the citizens.

So Welcker and the commoners of Baden consider themselves secured only when

they can count on selfishness. What is one to think, then, of the countless

phrases of unselfishness with which their mouths overflow at other times?

To a cause which I am pushing selfishly I have another relation than to one

which I am serving unselfishly. The following criterion might be cited for it;

against the one I can sin or commit a sin, the other I can only *trifle

away, push from me, deprive myself of -- i.e.* commit an imprudence. Free

trade is looked at in both ways, being regarded partly as a freedom which may

under certain circumstances be granted or withdrawn, partly as one which is

to be held sacred under all circumstances.

If I am not concerned about a thing in and for itself, and do not desire it

for its own sake, then I desire it solely as a means to an end, for its

usefulness; for the sake of another end, e. g., oysters for a pleasant

flavor. Now will not every thing whose final end he himself is, serve the

egoist as means? And is he to protect a thing that serves him for nothing --

e. g., the proletarian to protect the State?

Ownness includes in itself everything own, and brings to honor again what

Christian language dishonored. But ownness has not any alien standard either,

as it is not in any sense an idea like freedom, morality, humanity, etc.: it

is only a description of the -- owner.

Footnotes:

(1) [This is a literal translation of the German word Eigenheit, which, with

its primitive eigen, "own," is used in this chapter in a way that the German

dictionaries do not quite recognize. The author's conception being new, he had

to make an innovation in the German language to express it. The translator is

under the like necessity. In most passages "self-ownership," or else

"personality," would translate the word, but there are some where the thought

is so eigen, i. e., so peculiar or so thoroughly the author's own, that no

English word I can think of would express it. It will explain itself to one

who has read Part First intelligently.]

(2) [Eigenheit]

(3) Rom. 6, 18.

(4) 1 Pet. 2. 16.

(5) James 2. 12.

(6) [See note, p. 112]

(7) [Meaning "German". Written in this form because of the censorship.]

(8) ["Einzige"]

(9) [I take Entbehrung, "destitution," to be a misprint for Entehrung.]

(10) [Eigennutz, literally "own-use."]

II.

THE OWNER

I -- do I come to myself and mine through liberalism? Whom does the liberal

look upon as his equal? Man! Be only man -- and that you are anyway -- and the

liberal calls you his brother. He asks very little about your private opinions

and private follies, if only he can espy "Man" in you.

But, as he takes little heed of what you are privatim -- nay, in a strict

following out of his principle sets no value at all on it -- he sees in you

only what you are generatim. In other words, he sees in you, not you, but

the species; not Tom or Jim, but Man; not the real or unique one,(1)but your

essence or your concept; not the bodily man, but the spirit.

As Tom you would not be his equal, because he is Jim, therefore not Tom; as

man you are the same that he is. And, since as Tom you virtually do not exist

at all for him (so far, to wit, as he is a liberal and not unconsciously an

egoist), he has really made "brother-love" very easy for himself: he loves in

you not Tom, of whom he knows nothing and wants to know nothing, but Man.

To see in you and me nothing further than "men," that is running the Christian

way of looking at things, according to which one is for the other nothing but

a concept (e. g. a man called to salvation, etc.), into the ground.

Christianity properly so called gathers us under a less utterly general

concept: there we are "sons of God" and "led by the Spirit of God."(2) Yet not

all can boast of being God's sons, but "the same Spirit which witnesses to our

spirit that we are sons of God reveals also who are the sons of the devil."(3)

Consequently, to be a son of God one must not be a son of the devil; the

sonship of God excluded certain men. To be sons of men -- i. e., men -- on

the contrary, we need nothing but to belong to the human species, need only

to be specimens of the same species. What I am as this I is no concern of

yours as a good liberal, but is my private affair alone; enough that we are

both sons of one and the same mother, to wit, the human species: as "a son of

man" I am your equal.

What am I now to you? Perhaps this bodily I as I walk and stand? Anything

but that. This bodily I, with its thoughts, decisions, and passions, is in

your eyes a "private affair" which is no concern of yours: it is an "affair by

itself." As an "affair for you" there exists only my