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

her bosom; the State, as a society of men, can. But,

when the State has carried its principle clear through, of presupposing in its

constituents nothing but that they are men (even the North Americans still

presuppose in theirs that they have religion, at least the religion of

integrity, of responsibility), then it has dug its grave. While it will fancy

that those whom it possesses are without exception men, these have meanwhile

become without exception egoists, each of whom utilizes it according to his

egoistic powers and ends. Against the egoists "human society" is wrecked; for

they no longer have to do with each other as men, but appear egoistically as

an I against a You altogether different from me and in opposition to me.

If the State must count on our humanity, it is the same if one says it must

count on our morality. Seeing Man in each other, and acting as men toward

each other, is called moral behavior. This is every whit the "spiritual love"

of Christianity. For, if I see Man in you, as in myself I see Man and nothing

but Man, then I care for you as I would care for myself; for we represent, you

see, nothing but the mathematical proposition: A = C and B = C, consequently A

= B -- i.e. I nothing but man and you nothing but man, consequently I and

you the same. Morality is incompatible with egoism, because the former does

not allow validity to me, but only to the Man in me. But, if the State is a

society of men, not a union of egos each of whom has only himself before his

eyes, then it cannot last without morality, and must insist on morality.

Therefore we two, the State and I, are enemies. I, the egoist, have not at

heart the welfare of this "human society," I sacrifice nothing to it, I only

utilize it; but to be able to utilize it completely I transform it rather into

my property and my creature; i. e., I annihilate it, and form in its place

the Union of Egoists.

So the State betrays its enmity to me by demanding that I be a man, which

presupposes that I may also not be a man, but rank for it as an "un- man"; it

imposes being a man upon me as a duty. Further, it desires me to do nothing

along with which it cannot last; so its permanence is to be sacred for me.

Then I am not to be an egoist, but a "respectable, upright," i.e. moral,

man. Enough: before it and its permanence I am to be impotent and respectful.

This State, not a present one indeed, but still in need of being first

created, is the ideal of advancing liberalism. There is to come into existence

a true "society of men," in which every "man" finds room. Liberalism means to

realize "Man," i.e. create a world for him; and this should be the human

world or the general (Communistic) society of men. It was said, "The Church

could regard only the spirit, the State is to regard the whole man."(8) But is

not "Man" "spirit"? The kernel of the State is simply "Man," this unreality,

and it itself is only a "society of men." The world which the believer

(believing spirit) creates is called Church, the world which the man (human or

humane spirit) creates is called State. But that is not my world. I never

execute anything human in the abstract, but always my own things; my

human act is diverse from every other human act, and only by this diversity is

it a real act belonging to me. The human in it is an abstraction, and, as

such, spirit, i.e. abstracted essence.

Bruno Bauer states (e. g. Judenfrage, p. 84) that the truth of criticism is

the final truth, and in fact the truth sought for by Christianity itself --to

wit, "Man." He says, "The history of the Christian world is the history of the

supreme fight for truth, for in it -- and in it only! -- the thing at issue is

the discovery of the final or the primal truth -- man and freedom."

All right, let us accept this gain, and let us take man as the ultimately

found result of Christian history and of the religious or ideal efforts of man

in general. Now, who is Man? I am! Man, the end and outcome of

Christianity, is, as I, the beginning and raw material of the new history, a

history of enjoyment after the history of sacrifices, a history not of man or

humanity, but of -- me. Man ranks as the general. Now then, I and the

egoistic are the really general, since every one is an egoist and of paramount

importance to himself. The Jewish is not the purely egoistic, because the Jew

still devotes himself to Jehovah; the Christian is not, because the

Christian lives on the grace of God and subjects himself to him. As Jew and

as Christian alike a man satisfies only certain of his wants, only a certain

need, not himself: a half-egoism, because the egoism of a half-man, who is

half he, half Jew, or half his own proprietor, half a slave. Therefore, too,

Jew and Christian always half-way exclude each other; i.e. as men they

recognize each other, as slaves they exclude each other, because they are

servants of two different masters. If they could be complete egoists, they

would exclude each other wholly and hold together so much the more firmly.

Their ignominy is not that they exclude each other, but that this is done only

half-way. Bruno Bauer, on the contrary, thinks Jews and Christians cannot

regard and treat each other as "men" till they give up the separate essence

which parts them and obligates them to eternal separation, recognize the

general essence of "Man," and regard this as their "true essence."

According to his representation the defect of the Jews and the Christians

alike lies in their wanting to be and have something "particular" instead of

only being men and endeavoring after what is human -- to wit, the "general

rights of man." He thinks their fundamental error consists in the belief that

they are "privileged," possess "prerogatives"; in general, in the belief in

prerogative.(9)In opposition to this he holds up to them the general rights

of man. The rights of man! --

Man is man in general, and in so far every one who is a man. Now every one

is to have the eternal rights of man, and, according to the opinion of

Communism, enjoy them in the complete "democracy," or, as it ought more

correctly to be called -- anthropocracy. But it is I alone who have everything

that I -- procure for myself; as man I have nothing. People would like to give

every man an affluence of all good, merely because he has the title "man." But

I put the accent on me, not on my being man.

Man is something only as my quality(10) (property(11)), like masculinity or

femininity. The ancients found the ideal in one's being male in the full

sense; their virtue is virtus and arete -- i.e. manliness. What is one

to think of a woman who should want only to be perfectly "woman?" That is not

given to all, and many a one would therein be fixing for herself an

unattainable goal. Feminine, on the other hand, she is anyhow, by nature;

femininity is her quality, and she does not need "true femininity." I am a man

just as the earth is a star. As ridiculous as it would be to set the earth the

task of being a "thorough star," so ridiculous it is to burden me with the

call to be a "thorough man."

When Fichte says, "The ego is all," this seems to harmonize perfectly with my

thesis. But it is not that the ego is all, but the ego destroys all, and

only the self-dissolving ego, the never-being ego, the -- finite ego is

really I. Fichte speaks of the "absolute" ego, but I speak of me, the

transitory ego.

How natural is the supposition that man and ego mean the same! And yet one

sees, e. g., by Feuerbach, that the expression "man" is to designate the

absolute ego, the species, not the transitory, individual ego. Egoism and

humanity (humaneness) ought to mean the same, but according to Feuerbach the

individual can "only lift himself above the limits of his individuality, but

not above the laws, the positive ordinances, of his species."(12) But the

species is nothing, and, if the individual lifts himself above the limits of

his individuality, this is rather his very self as an individual; he exists

only in raising himself, he exists only in not remaining what he is; otherwise

he would be done, dead. Man with the great M is only an ideal, the species

only something thought of. To be a man is not to realize the ideal of Man,

but to present oneself, the individual. It is not how I realize the

generally human that needs to be my task, but how I satisfy myself. I am my

species, am without norm, without law, without model, etc. It is possible that

I can make very little out of myself; but this little is everything, and is

better than what I allow to be made out of me by the might of others, by the

training of custom, religion, the laws, the State. Better -- if the talk is to

be of better at all -- better an unmannerly child than an old head on young

shoulders, better a mulish man than a man compliant in everything. The

unmannerly and mulish fellow is still on the way to form himself according to

his own will; the prematurely knowing and compliant one is determined by the

"species," the general demands -- the species is law to him. He is

determined(13) by it; for what else is the species to him but his

"destiny,"(14) his "calling"? Whether I look to "humanity," the species, in

order to strive toward this ideal, or to God and Christ with like endeavor,

where is the essential dissimilarity? At most the former is more washed-out

than the latter. As the individual is the whole of nature, so he is the whole

of the species too.

Everything that I do, think -- in short, my expression or manifestation -- is

indeed conditioned by what I am. The Jew e. g. can will only thus or thus,

can "present himself" only thus; the Christian can present and manifest

himself only Christianly, etc. If it were possible that you could be a Jew or

Christian, you would indeed bring out only what was Jewish or Christian; but

it is not possible; in