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

the most rigorous conduct you yet remain an egoist, a

sinner against that concept -- i.e., you are not the precise equivalent of

Jew. Now, because the egoistic always keeps peeping through, people have

inquired for a more perfect concept which should really wholly express what

you are, and which, because it is your true nature, should contain all the

laws of your activity. The most perfect thing of the kind has been attained in

"Man." As a Jew you are too little, and the Jewish is not your task; to be a

Greek, a German, does not suffice. But be a -- man, then you have everything;

look upon the human as your calling.

Now I know what is expected of me, and the new catechism can be written. The

subject is again subjected to the predicate, the individual to something

general; the dominion is again secured to an idea, and the foundation laid

for a new religion. This is a step forward in the domain of religion, and

in particular of Christianity; not a step out beyond it.

To step out beyond it leads into the unspeakable. For me paltry language has

no word, and "the Word," the Logos, is to me a "mere word."

My essence is sought for. If not the Jew, the German, etc., then at any rate

it is -- the man. "Man is my essence."

I am repulsive or repugnant to myself; I have a horror and loathing of myself,

I am a horror to myself, or, I am never enough for myself and never do enough

to satisfy myself. From such feelings springs self-dissolution or

self-criticism. Religiousness begins with self-renunciation, ends with

completed criticism.

I am possessed, and want to get rid of the "evil spirit." How do I set about

it? I fearlessly commit the sin that seems to the Christian the most dire, the

sin and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. "He who blasphemes the Holy Spirit

has no forgiveness forever, but is liable to the eternal judgment!"(15) I want

no forgiveness, and am not afraid of the judgment.

Man is the last evil spirit or spook, the most deceptive or most intimate,

the craftiest liar with honest mien, the father of lies.

The egoist, turning against the demands and concepts of the present, executes

pitilessly the most measureless -- desecration. Nothing is holy to him!

It would be foolish to assert that there is no power above mine. Only the

attitude that I take toward it will be quite another than that of the

religious age: I shall be the enemy of -- every higher power, while religion

teaches us to make it our friend and be humble toward it.

The desecrator puts forth his strength against every fear of God, for fear

of God would determine him in everything that he left standing as sacred.

Whether it is the God or the Man that exercises the hallowing power in the

God-man -- whether, therefore, anything is held sacred for God's sake or for

Man's (Humanity's) -- this does not change the fear of God, since Man is

revered as "supreme essence," as much as on the specifically religious

standpoint God as "supreme essence" calls for our fear and reverence; both

overawe us.

The fear of God in the proper sense was shaken long ago, and a more or less

conscious "atheism," externally recognizable by a wide-spread

"unchurchliness," has involuntarily become the mode. But what was taken from

God has been superadded to Man, and the power of humanity grew greater in just

the degree that of piety lost weight: "Man" is the God of today, and fear of

Man has taken the place of the old fear of God.

But, because Man represents only another Supreme Being, nothing in fact has

taken place but a metamorphosis in the Supreme Being, and the fear of Man is

merely an altered form of the fear of God.

Our atheists are pious people.

If in the so-called feudal times we held everything as a fief from God, in the

liberal period the same feudal relation exists with Man. God was the Lord, now

Man is the Lord; God was the Mediator, now Man is; God was the Spirit, now Man

is. In this three fold regard the feudal relation has experienced a

transformation. For now, firstly, we hold as a fief from all-powerful Man our

power, which, because it comes from a higher, is not called power or might,

but "right" -- the "rights of man"; we further hold as a fief from him our

position in the world, for he, the mediator, mediates our intercourse with

others, which therefore may not be otherwise than "human"; finally, we hold as

a fief from him ourselves -- to wit, our own value, or all that we are worth

-- inasmuch as we are worth nothing when he does not dwell in us, and when

or where we are not "human." The power is Man's, the world is Man's, I am

Man's.

But am I not still unrestrained from declaring myself the entitler, the

mediator, and the own self? Then it runs thus:

My power is my property.

My power gives me property.

My power am I myself, and through it am I my property.

My Power

Right(16) is the spirit of society. If society has a will this will is

simply right: society exists only through right. But, as it endures only

exercising a sovereignty over individuals, right is its SOVEREIGN WILL.

Aristotle says justice is the advantage of society.

All existing right is -- foreign law; some one makes me out to be in the

right, "does right by me." But should I therefore be in the right if all the

world made me out so? And yet what else is the right that I obtain in the

State, in society, but a right of those foreign to me? When a blockhead

makes me out in the right, I grow distrustful of my rightness; I don't like to

receive it from him. But, even when a wise man makes me out in the right, I

nevertheless am not in the right on that account. Whether I am in the right is

completely independent of the fool's making out and of the wise man's.

All the same, we have coveted this right till now. We seek for right, and turn

to the court for that purpose. To what? To a royal, a papal, a popular court,

etc. Can a sultanic court declare another right than that which the sultan has

ordained to be right? Can it make me out in the right if I seek for a right

that does not agree with the sultan's law? Can it, e. g., concede to me high

treason as a right, since it is assuredly not a right according to the

sultan's mind? Can it as a court of censorship allow me the free utterance of

opinion as a right, since the sultan will hear nothing of this my right?

What am I seeking for in this court, then? I am seeking for sultanic right,

not my right; I am seeking for -- foreign right. As long as this foreign

right harmonizes with mine, to be sure, I shall find in it the latter too.

The State does not permit pitching into each other man to man; it opposes the

duel. Even every ordinary appeal to blows, notwithstanding that neither of

the fighters calls the police to it, is punished; except when it is not an I

whacking away at a you, but, say, the head of a family at the child. The

family is entitled to this, and in its name the father; I as Ego am not. The

Vossische Zeitung presents to us the "commonwealth of right." There

everything is to be decided by the judge and a court. It ranks the supreme

court of censorship as a "court" where "right is declared." What sort of a

right? The right of the censorship. To recognize the sentences of that court

as right one must regard the censorship as right. But it is thought

nevertheless that this court offers a protection. Yes, protection against an

individual censor's error: it protects only the censorship-legislator against

false interpretation of his will, at the same time making his statute, by the

"sacred power of right," all the firmer against writers.

Whether I am in the right or not there is no judge but myself. Others can

judge only whether they endorse my right, and whether it exists as right for

them too.

In the meantime let us take the matter yet another way. I am to reverence

sultanic law in the sultanate, popular law in republics, canon law in Catholic

communities. To these laws I am to subordinate myself; I am to regard them as

sacred. A "sense of right" and "law-abiding mind" of such a sort is so firmly

planted in people's heads that the most revolutionary persons of our days want

to subject us to a new "sacred law," the "law of society," the law of mankind,

the "right of all," and the like. The right of "all" is to go before my

right. As a right of all it would indeed be my right among the rest, since I,

with the rest, am included in all; but that it is at the same time a right of

others, or even of all others, does not move me to its upholding. Not as a

right of all will I defend it, but as my right; and then every other may

see to it how he shall likewise maintain it for himself. The right of all (*e.

g.,* to eat) is a right of every individual. Let each keep this right

unabridged for himself, then all exercise it spontaneously; let him not take

care for all though -- let him not grow zealous for it as for a right of all.

But the social reformers preach to us a "law of society". There the

individual becomes society's slave, and is in the right only when society

makes him out in the right, i.e. when he lives according to society's

statutes and so is -- loyal. Whether I am loyal under a despotism or in a

"society" àla Weitling, it is the same absence of right in so far as in both

cases I have not my right but foreign right.

In consideration of right the question is always asked, "What or who gives me

the right to it?" Answer: God, love, reason, nature, humanity, etc. No, only

your might, your power gives you the right (your reason, e. g.,, may give

it to you).

Communism, which assumes that men "have equal rights by nature," contradicts

its own proposition till it comes to this, that men have no right at all by

nature. For it is not willing to recognize, e. g., that parents have "by

nature" rights as against their children,