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

great as a criminal,

you -- commit no crime! You do not know that an ego who is his own cannot

desist from being a criminal, that crime is his life. And yet you should know

it, since you believe that "we are all miserable sinners"; but you think

surreptitiously to get beyond sin, you do not comprehend -- for you are

devil-fearing -- that guilt is the value of a man. Oh, if you were guilty! But

now you are "righteous."(32) Well -- just put every thing nicely to rights(33)

for your master!

When the Christian consciousness, or the Christian man, draws up a criminal

code, what can the concept of crime be there but simply -- heartlessness?

Each severing and wounding of a heart relation, each heartless behavior

toward a sacred being, is crime. The more heartfelt the relation is supposed

to be, the more scandalous is the deriding of it, and the more worthy of

punishment the crime. Everyone who is subject to the lord should love him; to

deny this love is a high treason worthy of death. Adultery is a heartlessness

worthy of punishment; one has no heart, no enthusiasm, no pathetic feeling for

the sacredness of marriage. So long as the heart or soul dictates laws, only

the heartful or soulful man enjoys the protection of the laws. That the man of

soul makes laws means properly that the moral man makes them: what

contradicts these men's "moral feeling," this they penalize. How, e. g.,

should disloyalty, secession, breach of oaths -- in short, all *radical

breaking off, all tearing asunder of venerable ties --* not be flagitious

and criminal in their eyes? He who breaks with these demands of the soul has

for enemies all the moral, all the men of soul. Only Krummacher and his mates

are the right people to set up consistently a penal code of the heart, as a

certain bill sufficiently proves. The consistent legislation of the Christian

State must be placed wholly in the hands of the -- parsons, and will not

become pure and coherent so long as it is worked out only by -- the

parson-ridden, who are always only half-parsons. Only then will every lack

of soulfulness, every heartlessness, be certified as an unpardonable crime,

only then will every agitation of the soul become condemnable, every objection

of criticism and doubt be anathematized; only then is the own man, before the

Christian consciousness, a convicted -- criminal to begin with.

The men of the Revolution often talked of the people's "just revenge" as its

"right." Revenge and right coincide here. Is this an attitude of an ego to an

ego? The people cries that the opposite party has committed "crimes" against

it. Can I assume that one commits a crime against me, without assuming that he

has to act as I see fit? And this action I call the right, the good, etc.; the

divergent action, a crime. So I think that the others must aim at the same

goal with me; i.e., I do not treat them as unique beings(34) who bear their

law in themselves and live according to it, but as beings who are to obey some

"rational" law. I set up what "Man" is and what acting in a "truly human" way

is, and I demand of every one that this law become norm and ideal to him;

otherwise he will expose himself as a "sinner and criminal." But upon the

"guilty" falls the "penalty of the law"!

One sees here how it is "Man" again who sets on foot even the concept of

crime, of sin, and therewith that of right. A man in whom I do not recognize

"man" is "sinner, a guilty one."

Only against a sacred thing are there criminals; you against me can never be a

criminal, but only an opponent. But not to hate him who injures a sacred thing

is in itself a crime, as St. Just cries out against Danton: "Are you not a

criminal and responsible for not having hated the enemies of the fatherland?"

--

If, as in the Revolution, what "Man" is apprehended as "good citizen," then

from this concept of "Man" we have the well-known "political offenses and

crimes."

In all this the individual, the individual man, is regarded as refuse, and on

the other hand the general man, "Man," is honored. Now, according to how this

ghost is named -- as Christian, Jew, Mussulman, good citizen, loyal subject,

freeman, patriot, etc. -- just so do those who would like to carry through a

divergent concept of man, as well as those who want to put themselves

through, fall before victorious "Man."

And with what unction the butchery goes on here in the name of the law, of the

sovereign people, of God, etc.!

Now, if the persecuted trickily conceal and protect themselves from the stern

parsonical judges, people stigmatize them as St. Just, e. g., does those

whom he accuses in the speech against Danton.(35) One is to be a fool, and

deliver himself up to their Moloch.

Crimes spring from fixed ideas. The sacredness of marriage is a fixed idea.

From the sacredness it follows that infidelity is a crime, and therefore a

certain marriage law imposes upon it a shorter or longer penalty. But by

those who proclaim "freedom as sacred" this penalty must be regarded as a

crime against freedom, and only in this sense has public opinion in fact

branded the marriage law.

Society would have every one come to his right indeed, but yet only to that

which is sanctioned by society, to the society-right, not really to his

right. But I give or take to myself the right out of my own plenitude of

power, and against every superior power I am the most impenitent criminal.

Owner and creator of my right, I recognize no other source of right than --

me, neither God nor the State nor nature nor even man himself with his

"eternal rights of man," neither divine nor human right.

Right "in and for itself." Without relation to me, therefore! "Absolute

right." Separated from me, therefore! A thing that exists in and for itself!

An absolute! An eternal right, like an eternal truth!

According to the liberal way of thinking, right is to be obligatory for me

because it is thus established by human reason, against which my reason is

"unreason." Formerly people inveighed in the name of divine reason against

weak human reason; now, in the name of strong human reason, against egoistic

reason, which is rejected as "unreason." And yet none is real but this very

"unreason." Neither divine nor human reason, but only your and my reason

existing at any given time, is real, as and because you and I are real.

The thought of right is originally my thought; or, it has its origin in me.

But, when it has sprung from me, when the "Word" is out, then it has "become

flesh," it is a fixed idea. Now I no longer get rid of the thought; however

I turn, it stands before me. Thus men have not become masters again of the

thought "right," which they themselves created; their creature is running away

with them. This is absolute right, that which is absolved or unfastened from

me. We, revering it as absolute, cannot devour it again, and it takes from us

the creative power: the creature is more than the creator, it is "in and for

itself."

Once you no longer let right run around free, once you draw it back into its

origin, into you, it is your right; and that is right which suits you.

Right has had to suffer an attack within itself, i.e. from the standpoint of

right; war being declared on the part of liberalism against "privilege."(36)

Privileged and endowed with equal rights -- on these two concepts turns a

stubborn fight. Excluded or admitted -- would mean the same. But where should

there be a power -- be it an imaginary one like God, law, or a real one like

I, you -- of which it should not be true that before it all are "endowed with

equal rights," i. e., no respect of persons holds? Every one is equally dear

to God if he adores him, equally agreeable to the law if only he is a law-

abiding person; whether the lover of God and the law is humpbacked and lame,

whether poor or rich, etc., that amounts to nothing for God and the law; just

so, when you are at the point of drowning, you like a Negro as rescuer as well

as the most excellent Caucasian -- yes, in this situation you esteem a dog not

less than a man. But to whom will not every one be also, contrariwise, a

preferred or disregarded person? God punishes the wicked with his wrath, the

law chastises the lawless, you let one visit you every moment and show the

other the door.

The "equality of right" is a phantom just because right is nothing more and

nothing less than admission, a matter of grace, which, be it said, one may

also acquire by his desert; for desert and grace are not contradictory, since

even grace wishes to be "deserved" and our gracious smile falls only to him

who knows how to force it from us.

So people dream of "all citizens of the State having to stand side by side,

with equal rights." As citizens of the State they are certainly all equal for

the State. But it will divide them, and advance them or put them in the rear,

according to its special ends, if on no other account; and still more must it

distinguish them from one another as good and bad citizens.

Bruno Bauer disposes of the Jew question from the standpoint that "privilege"

is not justified. Because Jew and Christian have each some point of advantage

over the other, and in having this point of advantage are exclusive, therefore

before the critic's gaze they crumble into nothingness. With them the State

lies under the like blame, since it justifies their having advantages and

stamps it as a "privilege." or prerogative, but thereby derogates from its

calling to become a "free State."

But now every one has something of advantage over another -- viz., himself

or his individuality; in this everybody remains exclusive.

And, again, before a third party every one makes his peculiarity count for as

much as possible, and (if he wants to win him at all) tries to make it appear

attractive before him.

Now, is the third party to be insensible to the difference of the one from the

other? Do they ask that of the free State or of humanity? Then these would

have to be absolutely without self-interest, and incapable of taking an

interest in any one whatever. Neither God (who divides his own from the

wicked) nor the State (which knows how to separate good citizens from bad) was

thought