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

>themselves let themselves be led by this principle when they have to judge one

who passes over to their party -- nay, they are likely to be making

proselytes; they should only at the same time acquire a consciousness of the

fact that one must commit immoral actions in order to commit his own --

i.e. here, that one must break faith, yes, even his oath, in order to

determine himself instead of being determined by moral considerations. In the

eyes of people of strict moral judgment an apostate always shimmers in

equivocal colors, and will not easily obtain their confidence; for there

sticks to him the taint of "faithlessness," i.e. of an immorality. In the

lower man this view is found almost generally; advanced thinkers fall here

too, as always, into an uncertainty and bewilderment, and the contradiction

necessarily founded in the principle of morality does not, on account of the

confusion of their concepts, come clearly to their consciousness. They do not

venture to call the apostate downright immoral, because they themselves entice

to apostasy, to defection from one religion to another, etc.; still, they

cannot give up the standpoint of morality either. And yet here the occasion

was to be seized to step outside of morality.

Are the Own or Unique(57) perchance a party? How could they be own if they

were e. g. belonged to a party?

Or is one to hold with no party? In the very act of joining them and entering

their circle one forms a union with them that lasts as long as party and I

pursue one and the same goal. But today I still share the party's tendency, as

by tomorrow I can do so no longer and I become "untrue" to it. The party has

nothing binding (obligatory) for me, and I do not have respect for it; if it

no longer pleases me, I become its foe.

In every party that cares for itself and its persistence, the members are

unfree (or better, unown) in that degree, they lack egoism in that degree, in

which they serve this desire of the party. The independence of the party

conditions the lack of independence in the party- members.

A party, of whatever kind it may be, can never do without a *confession of

faith. For those who belong to the party must believe* in its principle, it

must not be brought in doubt or put in question by them, it must be the

certain, indubitable thing for the party-member. That is: One must belong to a

party body and soul, else one is not truly a party-man, but more or less -- an

egoist. Harbor a doubt of Christianity, and you are already no longer a true

Christian, you have lifted yourself to the "effrontery" of putting a question

beyond it and haling Christianity before your egoistic judgment-seat. You have

-- sinned against Christianity, this party cause (for it is surely not *e.

g.* a cause for the Jews, another party.) But well for you if you do not let

yourself be affrighted: your effrontery helps you to ownness.

So then an egoist could never embrace a party or take up with a party? Oh,

yes, only he cannot let himself be embraced and taken up by the party. For him

the party remains all the time nothing but a gathering: he is one of the

party, he takes part.

The best State will clearly be that which has the most loyal citizens, and the

more the devoted mind for legality is lost, so much the more will the State,

this system of morality, this moral life itself, be diminished in force and

quality. With the "good citizens" the good State too perishes and dissolves

into anarchy and lawlessness. "Respect for the law!" By this cement the total

of the State is held together. "The law is sacred, and he who affronts it a

criminal". Without crime no State: the moral world -- and this the State is

-- is crammed full of scamps, cheats, liars, thieves, etc. Since the State is

the "lordship of law," its hierarchy, it follows that the egoist, in all cases

where his advantage runs against the State's, can satisfy himself only by

crime.

The State cannot give up the claim that its laws and ordinances are

sacred.(58) At this the individual ranks as the unholy(59) (barbarian,

natural man, "egoist") over against the State, exactly as he was once regarded

by the Church; before the individual the State takes on the nimbus of a

saint.(60) Thus it issues a law against dueling. Two men who are both at one

in this, that they are willing to stake their life for a cause (no matter

what), are not to be allowed this, because the State will not have it: it

imposes a penalty on it. Where is the liberty of self-determination then? It

is at once quite another situation if, as e. g. in North America, society

determines to let the duelists bear certain evil consequences of their act,

e. g. withdrawal of the credit hitherto enjoyed. To refuse credit is

everybody's affair, and, if a society wants to withdraw it for this or that

reason, the man who is hit cannot therefore complain of encroachment on his

liberty: the society is simply availing itself of its own liberty. That is no

penalty for sin, no penalty for a crime. The duel is no crime there, but

only an act against which the society adopts counter-measures, resolves on a

defense. The State, on the contrary, stamps the duel as a crime, i.e. as

an injury to its sacred law: it makes it a criminal case. The society leaves

it to the individual's decision whether he will draw upon himself evil

consequences and inconveniences by his mode of action, and hereby recognizes

his free decision; the State behaves in exactly the reverse way, denying all

right to the individual's decision and, instead, ascribing the sole right to

its own decision, the law of the State, so that he who transgresses the

State's commandment is looked upon as if he were acting against God's

commandment -- a view which likewise was once maintained by the Church. Here

God is the Holy in and of himself, and the commandments of the Church, as of

the State, are the commandments of this Holy One, which he transmits to the

world through his anointed and Lords-by-the-Grace-of-God. If the Church had

deadly sins, the State has capital crimes; if the one had heretics, the

other has traitors; the one ecclesiastical penalties, the other *criminal

penalties; the one inquisitorial processes, the other fiscal;* in short,

there sins, here crimes, there inquisition and here -- inquisition. Will the

sanctity of the State not fall like the Church's? The awe of its laws, the

reverence for its highness, the humility of its "subjects," will this remain?

Will the "saint's" face not be stripped of its adornment?

What a folly, to ask of the State's authority that it should enter into an

honourable fight with the individual, and, as they express themselves in the

matter of freedom of the press, share sun and wind equally! If the State, this

thought, is to be a de facto power, it simply must be a superior power

against the individual. The State is "sacred" and must not expose itself to

the "impudent attacks" of individuals. If the State is sacred, there must be

censorship. The political liberals admit the former and dispute the inference.

But in any case they concede repressive measures to it, for -- they stick to

this, that State is more than the individual and exercises a justified

revenge, called punishment.

Punishment has a meaning only when it is to afford expiation for the

injuring of asacred thing. If something is sacred to any one, he certainly

deserves punishment when he acts as its enemy. A man who lets a man's life

continue in existence because to him it is sacred and he has a dread of

touching it is simply a -- religious man.

Weitling lays crime at the door of "social disorder," and lives in the

expectation that under Communistic arrangements crimes will become impossible,

because the temptations to them, e. g. money, fall away. As, however, his

organized society is also exalted into a sacred and inviolable one, he

miscalculates in that good-hearted opinion. e. g. with their mouth professed

allegiance to the Communistic society, but worked underhand for its ruin,

would not be lacking. Besides, Weitling has to keep on with "curative means

against the natural remainder of human diseases and weaknesses," and "curative

means" always announce to begin with that individuals will be looked upon as

"called" to a particular "salvation" and hence treated according to the

requirements of this "human calling." Curative means or healing is only

the reverse side of punishment, the theory of cure runs parallel with the

theory of punishment; if the latter sees in an action a sin against right,

the former takes it for a sin of the man against himself, as a decadence

from his health. But the correct thing is that I regard it either as an action

that suits me or as one that does not suit me, as hostile or friendly to

me, i.e. that I treat it as my property, which I cherish or demolish.

"Crime" or "disease" are not either of them an egoistic view of the matter,

i.e. a judgment starting from me, but starting from another -- to wit,

whether it injures right, general right, or the health partly of the

individual (the sick one), partly of the generality (society). "Crime" is

treated inexorably, "disease" with "loving gentleness, compassion," etc.

Punishment follows crime. If crime falls because the sacred vanishes,

punishment must not less be drawn into its fall; for it too has significance

only over against something sacred. Ecclesiastical punishments have been

abolished. Why? Because how one behaves toward the "holy God" is his own

affair. But, as this one punishment, ecclesiastical punishment, has fallen,

so all punishments must fall. As sin against the so-called God is a man's

own affair, so is that against every kind of the so-called sacred. According

to our theories of penal law, with whose "improvement in conformity to the

times" people are tormenting themselves in vain, they want to punish men for

this or that "inhumanity"; and therein they make the silliness of these

theories especially plain by their consistency, hanging the little thieves and

letting the big ones run. For injury to property they have the house of

correction, and for "violence to thought," suppression of "natural rights of

man," only --representations and petitions.

The criminal code has continued existence only through the sacred, and

perishes of itself if punishment is given up. Now they want to