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

free

utterance.' The liberty of the press which is sought for is an affair of the

people's, and before the people (the State) possesses it I may make no use

of it. From the standpoint of property in the press, the situation is

different. Let my people, if they will, go without liberty of free press, I

will manage to print by force or ruse; I get my permission to print only from

-- myself and my strength.

If the press is my own, I as little need a permission of the State for

employing it as I seek that permission in order to blow my nose. The press is

my property from the moment when nothing is more to me than myself; for from

this moment State, Church, people, society, etc., cease, because they have to

thank for their existence only the disrespect that I have for myself, and with

the vanishing of this undervaluation they themselves are extinguished: they

exist only when they exist above me, exist only as powers and

power-holders. Or can you imagine a State whose citizens one and all think

nothing of it? It would be as certainly a dream, an existence in seeming, as

'united Germany.'

The press is my own as soon as I myself am my own, a self- owned man: to the

egoist belongs the world, because he belongs to no power of the world.

With this my press might still be very unfree, as e. g. at this moment.

But the world is large, and one helps himself as well as he can. If I were

willing to abate from the property of my press, I could easily attain the

point where I might everywhere have as much printed as my fingers produced.

But, as I want to assert my property, I must necessarily swindle my enemies.

'Would you not accept their permission if it were given you?' Certainly, with

joy; for their permission would be to me a proof that I had fooled them and

started them on the road to ruin. I am not concerned for their permission, but

so much the more for their folly and their overthrow. I do not sue for their

permission as if I flattered myself (like the political liberals) that we

both, they and I, could make out peaceably alongside and with each other, yes,

probably raise and prop each other; but I sue for it in order to make them

bleed to death by it, that the permitters themselves may cease at last. I act

as a conscious enemy, overreaching them and utilizing their heedlessness.

The press is mine when I recognize outside myself no judge whatever over

its utilization, i.e. when my writing is no longer determined by morality or

religion or respect for the State laws or the like, but by me and my egoism!"

Now, what have you to reply to him who gives you so impudent an answer? -- We

shall perhaps put the question most strikingly by phrasing it as follows:

Whose is the press, the people's (State's) or mine? The politicals on their

side intend nothing further than to liberate the press from personal and

arbitrary interferences of the possessors of power, without thinking of the

point that to be really open for everybody it would also have to be free from

the laws, from the people's (State's) will. They want to make a "people's

affair" of it.

But, having become the people's property, it is still far from being mine;

rather, it retains for me the subordinate significance of a permission. The

people plays judge over my thoughts; it has the right of calling me to account

for them, or, I am responsible to it for them. Jurors, when their fixed ideas

are attacked, have just as hard heads as the stiffest despots and their

servile officials.

In the "Liberale Bestrebungen"(83) Edgar Bauer asserts that liberty of the

press is impossible in the absolutist and the constitutional State, whereas in

the "free State" it finds its place. "Here," the statement is, "it is

recognized that the individual, because he is no longer an individual but a

member of a true and rational generality, has the right to utter his mind." So

not the individual, but the "member," has liberty of the press. But, if for

the purpose of liberty of the press the individual must first give proof of

himself regarding his belief in the generality, the people; if he does not

have this liberty through might of his own -- then it is a *people's

liberty*, a liberty that he is invested with for the sake of his faith, his

"membership." The reverse is the case: it is precisely as an individual that

every one has open to him the liberty to utter his mind. But he has not the

"right": that liberty is assuredly not his "sacred right." He has only the

might; but the might alone makes him owner. I need no concession for the

liberty of the press, do not need the people's consent to it, do not need the

"right" to it, nor any "justification." The liberty of the press too, like

every liberty, I must "take"; the people, "as being the sole judge," cannot

give it to me. It can put up with me the liberty that I take, or defend

itself against it; give, bestow, grant it cannot. I exercise it despite the

people, purely as an individual; i.e. I get it by fighting the people, my --

enemy, and obtain it only when I really get it by such fighting, i. e. take

it. But I take it because it is my property.

Sander, against whom E. Bauer writes, lays claim (page 99) to the liberty of

the press "as the right and the liberty of the citizens in the State". What

else does Edgar Bauer do? To him also it is only a right of the free

citizen.

The liberty of the press is also demanded under the name of a "general human

right." Against this the objection was well-founded that not every man knew

how to use it rightly, for not every individual was truly man. Never did a

government refuse it to Man as such; but Man writes nothing, for the

reason that he is a ghost. It always refused it to individuals only, and

gave it to others, e. g. its organs. If then one would have it for all, one

must assert outright that it is due to the individual, me, not to man or to

the individual so far as he is man. Besides, another than a man (a beast) can

make no use of it. The French government, e. g., does not dispute the

liberty of the press as a right of man, but demands from the individual a

security for his really being man; for it assigns liberty of the press not to

the individual, but to man.

Under the exact pretense that it was not human, what was mine was taken from

me! What was human was left to me undiminished.

Liberty of the press can bring about only a responsible press; the

irresponsible proceeds solely from property in the press.

For intercourse with men an express law (conformity to which one may venture

at times sinfully to forget, but the absolute value of which one at no time

ventures to deny) is placed foremost among all who live religiously: this is

the law -- of love, to which not even those who seem to fight against its

principle, and who hate its name, have as yet become untrue; for they also

still have love, yes, they love with a deeper and more sublimated love, they

love "man and mankind."

If we formulate the sense of this law, it will be about as follows: Every man

must have a something that is more to him than himself. You are to put your

"private interest" in the background when it is a question of the welfare of

others, the weal of the fatherland, of society, the common weal, the weal of

mankind, the good cause, etc.! Fatherland, society, mankind, must be more to

you than yourself, and as against their interest your "private interest" must

stand back; for you must not be an --egoist.

Love is a far-reaching religious demand, which is not, as might be supposed,

limited to love to God and man, but stands foremost in every regard. Whatever

we do, think, will, the ground of it is always to be love. Thus we may indeed

judge, but only "with love." The Bible may assuredly be criticized, and that

very thoroughly, but the critic must before all things love it and see in it

the sacred book. Is this anything else than to say he must not criticize it to

death, he must leave it standing, and that as a sacred thing that cannot be

upset? -- In our criticism on men too, love must remain the unchanged

key-note. Certainly judgments that hatred inspires are not at all our own

judgments, but judgments of the hatred that rules us, "rancorous judgments."

But are judgments that love inspires in us any more our own? They are

judgments of the love that rules us, they are "loving, lenient" judgments,

they are not our own, and accordingly not real judgments at all. He who

burns with love for justice cries out, fiat justitia, pereat mundus! He can

doubtless ask and investigate what justice properly is or demands, and *in

what it consists, but not whether* it is anything.

It is very true, "He who abides in love abides in God, and God in him." (1

John 4. 16.) God abides in him, he does not get rid of God, does not become

godless; and he abides in God, does not come to himself and into his own home,

abides in love to God and does not become loveless.

"God is love! All times and all races recognize in this word the central point

of Christianity." God, who is love, is an officious God: he cannot leave the

world in peace, but wants to make it blest. "God became man to make men

divine."(84) He has his hand in the game everywhere, and nothing happens

without it; everywhere he has his "best purposes," his "incomprehensible plans

and decrees." Reason, which he himself is, is to be forwarded and realized in

the whole world. His fatherly care deprives us of all independence. We can do

nothing sensible without its being said, God did that, and can bring upon

ourselves no misfortune without hearing, God ordained that; we have nothing

that we have not from him, he "gave" everything. But, as God does, so does

Man. God wants perforce to make the world blest, and Man wants to make it

happy, to make all men happy. Hence every "man" wants to awaken in all men

the reason which he supposes his own self to have: everything