The Ego and his Own by Max Stirner (most read books txt) π
Those not self-conscious and self-willed are constantly acting from self-interested motives, but clothing these in various garbs. Watch those people closely in the light of Stirner's teaching, and they seem to be hypocrites, they have so many good moral and religious plans of which self-interest is at the end and bottom; but they, we may believe, do not know that this is more than a coincidence.
In Stirner we have the philosophical foundation for political liberty. His interest in the practical development of egoism to the dissolution of the State and the union of free men is clear and pronounced, and harmonizes perfectly with the economic philosophy of Josiah Warren. Allowing for difference of temperament and language, there is a substantial agreement between Stirner and Proudhon. Each would be free, and sees in every increase of the number of free people and their intelligence an a
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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
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