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

the world and the worldly, not this world

but "another" world; it is only the reversing and deranging of the world, a

busying with the essence of the world, therefore a derangement. The

thinker is blind to the immediateness of things, and incapable of mastering

them: he does not eat, does not drink, does not enjoy; for the eater and

drinker is never the thinker, nay, the latter forgets eating and drinking, his

getting on in life, the cares of nourishment, etc., over his thinking; he

forgets it as the praying man too forgets it. This is why he appears to the

forceful son of nature as a queer Dick, a fool -- even if he does look upon

him as holy, just as lunatics appeared so to the ancients. Free thinking is

lunacy, because it is pure movement of the inwardness, of the merely *inward

man*, which guides and regulates the rest of the man. The shaman and the

speculative philosopher mark the bottom and top rounds on the ladder of the

inward man, the -- Mongol. Shaman and philosopher fight with ghosts, demons,

spirits, gods.

Totally different from this free thinking is own thinking, my thinking,

a thinking which does not guide me, but is guided, continued, or broken off,

by me at my pleasure. The distinction of this own thinking from free thinking

is similar to that of own sensuality, which I satisfy at pleasure, from free,

unruly sensuality to which I succumb.

Feuerbach, in the Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, is always

harping upon being. In this he too, with all his antagonism to Hegel and the

absolute philosophy, is stuck fast in abstraction; for "being" is abstraction,

as is even "the I." Only I am not abstraction alone: I am all in all,

consequently even abstraction or nothing; I am all and nothing; I am not a

mere thought, but at the same time I am full of thoughts, a thought-world.

Hegel condemns the own, mine,(112) -- "opinion."(113) "Absolute thinking" is

that which forgets that it is my thinking, that I think, and that it

exists only through me. But I, as I, swallow up again what is mine, am its

master; it is only my opinion, which I can at any moment change, i.e.

annihilate, take back into myself, and consume. Feuerbach wants to smite

Hegel's "absolute thinking" with unconquered being. But in me being is as

much conquered as thinking is. It is my being, as the other is my

thinking.

With this, of course, Feuerbach does not get further than to the proof,

trivial in itself, that I require the senses for everything, or that I

cannot entirely do without these organs. Certainly I cannot think if I do not

exist sensuously. But for thinking as well as for feeling, and so for the

abstract as well as for the sensuous, I need above all things myself, this

quite particular myself, this unique myself. If I were not this one, e. g.

Hegel, I should not look at the world as I do look at it, I should not pick

out of it that philosophical system which just I as Hegel do, etc. I should

indeed have senses, as do other people too, but I should not utilize them as I

do.

Thus the reproach is brought up against Hegel by Feuerbach(114) that he

misuses language, understanding by many words something else than what natural

consciousness takes them for; and yet he too commits the same fault when he

gives the "sensuous" a sense of unusual eminence. Thus it is said, p. 69, "the

sensuous is not the profane, the destitute of thought, the obvious, that which

is understood of itself." But, if it is the sacred, the full of thought, the

recondite, that which can be understood only through mediation -- well, then

it is no longer what people call the sensuous. The sensuous is only that which

exists for the senses; what, on the other hand, is enjoyable only to those

who enjoy with more than the senses, who go beyond sense-enjoyment or

sense-reception, is at most mediated or introduced by the senses, i. e., the

senses constitute a condition for obtaining it, but it is no longer anything

sensuous. The sensuous, whatever it may be, when taken up into me becomes

something non-sensuous, which, however, may again have sensuous effects, *e.

g.* as by the stirring of my emotions and my blood.

It is well that Feuerbach brings sensuousness to honor, but the only thing he

is able to do with it is to clothe the materialism of his "new philosophy"

with what had hitherto been the property of idealism, the "absolute

philosophy." As little as people let it be talked into them that one can live

on the "spiritual" alone without bread, so little will they believe his word

that as a sensuous being one is already everything, and so spiritual, full of

thoughts, etc.

Nothing at all is justified by being. What is thought of is as well as

what is not thought of; the stone in the street is, and my notion of it is

too. Both are only in different spaces, the former in airy space, the latter

in my head, in me; for I am space like the street.

The professionals, the privileged, brook no freedom of thought, i.e. no

thoughts that do not come from the "Giver of all good," be he called God,

pope, church, or whatever else. If anybody has such illegitimate thoughts, he

must whisper them into his confessor's ear, and have himself chastised by him

till the slave-whip becomes unendurable to the free thoughts. In other ways

too the professional spirit takes care that free thoughts shall not come at

all: first and foremost, by a wise education. He on whom the principles of

morality have been duly inculcated never becomes free again from moralizing

thoughts, and robbery, perjury, overreaching, etc., remain to him fixed ideas

against which no freedom of thought protects him. He has his thoughts "from

above," and gets no further.

It is different with the holders of concessions or patents. Every one must be

able to have and form thoughts as he will. If he has the patent, or the

concession, of a capacity to think, he needs no special privilege. But, as

"all men are rational," it is free to every one to put into his head any

thoughts whatever, and, to the extent of the patent of his natural endowment,

to have a greater or less wealth of thoughts. Now one hears the admonitions

that one "is to honor all opinions and convictions," that "every conviction is

authorized," that one must be "tolerant to the views of others," etc.

But "your thoughts are not my thoughts, and your ways are not my ways." Or

rather, I mean the reverse: Your thoughts are my thoughts, which I dispose

of as I will, and which I strike down unmercifully; they are my property,

which I annihilate as I list. I do not wait for authorization from you first,

to decompose and blow away your thoughts. It does not matter to me that you

call these thoughts yours too, they remain mine nevertheless, and how I will

proceed with them is my affair, not a usurpation. It may please me to leave

you in your thoughts; then I keep still. Do you believe thoughts fly around

free like birds, so that every one may get himself some which he may then make

good against me as his inviolable property? What is flying around is all --

mine.

Do you believe you have your thoughts for yourselves and need answer to no one

for them, or as you do also say, you have to give an account of them to God

only? No, your great and small thoughts belong to me, and I handle them at my

pleasure.

The thought is my own only when I have no misgiving about bringing it in

danger of death every moment, when I do not have to fear its loss as a *loss

for me*, a loss of me. The thought is my own only when I can indeed subjugate

it, but it never can subjugate me, never fanaticizes me, makes me the tool of

its realization.

So freedom of thought exists when I can have all possible thoughts; but the

thoughts become property only by not being able to become masters. In the time

of freedom of thought, thoughts (ideas) rule; but, if I attain to property

in thought, they stand as my creatures.

If the hierarchy had not so penetrated men to the innermost as to take from

them all courage to pursue free thoughts, e. g., thoughts perhaps

displeasing to God, one would have to consider freedom of thought just as

empty a word as, say, a freedom of digestion.

According to the professionals' opinion, the thought is given to me;

according to the freethinkers', I seek the thought. There the truth is

already found and extant, only I must -- receive it from its Giver by grace;

here the truth is to be sought and is my goal, lying in the future, toward

which I have to run.

In both cases the truth (the true thought) lies outside me, and I aspire to

get it, be it by presentation (grace), be it by earning (merit of my own).

Therefore, (1) The truth is a privilege; (2) No, the way to it is patent to

all, and neither the Bible nor the holy fathers nor the church nor any one

else is in possession of the truth; but one can come into possession of it by

-- speculating.

Both, one sees, are property-less in relation to the truth: they have it

either as a fief (for the "holy father," e. g. is not a unique person; as

unique he is this Sixtus, Clement, but he does not have the truth as Sixtus,

Clement, but as "holy father," i.e. as a spirit) or as an ideal. As a

fief, it is only for a few (the privileged); as an ideal, for all (the

patentees).

Freedom of thought, then, has the meaning that we do indeed all walk in the

dark and in the paths of error, but every one can on this path approach *the

truth* and is accordingly on the right path ("All roads lead to Rome, to the

world's end, etc."). Hence freedom of thought means this much, that the true

thought is not my own; for, if it were this, how should people want to shut

me off from it?

Thinking has become entirely free, and has laid down a lot of truths which I

must accommodate myself to. It seeks to complete itself into a system and to

bring itself to an absolute "constitution." In the State e. g. it