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

>Christianity it does not and cannot come to this, that the divine as

intramundane should really become the mundane itself: there is enough left

that does and must maintain itself unpenetrated as the "bad," irrational,

accidental, "egoistic," the "mundane" in the bad sense. Christianity begins

with God's becoming man, and carries on its work of conversion and redemption

through all time in order to prepare for God a reception in all men and in

everything human, and to penetrate everything with the spirit: it sticks to

preparing a place for the "spirit."

When the accent was at last laid on Man or mankind, it was again the idea that

they "pronounced eternal. " "Man does not die!" They thought they had now

found the reality of the idea: Man is the I of history, of the world's

history; it is he, this ideal, that really develops, i.e. realizes,

himself. He is the really real and corporeal one, for history is his body, in

which individuals are only members. Christ is the I of the world's history,

even of the pre-Christian; in modern apprehension it is man, the figure of

Christ has developed into the figure of man: man as such, man absolutely, is

the "central point" of history. In "man" the imaginary beginning returns

again; for "man" is as imaginary as Christ is. "Man," as the I of the world's

history, closes the cycle of Christian apprehensions.

Christianity's magic circle would be broken if the strained relation between

existence and calling, e. g., between me as I am and me as I should be,

ceased; it persists only as the longing of the idea for its bodiliness, and

vanishes with the relaxing separation of the two: only when the idea remains

-- idea, as man or mankind is indeed a bodiless idea, is Christianity still

extant. The corporeal idea, the corporeal or "completed" spirit, floats before

the Christian as "the end of the days" or as the "goal of history"; it is not

present time to him.

The individual can only have a part in the founding of the Kingdom of God, or,

according to the modern notion of the same thing, in the development and

history of humanity; and only so far as he has a part in it does a Christian,

or according to the modern expression human, value pertain to him; for the

rest he is dust and a worm-bag. That the individual is of himself a world's

history, and possesses his property in the rest of the world's history, goes

beyond what is Christian. To the Christian the world's history is the higher

thing, because it is the history of Christ or "man"; to the egoist only his

history has value, because he wants to develop only himself not the

mankind-idea, not God's plan, not the purposes of Providence, not liberty,

etc. He does not look upon himself as a tool of the idea or a vessel of God,

he recognizes no calling, he does not fancy that he exists for the further

development of mankind and that he must contribute his mite to it, but he

lives himself out, careless of how well or ill humanity may fare thereby. If

it were not open to confusion with the idea that a state of nature is to be

praised, one might recall Lenau's "Three Gypsies."- What, am I in the world

to realize ideas? To do my part by my citizenship, say, toward the realization

of the idea "State," or by marriage, as husband and father, to bring the idea

of the family into an existence? What does such a calling concern me! I live

after a calling as little as the flower grows and gives fragrance after a

calling.

The ideal "Man" is realized when the Christian apprehension turns about and

becomes the proposition, "I, this unique one, am man." The conceptual

question, "what is man?" -- has then changed into the personal question, "who

is man?" With "what" the concept was sought for, in order to realize it; with

"who" it is no longer any question at all, but the answer is personally on

hand at once in the asker: the question answers itself.

They say of God, "Names name thee not." That holds good of me: no concept

expresses me, nothing that is designated as my essence exhausts me; they are

only names. Likewise they say of God that he is perfect and has no calling to

strive after perfection. That too holds good of me alone.

I am owner of my might, and I am so when I know myself as unique. In the

unique one the owner himself returns into his creative nothing, of which he

is born. Every higher essence above me, be it God, be it man, weakens the

feeling of my uniqueness, and pales only before the sun of this consciousness.

If I concern myself for myself,(1) the unique one, then my concern rests on

its transitory, mortal creator, who consumes himself, and I may say:

All things are nothing to me.(2)

THE END

Footnotes:

(1) [Stell' Ich auf Mich meine Sache. Literally, "if I set my affair on

myself."]

(2) ["Ich hab' Mein' Sach' auf Nichts gestellt." Literally, "I have set my

affair on nothing." See note on p. 8.]