The Ego and his Own by Max Stirner (best memoirs of all time TXT) 📖
- Author: Max Stirner
- Performer: -
Book online «The Ego and his Own by Max Stirner (best memoirs of all time TXT) 📖». Author Max Stirner
of finiteness is no longer recognized by its blinded eye; the object of fear,
now raised to veneration, may no longer be handled; reverence is made eternal,
the respected is deified. The man is now no longer employed in creating, but
in learning (knowing, investigating, etc.), i.e. occupied with a fixed
object, losing himself in its depths, without return to himself. The
relation to this object is that of knowing, fathoming, basing, not that of
dissolution (abrogation, etc.). "Man is to be religious," that is settled;
therefore people busy themselves only with the question how this is to be
attained, what is the right meaning of religiousness, etc. Quite otherwise
when one makes the axiom itself doubtful and calls it in question, even though
it should go to smash. Morality too is such a sacred conception; one must be
moral, and must look only for the right "how," the right way to be so. One
dares not go at morality itself with the question whether it is not itself an
illusion; it remains exalted above all doubt, unchangeable. And so we go on
with the sacred, grade after grade, from the "holy" to the "holy of holies."
Men are sometimes divided into two classes: cultured and uncultured. The
former, so far as they were worthy of their name, occupied themselves with
thoughts, with mind, and (because in the time since Christ, of which the very
principle is thought, they were the ruling ones) demanded a servile respect
for the thoughts recognized by them. State, emperor, church, God, morality,
order, are such thoughts or spirits, that exist only for the mind. A merely
living being, an animal, cares as little for them as a child. But the
uncultured are really nothing but children, and he who attends only to the
necessities of his life is indifferent to those spirits; but, because he is
also weak before them, he succumbs to their power, and is ruled by --
thoughts. This is the meaning of hierarchy.
Hierarchy is dominion of thoughts, dominion of mind!
We are hierarchic to this day, kept down by those who are supported by
thoughts. Thoughts are the sacred.
But the two are always clashing, now one and now the other giving the offence;
and this clash occurs, not only in the collision of two men, but in one and
the same man. For no cultured man is so cultured as not to find enjoyment in
things too, and so be uncultured; and no uncultured man is totally without
thoughts. In Hegel it comes to light at last what a longing for things even
the most cultured man has, and what a horror of every "hollow theory" he
harbors. With him reality, the world of things, is altogether to correspond to
the thought, and no concept is to be without reality. This caused Hegel's
system to be known as the most objective, as if in it thought and thing
celebrated their union. But this was simply the extremest case of violence on
the part of thought, its highest pitch of despotism and sole dominion, the
triumph of mind, and with it the triumph of philosophy. Philosophy cannot
hereafter achieve anything higher, for its highest is the *omnipotence of
mind*, the almightiness of mind.(41)
Spiritual men have taken into their head something that is to be realized.
They have concepts of love, goodness, etc., which they would like to see
realized; therefore they want to set up a kingdom of love on earth, in which
no one any longer acts from selfishness, but each one "from love." Love is to
rule. What they have taken into their head, what shall we call it but --
fixed idea? Why, "their head is haunted." The most oppressive spook is
Man. Think of the proverb, "The road to ruin is paved with good intentions."
The intention to realize humanity altogether in oneself, to become altogether
man, is of such ruinous kind; here belong the intentions to become good,
noble, loving, etc.
In the sixth part of the Denkwürdigkeiten," p. 7, Bruno Bauer says: "That
middle class, which was to receive such a terrible importance for modern
history, is capable of no self-sacrificing action, no enthusiasm for an idea,
no exaltation; it devotes itself to nothing but the interests of its
mediocrity; i.e. it remains always limited to itself, and conquers at last
only through its bulk, with which it has succeeded in tiring out the efforts
of passion, enthusiasm, consistency -- through its surface, into which it
absorbs a part of the new ideas." And (p. 6) "It has turned the revolutionary
ideas, for which not it, but unselfish or impassioned men sacrificed
themselves, solely to its own profit, has turned spirit into money. -- That
is, to be sure, after it had taken away from those ideas their point, their
consistency, their destructive seriousness, fanatical against all egoism."
These people, then, are not self-sacrificing, not enthusiastic, not
idealistic, not consistent, not zealots; they are egoists in the usual sense,
selfish people, looking out for their advantage, sober, calculating, etc.
Who, then, is "self-sacrificing?"(42) In the full sense, surely, he who
ventures everything else for one thing, one object, one will, one passion.
Is not the lover self-sacrificing who forsakes father and mother, endures all
dangers and privations, to reach his goal? Or the ambitious man, who offers up
all his desires, wishes, and satisfactions to the single passion, or the
avaricious man who denies himself everything to gather treasures, or the
pleasure-seeker, etc.? He is ruled by a passion to which he brings the rest as
sacrifices.
And are these self-sacrificing people perchance not selfish, not egoist? As
they have only one ruling passion, so they provide for only one satisfaction,
but for this the more strenuously, they are wholly absorbed in it. Their
entire activity is egoistic, but it is a one-sided, unopened, narrow egoism;
it is possessedness.
"Why, those are petty passions, by which, on the contrary, man must not let
himself be enthralled. Man must make sacrifices for a great idea, a great
cause!" A "great idea," a "good cause," is, it may be, the honor of God, for
which innumerable people have met death; Christianity, which has found its
willing martyrs; the Holy Catholic Church, which has greedily demanded
sacrifices of heretics; liberty and equality, which were waited on by bloody
guillotines.
He who lives for a great idea, a good cause, a doctrine, a system, a lofty
calling, may not let any worldly lusts, any self-seeking interest, spring up
in him. Here we have the concept of clericalism, or, as it may also be
called in its pedagogic activity, school-masterliness; for the idealists play
the schoolmaster over us. The clergyman is especially called to live to the
idea and to work for the idea, the truly good cause. Therefore the people feel
how little it befits him to show worldly haughtiness, to desire good living,
to join in such pleasures as dancing and gaming -- in short, to have any other
than a "sacred interest." Hence, too, doubtless, is derived the scanty salary
of teachers, who are to feel themselves repaid by the sacredness of their
calling alone, and to "renounce" other enjoyments.
Even a directory of the sacred ideas, one or more of which man is to look upon
as his calling, is not lacking. Family, fatherland, science, etc., may find in
me a servant faithful to his calling.
Here we come upon the old, old craze of the world, which has not yet learned
to do without clericalism -- that to live and work for an idea is man's
calling, and according to the faithfulness of its fulfillment his human
worth is measured.
This is the dominion of the idea; in other words, it is clericalism. Thus
Robespierre and St. Just were priests through and through, inspired by the
idea, enthusiasts, consistent instruments of this idea, idealistic men. So St.
Just exclaims in a speech, "There is something terrible in the sacred love of
country; it is so exclusive that it sacrifices everything to the public
interest without mercy, without fear, without human consideration. It hurls
Manlius down the precipice; it sacrifices its private inclinations; it leads
Regulus to Carthage, throws a Roman into the chasm, and sets Marat, as a
victim of his devotion, in the Pantheon."
Now, over against these representatives of ideal or sacred interests stands a
world of innumerable "personal" profane interests. No idea, no system, no
sacred cause is so great as never to be outrivaled and modified by these
personal interests. Even if they are silent momentarily, and in times of rage,
and fanaticism, yet they soon come uppermost again through "the sound sense of
the people." Those ideas do not completely conquer till they are no longer
hostile to personal interests, till they satisfy egoism.
The man who is just now crying herrings in front of my window has a personal
interest in good sales, and, if his wife or anybody else wishes him the like,
this remains a personal interest all the same. If, on the other hand, a thief
deprived him of his basket, then there would at once arise an interest of
many, of the whole city, of the whole country, or, in a word, of all who abhor
theft; an interest in which the herring-seller's person would become
indifferent, and in its place the category of the "robbed man" would come into
the foreground. But even here all might yet resolve itself into a personal
interest, each of the partakers reflecting that he must concur in the
punishment of the thief because unpunished stealing might otherwise become
general and cause him too to lose his own. Such a calculation, however, can
hardly be assumed on the part of many, and we shall rather hear the cry that
the thief is a "criminal." Here we have before us a judgment, the thief's
action receiving its expression in the concept "crime." Now the matter stands
thus: even if a crime did not cause the slightest damage either to me or to
any of those in whom I take an interest, I should nevertheless denounce it.
Why? Because I am enthusiastic for morality, filled with the idea of
morality; what is hostile to it I everywhere assail. Because in his mind theft
ranks as abominable without any question, Proudhon, e. g., thinks that with
the sentence "Property is theft" he has at once put a brand on property. In
the sense of the priestly, theft is always a crime, or at least a misdeed.
Here the personal interest is at an end. This particular person who has stolen
the basket is perfectly indifferent to my person; it is only the thief, this
concept of which that person presents a specimen, that I take an interest in.
The thief and man are in my mind irreconcilable opposites; for one is not
truly man when one is a thief; one degrades Man or "humanity" in himself
when one steals.
Comments (0)