The Ego and his Own by Max Stirner (best memoirs of all time TXT) 📖

does not have noble birth as a condition; if, on

the other hand, even the most deserving commoner could not reach that station,

then an inequality of political rights would exist. Among the States of today

one has carried out that maxim of equality more, another less.

The monarchy of estates (so I will call absolute royalty, the time of the

kings before the revolution) kept the individual in dependence on a lot of

little monarchies. These were fellowships (societies) like the guilds, the

nobility, the priesthood, the burgher class, cities, communes. Everywhere the

individual must regard himself first as a member of this little society, and

yield unconditional obedience to its spirit, the esprit de corps, as his

monarch. More, e. g. than the individual nobleman himself must his family,

the honor of his race, be to him. Only by means of his corporation, his

estate, did the individual have relation to the greater corporation, the State

-- as in Catholicism the individual deals with God only through the priest. To

this the third estate now, showing courage to negate itself as an estate,

made an end. It decided no longer to be and be called an estate beside other

estates, but to glorify and generalize itself into the "nation." Hereby it

created a much more complete and absolute monarchy,' and the entire previously

ruling principle of estates, the principle of little monarchies inside the

great, went down. Therefore it cannot be said that the Revolution was a

revolution against the first two privileged estates. It was against the little

monarchies of estates in general. But, if the estates and their despotism were

broken (the king too, we know, was only a king of estates, not a

citizen-king), the individuals freed from the inequality of estate were left.

Were they now really to be without estate and "out of gear," no longer bound

by any estate, without a general bond of union? No, for the third estate had

declared itself the nation only in order not to remain an estate beside

other estates, but to become the sole estate. This sole estate is the

nation, the "State." What had the individual now become? A political

Protestant, for he had come into immediate connection with his God, the State.

He was no longer, as an aristocrat, in the monarchy of the nobility; as a

mechanic, in the monarchy of the guild; but he, like all, recognized and

acknowledged only -- one lord, the State, as whose servants they all

received the equal title of honor, "citizen."

The bourgeoisie is the aristocracy of DESERT; its motto, "Let desert wear

its crowns." It fought against the "lazy" aristocracy, for according to it

(the industrious aristocracy acquired by industry and desert) it is not the

"born" who is free, nor yet I who am free either, but the "deserving" man, the

honest servant (of his king; of the State; of the people in constitutional

States). Through service one acquires freedom, i. e., acquires "deserts,"

even if one served -- mammon. One must deserve well of the State, i.e. of

the principle of the State, of its moral spirit. He who serves this spirit

of the State is a good citizen, let him live to whatever honest branch of

industry he will. In its eyes innovators practice a "breadless art." Only the

"shopkeeper" is "practical," and the spirit that chases after public offices

is as much the shopkeeping spirit as is that which tries in trade to feather

its nest or otherwise to become useful to itself and anybody else.

But, if the deserving count as the free (for what does the comfortable

commoner, the faithful office-holder, lack of that freedom that his heart

desires?), then the "servants" are the -- free. The obedient servant is the

free man! What glaring nonsense! Yet this is the sense of the bourgeoisie,

and its poet, Goethe, as well as its philosopher, Hegel, succeeded in

glorifying the dependence of the subject on the object, obedience to the

objective world. He who only serves the cause, "devotes himself entirely to

it," has the true freedom. And among thinkers the cause was -- reason, that

which, like State and Church, gives -- general laws, and puts the individual

man in irons by the thought of humanity. It determines what is "true,"

according to which one must then act. No more "rational" people than the

honest servants, who primarily are called good citizens as servants of the

State.

Be rich as Croesus or poor as Job -- the State of the commonalty leaves that

to your option; but only have a "good disposition." This it demands of you,

and counts it its most urgent task to establish this in all. Therefore it will

keep you from "evil promptings," holding the "ill-disposed" in check and

silencing their inflammatory discourses under censors' canceling-marks or

press-penalties and behind dungeon walls, and will, on the other hand, appoint

people of "good disposition" as censors, and in every way have a *moral

influence* exerted on you by "well-disposed and well-meaning" people. If it

has made you deaf to evil promptings, then it opens your ears again all the

more diligently to good promptings.

With the time of the bourgeoisie begins that of liberalism. People want to

see what is "rational," "suited to the times," etc., established everywhere.

The following definition of liberalism, which is supposed to be pronounced in

its honor, characterizes it completely: "Liberalism is nothing else than the

knowledge of reason, applied to our existing relations."(65) Its aim is a

"rational order," a "moral behavior," a "limited freedom," not anarchy,

lawlessness, selfhood. But, if reason rules, then the person succumbs. Art

has for a long time not only acknowledged the ugly, but considered the ugly as

necessary to its existence, and takes it up into itself; it needs the villain.

In the religious domain, too, the extremest liberals go so far that they want

to see the most religious man regarded as a citizen -- i. e., the religious

villain; they want to see no more of trials for heresy. But against the

"rational law" no one is to rebel, otherwise he is threatened with the

severest penalty. What is wanted is not free movement and realization of the

person or of me, but of reason -- i.e. a dominion of reason, a dominion. The

liberals are zealots, not exactly for the faith, for God, but certainly for

reason, their master. They brook no lack of breeding, and therefore no

self-development and self- determination; they play the guardian as

effectively as the most absolute rulers.

"Political liberty," what are we to understand by that? Perhaps the

individual's independence of the State and its laws? No; on the contrary, the

individual's subjection in the State and to the State's laws. But why

"liberty"? Because one is no longer separated from the State by

intermediaries, but stands in direct and immediate relation to it; because one

is a -- citizen, not the subject of another, not even of the king as a person,

but only in his quality as "supreme head of the State." Political liberty,

this fundamental doctrine of liberalism, is nothing but a second phase of --

Protestantism, and runs quite parallel with "religious liberty."(66) Or would

it perhaps be right to understand by the latter an independence of religion?

Anything but that. Independence of intermediaries is all that it is intended

to express, independence of mediating priests, the abolition of the "laity,"

and so, direct and immediate relation to religion or to God. Only on the

supposition that one has religion can he enjoy freedom of religion; freedom of

religion does not mean being without religion, but inwardness of faith,

unmediated intercourse with God. To him who is "religiously free" religion is

an affair of the heart, it is to him his own affair, it is to him a

"sacredly serious matter." So, too, to the "politically free" man the State is

a sacredly serious matter; it is his heart's affair, his chief affair, his own

affair.

Political liberty means that the polis, the State, is free; freedom of

religion that religion is free, as freedom of conscience signifies that

conscience is free; not, therefore, that I am free from the State, from

religion, from conscience, or that I am rid of them. It does not mean my

liberty, but the liberty of a power that rules and subjugates me; it means

that one of my despots, like State, religion, conscience, is free. State,

religion, conscience, these despots, make me a slave, and their liberty is

my slavery. That in this they necessarily follow the principle, "the end

hallows the means," is self-evident. If the welfare of the State is the end,

war is a hallowed means; if justice is the State's end, homicide is a hallowed

means, and is called by its sacred name, "execution"; the sacred State

hallows everything that is serviceable to it.

"Individual liberty," over which civic liberalism keeps jealous watch, does

not by any means signify a completely free self-determination, by which

actions become altogether mine, but only independence of persons.

Individually free is he who is responsible to no man. Taken in this sense --

and we are not allowed to understand it otherwise -- not only the ruler is

individually free, i.e., irresponsible toward men ("before God," we know,

he acknowledges himself responsible), but all who are "responsible only to the

law." This kind of liberty was won through the revolutionary movement of the

century -- to wit, independence of arbitrary will, or tel est notre plaisir.

Hence the constitutional prince must himself be stripped of all personality,

deprived of all individual decision, that he may not as a person, as an

individual man, violate the "individual liberty" of others. The *personal

will of the ruler* has disappeared in the constitutional prince; it is with a

right feeling, therefore, that absolute princes resist this. Nevertheless

these very ones profess to be in the best sense "Christian princes." For this,

however, they must become a purely spiritual power, as the Christian is

subject only to spirit ("God is spirit"). The purely spiritual power is

consistently represented only by the constitutional prince, he who, without

any personal significance, stands there spiritualized to the degree that he

can rank as a sheer, uncanny "spirit," as an idea. The constitutional king

is the truly Christian king, the genuine, consistent carrying-out of the

Christian principle. In the constitutional monarchy individual dominion --

i.e. a real ruler that wills -- has found its end; here, therefore,

individual liberty prevails, independence of every individual dictator, of

everyone who could dictate to me with a tel est notre plaisir. It is the

completed Christian State-life, a spiritualized life.

The behavior of the commonalty is liberal through and through. Every