Latest / The Philosophy Insights Collection / 22 - My Power - part 2 - The Ego and His Own - Max Stirner
Transcript
- Section twenty two. My power heart too. But what is right? What is matter of right in a society is voice two in the law. Whatever the law may be, it must be respected by the local citizen. Thus the law abiding mind of old England is eulogized to this. That euribidian sentiment Austers four one eighth entirely corresponds, we serve the gods. Whatever the gods are, law as such, God as such. Thus far we are to day people are at pains to distinguish law from arborary orders from an ordinance. The former comes from her duly entitled authority, but her law over human action, ethical law, state law, et cetera. Is always a declaration of will, and so an order. Yes, even if I myself gave myself the law, it would yet be only my order to which in the next moment I can refuse obedience. One may well enough declare what he will put up with, and so depreciate the opposite of the law, making known that in the colon try case he will treat the transgressor as his enemy. But no one has any business to command my actions, to say what course I shall pursue, and set up a code to govern it. I must put up with it that he treats me as his enemy, but never that he makes free with me as his creature, and that he makes his reason or even unreason. My plum line states last only so long as there is a ruling will. And this ruling will is looked upon as tanta might to the own will. The lord's will is law. What do your laws amount to if no one obeys them? What your orders? If nobody lets himself be ordered, the state cannot forbear the claim to determine the individual's will. To speculate and count on this For the state, it is indispensable that nobody have and own will. If one had, the state would have to exclude, look up, banish, etc. This one. If all had, they would do away with the state. The state is not thinkable without lordship and servitude subjection. For the state must will to be the lord of all that it in races, and this will is called the will of the state. He who has to hold his own must count on the absence of will in others is a thing made by these others, as the master is a thing made by the servant. If submissive nurse ceased, it would be over with all lordship, the own will of me is the state's destroyer. It is therefore branded by the state as self will. Own will and the state are powers in deadly hostility, between which no etil or peace is possible. As long as the state asserts itself, it represents own will, its ever hostile opponement, as unreasonable evil. And the latter lets itself be talked into believing this. Nay, it really is such. For no more reason than this that it still lets itself be talked into such belief. It has not yet come to itself and to the consciousness of its dignity. Hence it is still incomplete, still agnible to find words, etc. Every state is a dipotism, be the despot one or money, or as one is likely to imagine about republic, if all be lords, I despotize one over another. For this is the case when the law given at any time, the expressed violation of it, may be a popular assembly, is thenceforth to be law for the individual to which obedience is due from him, or toward which he has the duty of obedience. If one were even to conceive the case that every individual in the people had expressed the same will and hereby a complete collective will had come into being, the matter would still remain the same. Would I not be bound today and henceforth to my will of yesterday? My will would in this case be frozen, wretched stability, my creature to wit, a particular expression of will would have become my command. But I, in my will, I the creator, should be hindered in my flow and my dissolution. Because I was a fool yesterday, I must remain such my life long. So in the state life I am, at best, I might just as well say, at worst a bondman of myself. Because I was a willer yesterday. I am today without will yesterday in voluntary today involuntary. How change it only be recognizing no duty, no binding myself, nor letting myself be bound. If I have no duty, then I know no law either, But they will bind me my will nobody confined, and my disinclination remains free. Why everything must go topsy turvy if everyone could do what he would? While who says that everyone can do everything? What are you? Therefore? Pray? Do you who do not need to put up with everything? Defend yourself and no one will do anything to you? He who would break your will has to do with you, and is your enemy. Deal with him as such. If there stand behind you for your own protection some millions more, then you are an imposing power and will have an easy victory. But even if as a power you overawe your appayment, still you are not on that account a hallowed authority to him. Unless he be a simpleton, he does not owe you respect and regard, even though he will have to consider your might. We are accustomed to classify states according to the different ways in which the supreme being is distributed. If an individual has its monoch he of all habit, democracy, etc. Supreme might, then might against whom against the individual and his self will the state practices violence, The individual must not do so. The state's behavior is violence, and it calls is violence law that of the individual crime crime. Then so the individual's violence is called and only by crime does he overcome the state's violence. When he thinks that the state is not above him, but he is above the state. Now, if I wanted to act ridiculously, I might, as a well meaning person, admonish you not to make laws which impair my self development, self activity, self creation. I do not give this advice, for if you should follow it, you would be unwise, and I should have been cheated of my entire profit. I request nothing at all from you, for whatever I might demand, you would still be dictial lawgivers, and must be so, because a raven cannot sing, nor a robber live without robbery. Rather, do I ask those who would be egoists that they think the more egoistic to let laws be given them by you, and to respect those that are given, or to practice the factory in us, yes, complete disobedience. Good hearted people think the laws ought to prescribe only what is accepted in the people's feeling as right and proper. But what concern is it of mine? What is accepted in the nation and by the nation. The nation will perhaps be against the blasphema. Therefore a law against blasphemy? Am I not to to blaspheme? On that account? Is this law to be more than an ordered to me? I put the question solely from the principle that all right and all authority belong to the collectively of the people. To all forms of government arise, for none of them lacks this appeal to the collectivity and the despot as well as the president or any aristocracy acts and commands in the name of the state, they are in possession of the authority of the state, and it is perfectly indifferent whether were this possible, the people as a collectivity all individuals exercise their state authority, or whether it is only the representatives of this collectivity, be there many of them, as in aristocracies, or one as in monarchies. Always the collectivity is above the end individual and has a power which is called legitimate are y, which is law over against the sacredness of the state. The individual is only a vessel of dishonour, in which exuberance, malevolence, mania for ridicule, and slander, frivolity, et cetera, are left as soon as he does not deem that object of veneration the state to be worthy of recognition. The spiritual haughtiness of the servants and subjects of the state has fine penalties against unspiritual exuberance. When the government designates as punishable or play of mind against the state, the moderate liberals come and opine that fun, satire, rid humor must have free play anyhow, and genius must enjoy freedom, So not the individual man indeed, but still genius is to be free. Here the state, or in its name, the government says, with perfect right, he who is not for me is against me, fun wit. Etc. In short, the turning of the state affairs into a comedy of undermined the states of old. They are not innocent, And further, what boundaries are to be drawn between guilty and innocent, wit, et cetera. At this question, the moderates fall into great perplexity, and everything reduces itself to the prayer that the state government would please not be so sensitive, so ticklish, that it would not immediately send malevolence in harmless things, and would in general be a little more tolerant. Exaggerated sensitiveness is certainly a weakness. Its avoidance may be praise, will be virtue. But in time of war one cannot be sparing, and what may be allowed under peaceable circumstances ceases to be permitted as soon as a state of siege is declared. Because the well meaning liberals failed this plainly, they hasten to declare that, considering the devotion of the people, there is assuredly no danger to be feared, but the government will be wiser and not let itself be talked into believing anything of that sort. It knows too well how people's stuff one with fine words, and will not let itself be satisfied with the barmecide dish. But they are bound to have their playground, for they are children, you know. I cannot be so stayed as old faults. Boys will be boys only for this playground, only for a few hours of jolly running about bargain. They ask only that the state should not, like a splemitic papa, be too cross. It should permit some possessions of the ass and plays of falls, as the Church allowed them in the Middle Ages. But the times when it could round this without danger are past. Children that now once come into the open and live through an hour without the rod of discipline, are no longer willing to go into the cell, for the open is now no longer a supplement to the cell, no longer a refreshing recreation, but its opposite and ought. In short, the state must either no longer put up with anything, or put up with everything and perish. It must be either sensitive through and through, or like a dead man. Insensitive tolerance is done with If the state God gives a finger, they take the whole hand at once. There can be no more jesting, and all jest, such as fun with humor, becomes bitter earnest. The clamor of the liberals for freedom of the press runs counter to their own principle their proper will they will what they do not will i e. They wish they would like. Hence it is too that they fall away so easily when once so called freedom of the press appears, then they would like censorship quite naturally. The state is sacred even to them. Likewise morals they behave toward it only as ill bred rats, as tricky children who seek to utilize the weaknesses of their parents. Papa's state is to permit them to say many things that do not please him. But Papa has the right by a stern look to blue pencil their impertinent gabble. If they recognize in him their papa, they must, in his presence put up with the censorship of speech. Like every child. If you let yourself be made out in the right by another, you must no less let yourself be made out in the wrong by him. If justification and reward come to you from him, except also his arraignment and punishment, alongside right goes wrong, alongside legality crime. What are you? You are a criminal? The criminal is in the utmost degree estate's own crime, said Bettina. When they let this sentiment pass, even if Bettina herself does not understand it exactly so. For in the state of the unbridled, I, I, as I belong to myself alone, cannot come to my fillment and realization. Every ego is from birth a criminal to begin with against the people. The state. Hence it is that it does really keep watch over all. It sees in each one an egoist, and it is afraid of the egoist. It presumes the worst about each other, and takes care, police care that no harm happens to the state. Need qued, this publica detrimentic pay the umbroidled ego and this we originally are, and in our secret inward parts we remain so oldways is never seizing criminal in the state. The man whom his baldness, his will is inconsiderateness and fearlessness lead is surrounded with spies by the state, by the people, I say, by the people. The people think it's something wonderful, your good hearted faults or what you have in the people. The people is full of police sentiments through and through only he who renounces his ego, who practices self renunciation, is acceptable to the people. In the book, Site of Bettina is throughout good natured enough to regard the state as ay sick and to hope for its recovery, a recovery which she would bring about through their demigogues. But it is not sick. Rather, it is in its full strength when it puts from the demogogus who wants to acquire something for the individual. For all in its believers is provided with the best demigogees leaders of people. According to Bettina, the state is to develop mankind's germ of freedom. Otherwise it is a raven mother, and caring for raven father. It cannot do otherwise inn and it's very caring for mankind, which besides would have to be that humane or free state to begin with. The individual is raving fodder for it. How wrightly speaks the burgomaster. On the other hand, what the state has no other duty than to be merely the attendant of inclorable invalids. That isn't to the point. Some of old a health estate has relieved itself of the deceased matter, and not mixed itself with it. It does not need to be so economical with its juices, cut off the robber branches without hesitation, that the others may bloom. Do not shiver at the state's harshness. Its morality, its policy, and religion point it to that accuse it of no want of feeling. Its sympathy revolts against this, but its experience finds safety only in this severity. There are diseases in which only drastic remedies will help. The physician who recognizes their disease as such but timidly turns to palliatives will never remove the disease, but may well cause the patient to succumb after a shorter or longer sickness. Through Rut's question, if you apply death as a drastic remedy, how is the cure to be wrought? Then? Isn't to the point why the state does moiply death against itself, but against an offensive number. It tears out an eye that offends it, et cetera. For the individual state, the only way of salvation is to make man flourish in it. If one here like Bettina understands by man, the concept man. She is right. The infinite state will recover by the flourishing of man, for the more infatuated the individuals are with man, the better it serves the state's turn. But if one referred it to the individuals to all, and the authoress half does this too, because about man she is still envolved with vagueness, then it would sound somewhat like the following. For an individual band of robbers, the only way of salvation is to make the lower citizen nourish in it. Why thereby the band of robbers would simply go to ruin as bad of robbers. And because it perceives this, it prefers to shoot every one who has a meaning toward become in a steady man. In this book, Bettina is a patriot, or what is little more, a philanthropist, a worker for human happiness. She is discontented with the existing order in quite the same way as is the title ghost of her book, along with all who would like to bring back the good old faith and what is with it? Only she thinks counterwise that the politicians, placeholders and diplomats ruined the state, while those lay it at the door of the nambient, the seducers of the people. End of Section twenty two