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19 - Ownness - part 2 - The Ego and His Own - Max Stirner · The Philosophy Insights Collection

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Section nineteen ONUS Part two. F your efforts are ever to make freedom the
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issue, then exhaust freedom's demands. Who is it that is to become free?
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You? I? We? Free from what? From everything that is
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not you? Not I? Not we? I therefore am the kernel that
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is to be delivered from all wrappings and freed from all cramping shells? What
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is left when I have been freed from everything that is not I? Only
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I, nothing but I. But freedom has nothing to offer to this I
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himself as to what is now to happen. Further, after I've become free,
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freedom is silent, as our government when the prisoner's time is up,
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merely let him go, thrusting him out into abandonment. Now, why if
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freedom is driven after for love of that I after all, why not choose
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that I himself as beginning, middle, and end? Am I not wor
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earth more than freedom? Is it not I that make myself free? Am
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not I the first? Even unfree, even laid in a thousand fetters?
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I? Yet am and I am not like freedom extant only in the future
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and in hopes, But even as the most abjective slaves, I am present.
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Think that over well, and decide whether you will place on your banner
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the dream of freedom or the resolution of egoism of ownness. Freedom awakens your
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rage against everything that is not you. Egoism calls you to joy over yourselves,
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to self enjoyment. Freedom is and remains a longing, a Romantic plaint,
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a Christian hope for unearthliness and futurity. Ownness is a reality which of
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itself removes just so much unfreedom as by barring your own way hinders you.
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What does not disturb you you will not want to renounce. And if it
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begins to disturb you, why you know that you must obey yourselves rather than
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men. Freedom teaches only get yourselves rid, relieve yourselves of everything burdens.
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It does not teach you who you yourselves are rid rid so called get rid
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even of yourselves, deny yourselves. But owness calls you back to yourselves.
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It says, come to yourself. Under the aegis of freedom, you get
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rid of many kinds of things, but something new pinches you again. You
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are rid of the evil. One evil is left note see note page one
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hundred and twelve. End note. As own you are really rid of everything
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and what clings to you you have accepted. It is your choice and your
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pleasure. The own man is the freeborn, the man free to begin with.
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The free man, on the contrary, is only the eliuth romania,
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the dreamer, an enthusiast. The former is originally free because he recognizes nothing
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but himself. He does not need to free himself first, because at the
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start he rejects everything outside himself, because he prizes nothing more than himself,
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rates nothing higher. Because in short, he starts from himself and comes to
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himself constrained by childish respect, he is nevertheless already working at freeing himself from
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his constraint. Ownness works in the little egoists and procures him the desired freedom.
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Thousands of years of civilization have obscured to you what you are, have
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made you believe you are not egoists, but are called to be idealists.
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Good men, shake that off. Do not seek for freedom, which does
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precisely deprive you of yourselves in self denial, but seek for yourselves. Become
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egoists, become each of you an almighty ego, or more clearly, just
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recognize yourselves again, Just recognize what you really are, and let go your
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hypocritical endeavors, your foolish mania to be something else than you are hypocritical,
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I call them because you have yet remained egoists all these thousands of years.
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But sleeping, self deceiving, crazy egoists, you, Hughton timorum enoses you
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self tormentors. Never yet has a religion been able to dispense with promises,
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whether they referred us to the other world or to this long life, etc.
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For man is mercenary and does nothing at gratis. But how about that
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doing the good for the good's sake without prospect of reward, as if here
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to the pay was not contained in the satisfaction that it is to afford.
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Even religion therefore is founded on our egoism, and exploits it, calculated for
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our desires, stifles many others for the sake of one. This then gives
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the phenomenon of cheated egoism, where I satisfy not myself but one of my
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desires e g. The impulse towards blessedness. Religion promised me the supreme good.
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To gain this, I no longer regard any other of my desires,
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and do not slate them. All your doings are unconfessed secret covert and concealed
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egoism. But because they are egoism that you are unwilling to confess to yourselves,
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that you keep secret from yourselves, hence not manifest and public egoism,
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consequently unconscious egoism. Therefore they are not egoism but thraldom service self renunciation.
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You are egoists, and you are not. Since you renounce egoism where you
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seem most to be such, you have drawn upon the word egoists loathing and
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contempt. I secure my freedom with regard to the world, in the degree
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that I make the world my own. I gain it and take possession of
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it for myself, whatever might by that of persuasion, a petition of categorical
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demand, Yes, even by hypocrisy, cheating, etc. For the means
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that I use for it are determined by what I am. If I am
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weak, I have only weak means like the aforesaid, which yet are good
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enough for a considerable part of the will. Besides cheating, hypocrisy, lying
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look worse than they are. Who has not cheated the police the law,
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who has not quickly taken on an air of honorable loyalty before the sheriff's officer
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who meets him in order to conceal an illegality that may have been committed,
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etc. He who has not done it has simply let violence be done to
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him. He was a weakling form conscience. I know that my freedom is
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diminished even by my not being able to carry out my will on another object,
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be this other something without will like a rock, or something with will,
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like a government, an individual. I deny my own, then,
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in presence of another, I give myself up. I give away, desist,
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submit therefore by loyalty submission. For it is one thing when I give
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up my previous course because it does not lead to the goal, and therefore
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turn out of a wrong road because another one. I yield myself a prisoner.
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I get around a rock that stands in my way till I have powder
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enough to blast it. I get around the laws of a people till I
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have gathered strength to overthrow them. Because I cannot grasp the moon, is
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it therefore to be sacred to me? And ask starte If I only could
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grasp you, I surely would. And if I only find a means to
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get up to you, you shall not frighten me, You inapprehensible one,
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you shall remain inapprehensible to me only till I have acquired the might for apprehension
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and call you my own. I do not give myself up before you,
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but only bide my time. Even if for the present I put up with
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my inability to touch you, I yet remember it against you. Vigorous men
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have always done so. When the loyal had exalted and unsubdued power to be
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their master, and had adored it, when they had demanded adoration from all.
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Then there came some such son of nature who would not loyally submit,
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and drove the adored power from its inaccessible olympus. He cried his stand still
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to the rolling sun and made the earth go round. The Loyal had to
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make the best of it. He laid his axe to the sacred oaks,
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and that loyal were astonished that no heavenly fire consumed him. He threw the
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Pope off Peter's chair, and the Loyal had no way to hinder it.
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He is tearing down the divine right business, and the Loyal croak in vain,
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and at last are silent. My freedom becomes complete only when it is
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my might. But by this I cease to be a merely free man.
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And become an own man. Why is the freedom of the people's hollow word?
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Because the peoples have no might. With the breath of the living ego,
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I blow peoples over, be it by the breath of a nero,
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a Chinese emperor or a poor writer. Why is it that the G note
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meaning German written in this form because of the censorship original form in text G
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dot dot dot end note legislature's pine in fame for freedom and are lectured for
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it by the cabinet ministers because they are not. The mighty might is a
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fine thing, and useful for many purposes. For one goes further with a
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handful of might than with a bagful of right. You long for freedom,
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he fools. If you took might, freedom would come of itself. See
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he who has might stands above the law. How does this prospect taste to
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you, the law abiding people? But you have no taste? The cry
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for freedom rings loudly all around, But is it felt unknown what a donated
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or chartered freedom must mean. He's not recognized in the full amplitude of the
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word, that all freedom is essentially self liberation, I e. That I
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can have only so much freedom as I procured for myself by my ownness.
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Of what use is it to sheep that no one abridges their freedom of speech,
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They stick to bleating. Give one who is inwardly a Mohammadan, a
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Jew, or a Christian permission to speak what he likes, he will yet
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utter only narrow minded stuff. If, on the contrary, certain others rob
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you of the freedom of speaking and hearing, they know quite rightly wherein lies
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their temporary advantage, as you would perhaps be able to say and hear something,
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whereby those certain persons would lose their credit. If they nevertheless give you
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freedom, they are simply knaves who give more than they have for then they
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give you nothing of their own but stolen wares. They give you your own
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freedom, the freedom that you must take for yourselves, and they give it
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to you only that you may not take it and call the thieves and cheats
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to an account to boot. In their slyness, they know well that given
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chartered freedom is no freedom, since only the freedom one takes for himself.
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Therefore, the egoist freedom rides with full sails. Donated freedom strikes its sales
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as soon as there comes a storm or calm. It requires always a gentle
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and moderate breeze. Here lies the difference between self liberation and emancipation manumission setting
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free. Those who today stand in the opposition are thirsting and screaming to be
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set free. And princes are to declare their peoples of age. I emancipate
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them. Behave as if you were of age, and you are so without
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any declaration of majority. If you do not behave accordingly, you are not
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worthy of it, and would never be of age even by a declaration of
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majority. When the Greeks were of age, they drove out their tyrants.
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And when the son is of age, he makes himself independent of his father.
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If the Greeks had waited till their tyrants graciously allowed them their majority,
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they might have waited long. A sensible father throws out a son who will
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not come of age, and keeps the house to himself. It serves the
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noodle right. The man who is set free is nothing but a freedman,
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a libertinus, a dog dragging a piece of chain with him. He is
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an unfree man in the garment of freedom, like the ass in the lion's
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skin. Emancipated Jews are nothing bettered in themselves but only relieved as Jews,
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although he who relieves their condition is certainly more a churchly Christian, as the
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latter can do this without inconsistency, But emancipated or not emancipated Jew remains Jew.
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He who is not self freed is merely an emancipated man. The Protestant
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state can certainly set free emancipate the Catholics, but because they do not make
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themselves free, they remain simply Catholics. Selfishness and unselfishness have already been spoken
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of. The friends of freedom are exasperated against selfishness, because in their religious
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striving after freedom, they cannot free themselves from that sublime thing, self renunciation.
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The liberals' anger is directed against egoism. For the egoist, you know,
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never takes trouble about a thing for the sake of the thing, but
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for his sake, the thing must serve him. It is egoistic to ascribe
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to no thing a value of its own, an absolute value, but to
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seek its value in me. One often hears that pot boiling study, which
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is so common counted among the most repulsive traits of egoistic behavior, because it
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manifests the most shameful desecration of science. But what is science for but to
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be consumed? If one does not know how to use it for anything better
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than to keep the pot boiling, then his egoism is a petty one.
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Indeed, because this egoist power is a limited power. But the egoistic element
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in it, and the desecration of science, only a possessed man can blame.
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Because Christianity incapable of letting the individual count as an ego note original German
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for ego Heinzigger end note thought of him only as a dependent and was properly
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nothing but a social theory, a doctrine of living together, and that of
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man with God as well as of man with man. Therefore, in it
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everything own must for all into most woeful disrepute, selfishness, self will,
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owners, self love, et cetera. The Christian way of looking at things
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has, on all sides gradually re stamped honorable words into dishonorable Why should they
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not be brought into honor again? So shimph brackets, contumely and brackets is
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in its old sense equivalent to jess. But for Christian seriousness, pastime became
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a dishonor note I take enferung destitution to be a misprint of entern EndNote for
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that serious cannot take a joke. Frek impudent formerly meant only bold, brave,
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frevel, want and outrage was only daring. It is well known how
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askance the word reason was looked at for a long time. Our language has
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settled itself pretty well to the Christian same standpoint, and the general consciousness is
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still too Christian not to shrink in terror from everything Unchristian, as from something
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incomplete or evil. Therefore, selfishness is in a bad way too. Selfishness
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note eigenots literally own use end note in the Christian sense means something like this.
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I look only to see whether anything is of use to me as a
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sensual man. But is the sensuality then the whole of my ownness? Am
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I in my own senses? When I am given up to sensuality? Do
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I follow myself my own determination? When I follow that, I am my
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own only when I am master of myself, instead of being mastered either by
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sensuality or by anything else, God, man, authority, law, state,
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church, et cetera. What is of use to me this self owned
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or self appertaining one my selfishness pursues. Besides, one sees himself every moment
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compelled to believe in that constantly blasphemed selfishness as an all controlling power. In
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the session of February tenth, eighteen forty four, Welker argues emotion on the
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dependence of the judges and sets forth in a detailed speech that removable, dismissable,
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transferable, and pensionable judges. In short, such members of a court
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of justice, as can by mere administrative process be damaged and endangered, are
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wholly without reliability. Yes, lose all respect and all confidence among the people.
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The whole bench, Welker cries, is demoralized by this dependence. In
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blunt words, this means nothing else than that the judges find it more to
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their advantages to give judgment as the ministers would have them than to give it
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as the law would have them. How is that to be helped, perhaps
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by bringing home to the judges hearts the ignominiousness of their venality, and then
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cherishing the confidence that they will repent and henceforth prize justice more highly than their
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selfishness. No, the people does not sough to this romantic confidence, for
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it feels that selfishness is mightier than any other motive. Therefore, the same
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person who have been judges hitherto may remain so, however thoroughly one has convinced
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himself that they behaved as egoists. Only they must not any longer find their
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selfishness favored by the venality of justice, but must stand so independent of the
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government, that by a judgment in conformity with the facts, they do not
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throw into the shade their own cause, their well understood interest, but rather
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securer comfortable combination of a good salary with respect among citizens. So Welker and
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the commoners of Baden consider themselves secured. Only they can count on selfishness.
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What is one to think, then, of the countless phrases of unselfishness with
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which their mouths overflow. At other times to a cause which I am pushing
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selfishly, I have another relation than to one which I am serving unselfishly.
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The following criterion might be cited for it. Against the one, I can
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sin or commit a sin. The other I can only trifle away, push
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from me, deprive myself of I commit an imprudence. Free trade is looked
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at in both ways, being regarded partly as a freedom which may, under
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certain circumstances be granted or withdrawn, partly as one which is to be held
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sacred under all circumstances. If I am not concerned about a thing in and
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for itself, and do not desire it for its own sake, then I
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desire it solely as a means to an end, for its usefulness for the
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sake of another end e g. Oysters for a pleasure and flavor. Now
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will not everything whose final end he himself is serve the egoist as memes.
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And is he to protect a thing that serves him for nothing e g.
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The proletarian to protect the state. Ownness includes in itself everything own and brings
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to honor. Again what Christian language dishonored? But ownness has not any alien
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standard either, as it is not in any sense an idea like freedom,
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morality, humanity, etc. It is only a description of the owner.
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End of Section nineteen