Latest / The Philosophy Insights Collection / 25 - My Intercourse - part 2 - The Ego and His Own - Max Stirner
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- My Intercourse Part two. As a communion of the required sort, the family offers itself in the first place, parents, husbands and wife, children, brothers and sisters that present a whole or form a family for the further widening of which the collateral relatives also may be made to serve. If taken into account, the family is a true communion only when the law of the family, piety for family love is observed by its members. A son to whom parents, brothers, ancestors have become indifferent has been a son. For as the sonship no longer shows itself efficacious, it has no greater significance than the long past connection of mother and child by the naval string that one has once lived in. This bodily juncture cannot, as a fact, be undone, And so far one remains irrevcably his mother's son and the brother of the rest of her children. But it would come to a lasting connection only by lasting piety this spirit of the family. Individuals are members of a family in the full sense only when they make the persistence of the family their task. Only as conservative do they keep aloft from doubting their basis to the family. To every member of the family. One thing must be fixed and sacred viz. The family itself, or more expressively, piety. That the family is to persist remains to its members, so long as he keeps himself free from that egoism which is hostile to the family and unassailable truth. In a word, if the family is sacred, then nobody who belongs to it makes secede from it. Else he becomes a criminal against the family. He may never pursue an interest hostile to the family, eg. From a misalliance. He who does this has dishonored the family, put it to shame, etc. Now, if an individual the egoistic impulse has not force enough, he complies and makes a marriage which suits the claims of the family, takes a rank which harmonizes with its position, etc. In short, he does honor to the family. If, on the contrary, the egoistic blood flows priorally through his things, he prefers to become a criminal against the family and to throw off its laws. Which of the two lies never my heart, the good of the family or my good innumerable cases, both go peacefully together. The advantage of the family is at the same time mine and vice versa. Then it is hard to decide whether I am thinking selfishly or for the common benefit. And perhaps I complacently flatter myself with my unselfishness. But there comes the day when a necessity of choice makes me tremble, When I have it in mind to dishonor my family tree, to affront parents, brothers and kindred. What then, now it will appear how I am disposed at the bottom of my heart. Now it will be revealed of a piety ever stood above egoism. For me, Now the selfish one can no longer skulp behind the semblance of unselfishness. A wish rises in my soul, and, growing from hour to hour, becomes a passion. To whom does it occur at first blush that their slightest fault, which may result adversely to the spirit of the family piety, bears with it a transgression against this nay, who at once, in the first moment, becomes completely conscious of the matter. It happens so with Juliet. In Romeo and Juliet, the unruly passion can at last no longer be tamed and undermines the building of piety. You will say, indeed, it is from self will that the family casts out of its bosom. There's willful ones that grant more of a hearing to their passion and to piety. The good Protestants use the same its use with much success against the Catholics, and believed in it themselves. But it is just a subterfuge to roll the fault of one nothing more. The Catholics had regard for the common bond of the Church and thrust those heretics from them only because these did not have so much regard for the bond of the Church as to sacrifice their conviction to it. The former therefore held the bond fast, because the bond the Catholic i e. Common and United Church was sacred to them. The latter, on the contrary, disregarded the bond just so those who lack piety, they are not thrust out, but thrust themselves out, prising their passion, their wilfulness higher than the bond of the family. But now sometimes a wish glimmers in a less passionate and wilful heart than Juliet's. The pliable girl brings herself as a sacrifice to the peace of the family. One might say that here too, selfishness prevailed for the decision came from the feeling that the pliable girl felt herself more satisfied by the unity of the family than by the fulfillment of her wish. That might be. But what if there remained a sure sign that the egoism had been sacrificed to piety. What if, even after the wish that had been directed against the peace of the family was sacrificed, it remained at least as a recollection of a sacrifice wroughte to a sacred tie. What if the pliable girl were conscious of having left her self will unsatisfied and humbly subjected herself to a higher power, subjected and sacrificed because the superstition of piety exercised his dominion over her. Their egoism won. Here, piety wins an the egoistic heart bleeds. Their egoism was strong, here it was weak. But the week, as we have long known, other unselfish for them. For these its weak members, the family cares because they belong to the family, do not belong to themselves and care for themselves. This weakness he goal eg praises when he wants to have matchmaking left of the choice of the parents. As a sacred communion to which among the rest the individual ow's obedience. The family has a judicial function too vested in it, such as a family court is described e g. In the Cannabis of rolibard Olepsis. There the father, in the name of the family council, puts the intractable son among the soldiers and thrusts him out of the family in order to cleanse a smirch family. Again with the means of this act of punishment, the most consistent development of family responsibility is contained in Chinese law, according to which the whole family has to expiate the individual's fault. Today, however, the arm of family power seldom reaches far enough to take seriously in hand the punishment of the prostates. In most cases, the state protects even against disinheritance the criminal against the family. Family criminal flees into the domain of the state and is free as the state. Criminal who gets away to America is no longer reached by the punishments of his state. He who has shamed his family, the graceless son is protected against the family's punishment. Because the state is protecting lord takes away from family punishments its sacred and confins it, decreeing that it is only revenge. It restrains punishment this sacred family right, because before it's the state's sacredness. The subordinate sacredness of the family always pales and loses its sanctity as soon as it comes in conflict with this higher sacredness. Without the conflict, the state lets pass the lesser sacredness of the family. But in the opposite case it even commands crime against the family, charging e g. The son to refuse obedience to his parents as soon as they want to beguile him to a crime against the state. While the egoist has broken the ties of the family and found in the state a lord to shelter him against the grievously affronted spirit of the family. But where has he run now? Straight into a new society in which his egoism is awaited by the same snares and nets that it has just escaped. For the state is likewise a society, not a union. It is the broadened family father of the country, mother of the country, children of the country. What is called a state is a tissue and plexus of dependence and adherents. It is a belonging together, a holding together, in which those who are placed together fit themselves to each other, or in short, mutually depend on each other. It is the order of this dependence. Suppose the king, whose authority lends authority to all down to the beadle, should vanish. Still all in whom the will for order was awake would keep order erect against the disorders of hostality. If order were the victorias, the state would be at an end. But is this thought of love to fit ourselves to each other, to adhere to each other, and depend on each other, really capable of winning us? According to this the states should be love realized. The being for each other and living for each other of all is not self will being lost while we attend to the will for order, while people will not be satisfied when order is cared for by authority i e. When authority sees to it that no one gets in the way of another. When then the heard is judiciously disrupted or ordered, why then everything is in the best order. And it is this best order that is called state. Our societies and states are without our making them, are united without our uniting, are predestined and established will have an independent standing of their own are the intersolarly established against us egoists. The fight of the world today is, as it is said, directed against the established. Yet people are wont to misunderstand this, as if it were only that what is now established was to be exchanged for another, a better established system. But war might rather be declared against establishment itself. The state not a particular state, not any such thing as the mere condition of the state at the time. It is not another state e g. A people state that men aim at, but their union uniting is ever fluid, uniting of everything standing. A state exists even without my cooperation. I am born in it, aught up in it, and the obligation to it, I must do it homage. It takes me up into its favor, and I live by its grace. Thus, the independent establishment of the state plans my lack of independence. Its condition as a natural growth. Its organism, demands that my nature do not grow freely, but be cut to fit it, that it may be able to unfold in natural growth. It applies to me the shes of civilization. It gives me an education and culture adapted to it, not to me, and teaches me e g. To respect the laws, to refrain from injury to state property i e. Private property, to reverence, divine and earthly highness, et cetera. In short, it teaches me to be unpunishable, sacrificing my ownness to sacredness. Everything possible is sacred e. G. Property, others, life, et cetera. In this consists a sort of civilization and culture. But the state is able to give me. It brings me up to be a serviceable instrument, a serviceable member of society. This every state must do, the people's state as well as the absolute or constitutional one. It must do so as long as we rest in the error that it is an eye, as which it then applies to itself the name of a moral, mystical or political person. I who really am? I must pull off this lion's skin of the eye from the stalking, fissile eater. What moneyfold robbery have I not put up with? In the history of the world. There I let sun, moon and stars, cats and crocodiles receive the honor of ranking as are their jehevah Allah and our father came and were invested with the eye. Their families, tribes, peoples, and at last actually mankind came and were honored as eyes. There the church of the state came with the pretension to be I, and I gazed calmly on all. What wonder if then there was always a real eye to that joined the company and affirmed in my face that it was not my view but my real eye. Why the son of man par excellence had done the like? Why should not the son of man do it too? So I saw my eye always above me and outside me, and could never really come to myself. I never believed in myself. I never believed in my presence. I saw myself only in the future. The boy believe he will be a proper eye, a proper fellow, only when he has become a man. The man thinks only in the other world will he be something proper, and to enter more closely upon reality at once. Even the best are today still persuading each other that one must have received into himself the state is peopled mankind and what not. In order to be a real eye, a free burger, a citizen, a free or true man, then two see the truth and reality of me in the reception of an alien eye and devotion to it. And what sort of an eye an I that is neither an i, nor a you, a fancied eye a spook. While in the Middle Ages the Church would well brook many states living united in it. The states learned after the Reformation, especially after the Thirty Years War, to tolerate many churches confessions gathering under one crown. But all states are religious, and, as the case may be, Christian states, and make it their task to force the intractable the egoists under the bond of the unnatural e g. Christianize them. All arrangements of the Christian state are the object of christianizing the people. Thus the court has the object of forcing people to justice, the school that are forcing them to mental culture. In short, the object of protecting those who act christianly against those who act unchristianly, of bringing Christian action to dominion, of making it powerful. Among these means of force, the state counted the church too. It demanded a particular religion from everybody. Jupin said lately against the clergy, instruction and education belonging to the state. Certainly, everything that regards the principle of morality is a state affair. Hence it is that the Chinese state meddles so much in family concerns and one is nothing there if one is not, first of all, a good child to his parents. Family concerns are altogether state concerns. With us two only that our state puts confidence in the families without painful oversight. It holds the family bonds by the marriage tie, and this tie cannot be broken without it. But that mistate makes me responsible for my principles and demands certain ones from me might make me ask what concern has it with the will in my head? Since very much for the state is the ruling principle. It is supposed that in divorced matters, in marriage law in general, the question is of the proportion of rights between church and states. Rather, the question is of whether anything sacred is to rule over man, be it called faith or ethical law morality. The state behaves as the same ruler that the church was. The latter rests on godliness, the former on morality. People talk of the tolerance, the leaving opposite tendencies free, et cetera, by which civilized states are distinguished. Certainly, some are strong enough to look without complacency on even the most unrestrained meetings, while others charge their catch polls to go hunting for tobacco pipes. Yet for one stake, as for another, play of individuals among themselves, their buzzing to and fro their daily life is an incident which it must be content to lead to themselves, because it can do nothing with this. Many indeed still strain out mats and swallow camels, while others are shrewder. Individuals are freer in the latter because less pested. But I am free in no state. The laded tolerance of states is simply a tolerating of the harmless but not dangerous. It is only elevation above petty mindedness, only a more estibral, grander, prouder despotism. A certain state seemed for a while to mean to be pretty well elevated above literary combats, which might be carried on with all heat. England is elevated above popular turmoil and tobacco smoke him. But word to the literature that deals blows at the state itself, Word to the mobs that endanger the state. In that certain state, they dream of a free science in England, of a free popular life. The state does let individuals play as freely as possible, only they must not be in earnest, must not forget it. Man must not carry on intercourse with man unconcernedly, not without superior oversight and mediation. I must not execute all that I am able to, but only so much as the state allows. I must not turn to account my faults, nor my work, nor in general anything of mine. The state always has the sole purpose to limit, tame, subordinate the individual, to make him subject to some generality or other. It lasts only so long as the individual is not all in all, and it is only the clearly marked restriction of me, my limitation, my slavery. Never does a state aim to bring in the free activity of individuals, but always that which is bound to the purpose of the state. Through the state, nothing in common comes to pass either. As little as one can call a piece of cloth the common work of all the individual parts of a machine, it is rather the work of the whole machine as a unit machine work. In the same style everything is done by the state machines, too, for it moves the clockwork of the individual minds, none of which follow their own impulse. The state seeks to hinder every free activity by its censorship, its supervision, its police, and holds it hindering to be its duty, because it is in truth a duty of self preservation. The state wants to make something out of man. Therefore they're living it only made man. Everyone who wants to be his own self is its opponent and is nothing. He is nothing, means as much as the state does not make use of him, grants him no position, no office, no trade, etc. Edgard Buer in the Liberal Best Rebungeon following two page fifty, is still dreaming of a government which, proceeding out of the people, can never stand in opposition to it. He does, indeed, page sixty nine himself, take back the word government. In the republic, no government at all obtains, but only an executive authority, an authority which precedes purely and alone out of the people, which has not an independent power, independent principles, independent officers over against the people, but which has its foundation the fountain of its power and of its principles, in the soul, supreme authority of the state in the people. The concept government therefore is not at all suitable in the people's state. But the thing remains the same, that which has proceeded, been founded. Sprung from the fountain, becomes something independent and like a child delivered from the womb enters upon a position at once. The government, if it were nothing independent and opposing, would be nothing at all. In the free state, there is no government, et cetera, page ninety four. This surely means that the people, when it is the soul, does not let itself be conducted by a superior authority. Is it perchance different? In absolute monarchy? Is there there for the sovereign, per chance a government standing over him? Even the sovereign be he called prince or people. There never stands a government that is understood of itself, but over me. There will stand a government in every state in the absolute as well as in the republican or three, I am as badly off in one as in the other. The republic is nothing whatever but absolute monarchy, for it makes no difference whether the monarch is called prince or people, both being a majesty. Constitutionalism it self proves that nobody is able and willing to be only an instrument the minister's the menia over the master, the prince, the deputies over their master the people. Hear, then the parties at least are already free. The galicients the office holder's party so called People's party, The prince must reform to the will of the ministers. The people dance to the pipe of the chambers. Constitutionalism is further than the republic because it is the state in supotential dissolution. Edgar Bure denies, page fifty six that the people is a personality in the constitutional state. Per contrast, then in the republic, while in the constitutional state the people is a party, and a party is surely a personality if one is once resolved to talk of a political page seventy six moral person. Anyhow, the fact is that a moral person, be it called people's party or people or even the lord, is in no wise a person but a spook. Further, edgar Bure goes on page sixty nine, guardianship is the characteristic of a government, truly still more that of the people and people's state. It is the characteristics of all dominion, a people's state, which unites in itself all completeness of power. The absolute master cannot let me become powerful, and what a chimera to be no longer willing to call the people's officials servants instruments because they execute the free, rational law will of the people. Page seventy three, He thinks page seventy four, only by all official circles subordinating themselves to the government's views can unity be brought into the state. But his people's state is to have unity to how will a lack of subordination be allowed there? Subordination to the people's will. In the constitutional state, it is the regent and his disposition that the whole structure of government rests on. In the end, page one hundred and thirty, how would that be otherwise? In the people's state? Shall I not there be governed by the people's disposition too? And does it make a difference for me whether I see myself kept independence by the prince's disposition or by the people's disposition so called public opinion. If dependence means as much as religious relation, as Edgar Buer rightly alleges, then in the people's state, the people remains for me the superior power the majesty, for God and Princess have their proper essence in majesty to which I stand. In religious relations, like a sovereign regent, the sovereign people too would be reached by no law. Edgar Bure's whole attempt comes to a change of masters. Instead of wanting to make the people free, he should have had his mind on the sole realizable freedom his own in the constitutional state. Absolutism itself has at last come in conflict with itself, as it has been shattered into adulity. The government wants to be absolute and the people wants to be absolute. These two absolutes will wear out against each other. End of Section twenty five