Latest / Logic Library / 25 - My Intercourse - part 2 - The Ego and His Own - Max Stirner

Transcript

25 - My Intercourse - part 2 - The Ego and His Own - Max Stirner · Logic Library

0:00
My Intercourse Part two. As a communion of the required sort, the family
0:08
offers itself in the first place, parents, husbands and wife, children,
0:13
brothers and sisters that present a whole or form a family for the further widening
0:20
of which the collateral relatives also may be made to serve. If taken into
0:26
account, the family is a true communion only when the law of the family,
0:32
piety for family love is observed by its members. A son to whom
0:39
parents, brothers, ancestors have become indifferent has been a son. For as
0:45
the sonship no longer shows itself efficacious, it has no greater significance than the
0:52
long past connection of mother and child by the naval string that one has once
0:59
lived in. This bodily juncture cannot, as a fact, be undone,
1:03
And so far one remains irrevcably his mother's son and the brother of the rest
1:10
of her children. But it would come to a lasting connection only by lasting
1:15
piety this spirit of the family. Individuals are members of a family in the
1:22
full sense only when they make the persistence of the family their task. Only
1:29
as conservative do they keep aloft from doubting their basis to the family. To
1:37
every member of the family. One thing must be fixed and sacred viz.
1:42
The family itself, or more expressively, piety. That the family is to
1:49
persist remains to its members, so long as he keeps himself free from that
1:56
egoism which is hostile to the family and unassailable truth. In a word,
2:02
if the family is sacred, then nobody who belongs to it makes secede from
2:07
it. Else he becomes a criminal against the family. He may never pursue
2:15
an interest hostile to the family, eg. From a misalliance. He who
2:21
does this has dishonored the family, put it to shame, etc. Now,
2:27
if an individual the egoistic impulse has not force enough, he complies and
2:32
makes a marriage which suits the claims of the family, takes a rank which
2:38
harmonizes with its position, etc. In short, he does honor to the
2:44
family. If, on the contrary, the egoistic blood flows priorally through his
2:51
things, he prefers to become a criminal against the family and to throw off
2:55
its laws. Which of the two lies never my heart, the good of
3:01
the family or my good innumerable cases, both go peacefully together. The advantage
3:08
of the family is at the same time mine and vice versa. Then it
3:15
is hard to decide whether I am thinking selfishly or for the common benefit.
3:21
And perhaps I complacently flatter myself with my unselfishness. But there comes the day
3:28
when a necessity of choice makes me tremble, When I have it in mind
3:32
to dishonor my family tree, to affront parents, brothers and kindred. What
3:38
then, now it will appear how I am disposed at the bottom of my
3:44
heart. Now it will be revealed of a piety ever stood above egoism.
3:50
For me, Now the selfish one can no longer skulp behind the semblance of
3:54
unselfishness. A wish rises in my soul, and, growing from hour to
4:00
hour, becomes a passion. To whom does it occur at first blush that
4:05
their slightest fault, which may result adversely to the spirit of the family piety,
4:13
bears with it a transgression against this nay, who at once, in
4:17
the first moment, becomes completely conscious of the matter. It happens so with
4:24
Juliet. In Romeo and Juliet, the unruly passion can at last no longer
4:30
be tamed and undermines the building of piety. You will say, indeed,
4:35
it is from self will that the family casts out of its bosom. There's
4:40
willful ones that grant more of a hearing to their passion and to piety.
4:46
The good Protestants use the same its use with much success against the Catholics,
4:53
and believed in it themselves. But it is just a subterfuge to roll the
4:59
fault of one nothing more. The Catholics had regard for the common bond of
5:04
the Church and thrust those heretics from them only because these did not have so
5:11
much regard for the bond of the Church as to sacrifice their conviction to it.
5:16
The former therefore held the bond fast, because the bond the Catholic i
5:23
e. Common and United Church was sacred to them. The latter, on
5:29
the contrary, disregarded the bond just so those who lack piety, they are
5:35
not thrust out, but thrust themselves out, prising their passion, their wilfulness
5:42
higher than the bond of the family. But now sometimes a wish glimmers in
5:47
a less passionate and wilful heart than Juliet's. The pliable girl brings herself as
5:54
a sacrifice to the peace of the family. One might say that here too,
6:00
selfishness prevailed for the decision came from the feeling that the pliable girl felt
6:05
herself more satisfied by the unity of the family than by the fulfillment of her
6:12
wish. That might be. But what if there remained a sure sign that
6:17
the egoism had been sacrificed to piety. What if, even after the wish
6:24
that had been directed against the peace of the family was sacrificed, it remained
6:30
at least as a recollection of a sacrifice wroughte to a sacred tie. What
6:36
if the pliable girl were conscious of having left her self will unsatisfied and humbly
6:43
subjected herself to a higher power, subjected and sacrificed because the superstition of piety
6:50
exercised his dominion over her. Their egoism won. Here, piety wins an
6:58
the egoistic heart bleeds. Their egoism was strong, here it was weak.
7:04
But the week, as we have long known, other unselfish for them.
7:11
For these its weak members, the family cares because they belong to the family,
7:16
do not belong to themselves and care for themselves. This weakness he goal
7:23
eg praises when he wants to have matchmaking left of the choice of the parents.
7:30
As a sacred communion to which among the rest the individual ow's obedience.
7:35
The family has a judicial function too vested in it, such as a family
7:41
court is described e g. In the Cannabis of rolibard Olepsis. There the
7:47
father, in the name of the family council, puts the intractable son among
7:54
the soldiers and thrusts him out of the family in order to cleanse a smirch
8:00
family. Again with the means of this act of punishment, the most consistent
8:05
development of family responsibility is contained in Chinese law, according to which the whole
8:11
family has to expiate the individual's fault. Today, however, the arm of
8:18
family power seldom reaches far enough to take seriously in hand the punishment of the
8:24
prostates. In most cases, the state protects even against disinheritance the criminal against
8:33
the family. Family criminal flees into the domain of the state and is free
8:39
as the state. Criminal who gets away to America is no longer reached by
8:43
the punishments of his state. He who has shamed his family, the graceless
8:50
son is protected against the family's punishment. Because the state is protecting lord takes
8:56
away from family punishments its sacred and confins it, decreeing that it is only
9:03
revenge. It restrains punishment this sacred family right, because before it's the state's
9:11
sacredness. The subordinate sacredness of the family always pales and loses its sanctity as
9:18
soon as it comes in conflict with this higher sacredness. Without the conflict,
9:24
the state lets pass the lesser sacredness of the family. But in the opposite
9:30
case it even commands crime against the family, charging e g. The son
9:35
to refuse obedience to his parents as soon as they want to beguile him to
9:41
a crime against the state. While the egoist has broken the ties of the
9:46
family and found in the state a lord to shelter him against the grievously affronted
9:52
spirit of the family. But where has he run now? Straight into a
9:58
new society in which his egoism is awaited by the same snares and nets that
10:05
it has just escaped. For the state is likewise a society, not a
10:11
union. It is the broadened family father of the country, mother of the
10:16
country, children of the country. What is called a state is a tissue
10:22
and plexus of dependence and adherents. It is a belonging together, a holding
10:28
together, in which those who are placed together fit themselves to each other,
10:35
or in short, mutually depend on each other. It is the order of
10:39
this dependence. Suppose the king, whose authority lends authority to all down to
10:46
the beadle, should vanish. Still all in whom the will for order was
10:52
awake would keep order erect against the disorders of hostality. If order were the
11:00
victorias, the state would be at an end. But is this thought of
11:05
love to fit ourselves to each other, to adhere to each other, and
11:09
depend on each other, really capable of winning us? According to this the
11:15
states should be love realized. The being for each other and living for each
11:20
other of all is not self will being lost while we attend to the will
11:26
for order, while people will not be satisfied when order is cared for by
11:31
authority i e. When authority sees to it that no one gets in the
11:37
way of another. When then the heard is judiciously disrupted or ordered, why
11:45
then everything is in the best order. And it is this best order that
11:50
is called state. Our societies and states are without our making them, are
11:58
united without our uniting, are predestined and established will have an independent standing of
12:05
their own are the intersolarly established against us egoists. The fight of the world
12:11
today is, as it is said, directed against the established. Yet people
12:18
are wont to misunderstand this, as if it were only that what is now
12:22
established was to be exchanged for another, a better established system. But war
12:31
might rather be declared against establishment itself. The state not a particular state,
12:37
not any such thing as the mere condition of the state at the time.
12:41
It is not another state e g. A people state that men aim at,
12:46
but their union uniting is ever fluid, uniting of everything standing. A
12:54
state exists even without my cooperation. I am born in it, aught up
12:58
in it, and the obligation to it, I must do it homage.
13:03
It takes me up into its favor, and I live by its grace.
13:09
Thus, the independent establishment of the state plans my lack of independence. Its
13:16
condition as a natural growth. Its organism, demands that my nature do not
13:22
grow freely, but be cut to fit it, that it may be able
13:26
to unfold in natural growth. It applies to me the shes of civilization.
13:33
It gives me an education and culture adapted to it, not to me,
13:39
and teaches me e g. To respect the laws, to refrain from injury
13:43
to state property i e. Private property, to reverence, divine and earthly
13:50
highness, et cetera. In short, it teaches me to be unpunishable,
13:56
sacrificing my ownness to sacredness. Everything possible is sacred e. G. Property,
14:03
others, life, et cetera. In this consists a sort of civilization
14:09
and culture. But the state is able to give me. It brings me
14:13
up to be a serviceable instrument, a serviceable member of society. This every
14:20
state must do, the people's state as well as the absolute or constitutional one.
14:26
It must do so as long as we rest in the error that it
14:30
is an eye, as which it then applies to itself the name of a
14:35
moral, mystical or political person. I who really am? I must pull
14:41
off this lion's skin of the eye from the stalking, fissile eater. What
14:46
moneyfold robbery have I not put up with? In the history of the world.
14:52
There I let sun, moon and stars, cats and crocodiles receive the
14:58
honor of ranking as are their jehevah Allah and our father came and were invested
15:05
with the eye. Their families, tribes, peoples, and at last actually
15:09
mankind came and were honored as eyes. There the church of the state came
15:16
with the pretension to be I, and I gazed calmly on all. What
15:22
wonder if then there was always a real eye to that joined the company and
15:28
affirmed in my face that it was not my view but my real eye.
15:33
Why the son of man par excellence had done the like? Why should not
15:39
the son of man do it too? So I saw my eye always above
15:46
me and outside me, and could never really come to myself. I never
15:50
believed in myself. I never believed in my presence. I saw myself only
15:56
in the future. The boy believe he will be a proper eye, a
16:02
proper fellow, only when he has become a man. The man thinks only
16:07
in the other world will he be something proper, and to enter more closely
16:14
upon reality at once. Even the best are today still persuading each other that
16:19
one must have received into himself the state is peopled mankind and what not.
16:26
In order to be a real eye, a free burger, a citizen,
16:30
a free or true man, then two see the truth and reality of me
16:37
in the reception of an alien eye and devotion to it. And what sort
16:41
of an eye an I that is neither an i, nor a you,
16:48
a fancied eye a spook. While in the Middle Ages the Church would well
16:55
brook many states living united in it. The states learned after the Reformation,
17:00
especially after the Thirty Years War, to tolerate many churches confessions gathering under one
17:08
crown. But all states are religious, and, as the case may be,
17:14
Christian states, and make it their task to force the intractable the egoists
17:19
under the bond of the unnatural e g. Christianize them. All arrangements of
17:26
the Christian state are the object of christianizing the people. Thus the court has
17:33
the object of forcing people to justice, the school that are forcing them to
17:38
mental culture. In short, the object of protecting those who act christianly against
17:45
those who act unchristianly, of bringing Christian action to dominion, of making it
17:52
powerful. Among these means of force, the state counted the church too.
18:00
It demanded a particular religion from everybody. Jupin said lately against the clergy,
18:07
instruction and education belonging to the state. Certainly, everything that regards the principle
18:14
of morality is a state affair. Hence it is that the Chinese state meddles
18:19
so much in family concerns and one is nothing there if one is not,
18:25
first of all, a good child to his parents. Family concerns are altogether
18:30
state concerns. With us two only that our state puts confidence in the families
18:37
without painful oversight. It holds the family bonds by the marriage tie, and
18:44
this tie cannot be broken without it. But that mistate makes me responsible for
18:51
my principles and demands certain ones from me might make me ask what concern has
18:56
it with the will in my head? Since very much for the state is
19:03
the ruling principle. It is supposed that in divorced matters, in marriage law
19:07
in general, the question is of the proportion of rights between church and states.
19:14
Rather, the question is of whether anything sacred is to rule over man,
19:19
be it called faith or ethical law morality. The state behaves as the
19:25
same ruler that the church was. The latter rests on godliness, the former
19:30
on morality. People talk of the tolerance, the leaving opposite tendencies free,
19:37
et cetera, by which civilized states are distinguished. Certainly, some are strong
19:45
enough to look without complacency on even the most unrestrained meetings, while others charge
19:52
their catch polls to go hunting for tobacco pipes. Yet for one stake,
19:57
as for another, play of individuals among themselves, their buzzing to and fro
20:03
their daily life is an incident which it must be content to lead to themselves,
20:10
because it can do nothing with this. Many indeed still strain out mats
20:15
and swallow camels, while others are shrewder. Individuals are freer in the latter
20:22
because less pested. But I am free in no state. The laded tolerance
20:29
of states is simply a tolerating of the harmless but not dangerous. It is
20:36
only elevation above petty mindedness, only a more estibral, grander, prouder despotism.
20:44
A certain state seemed for a while to mean to be pretty well elevated
20:48
above literary combats, which might be carried on with all heat. England is
20:56
elevated above popular turmoil and tobacco smoke him. But word to the literature that
21:03
deals blows at the state itself, Word to the mobs that endanger the state.
21:10
In that certain state, they dream of a free science in England,
21:15
of a free popular life. The state does let individuals play as freely as
21:21
possible, only they must not be in earnest, must not forget it.
21:26
Man must not carry on intercourse with man unconcernedly, not without superior oversight and
21:33
mediation. I must not execute all that I am able to, but only
21:40
so much as the state allows. I must not turn to account my faults,
21:45
nor my work, nor in general anything of mine. The state always
21:51
has the sole purpose to limit, tame, subordinate the individual, to make
21:56
him subject to some generality or other. It lasts only so long as the
22:02
individual is not all in all, and it is only the clearly marked restriction
22:07
of me, my limitation, my slavery. Never does a state aim to
22:14
bring in the free activity of individuals, but always that which is bound to
22:19
the purpose of the state. Through the state, nothing in common comes to
22:25
pass either. As little as one can call a piece of cloth the common
22:30
work of all the individual parts of a machine, it is rather the work
22:34
of the whole machine as a unit machine work. In the same style everything
22:41
is done by the state machines, too, for it moves the clockwork of
22:45
the individual minds, none of which follow their own impulse. The state seeks
22:52
to hinder every free activity by its censorship, its supervision, its police,
22:57
and holds it hindering to be its duty, because it is in truth a
23:03
duty of self preservation. The state wants to make something out of man.
23:08
Therefore they're living it only made man. Everyone who wants to be his own
23:15
self is its opponent and is nothing. He is nothing, means as much
23:21
as the state does not make use of him, grants him no position,
23:26
no office, no trade, etc. Edgard Buer in the Liberal Best Rebungeon
23:33
following two page fifty, is still dreaming of a government which, proceeding out
23:40
of the people, can never stand in opposition to it. He does,
23:45
indeed, page sixty nine himself, take back the word government. In the
23:49
republic, no government at all obtains, but only an executive authority, an
23:56
authority which precedes purely and alone out of the people, which has not an
24:03
independent power, independent principles, independent officers over against the people, but which
24:11
has its foundation the fountain of its power and of its principles, in the
24:17
soul, supreme authority of the state in the people. The concept government therefore
24:23
is not at all suitable in the people's state. But the thing remains the
24:29
same, that which has proceeded, been founded. Sprung from the fountain,
24:34
becomes something independent and like a child delivered from the womb enters upon a position
24:41
at once. The government, if it were nothing independent and opposing, would
24:48
be nothing at all. In the free state, there is no government,
24:52
et cetera, page ninety four. This surely means that the people, when
24:59
it is the soul, does not let itself be conducted by a superior authority.
25:04
Is it perchance different? In absolute monarchy? Is there there for the
25:11
sovereign, per chance a government standing over him? Even the sovereign be he
25:18
called prince or people. There never stands a government that is understood of itself,
25:23
but over me. There will stand a government in every state in the
25:27
absolute as well as in the republican or three, I am as badly off
25:33
in one as in the other. The republic is nothing whatever but absolute monarchy,
25:41
for it makes no difference whether the monarch is called prince or people,
25:45
both being a majesty. Constitutionalism it self proves that nobody is able and willing
25:53
to be only an instrument the minister's the menia over the master, the prince,
26:00
the deputies over their master the people. Hear, then the parties at
26:04
least are already free. The galicients the office holder's party so called People's party,
26:11
The prince must reform to the will of the ministers. The people dance
26:17
to the pipe of the chambers. Constitutionalism is further than the republic because it
26:23
is the state in supotential dissolution. Edgar Bure denies, page fifty six that
26:32
the people is a personality in the constitutional state. Per contrast, then in
26:37
the republic, while in the constitutional state the people is a party, and
26:44
a party is surely a personality if one is once resolved to talk of a
26:49
political page seventy six moral person. Anyhow, the fact is that a moral
26:56
person, be it called people's party or people or even the lord, is
27:02
in no wise a person but a spook. Further, edgar Bure goes on
27:07
page sixty nine, guardianship is the characteristic of a government, truly still more
27:15
that of the people and people's state. It is the characteristics of all dominion,
27:21
a people's state, which unites in itself all completeness of power. The
27:26
absolute master cannot let me become powerful, and what a chimera to be no
27:33
longer willing to call the people's officials servants instruments because they execute the free,
27:41
rational law will of the people. Page seventy three, He thinks page seventy
27:47
four, only by all official circles subordinating themselves to the government's views can unity
27:55
be brought into the state. But his people's state is to have unity to
28:00
how will a lack of subordination be allowed there? Subordination to the people's will.
28:07
In the constitutional state, it is the regent and his disposition that the
28:12
whole structure of government rests on. In the end, page one hundred and
28:18
thirty, how would that be otherwise? In the people's state? Shall I
28:23
not there be governed by the people's disposition too? And does it make a
28:29
difference for me whether I see myself kept independence by the prince's disposition or by
28:36
the people's disposition so called public opinion. If dependence means as much as religious
28:42
relation, as Edgar Buer rightly alleges, then in the people's state, the
28:48
people remains for me the superior power the majesty, for God and Princess have
28:55
their proper essence in majesty to which I stand. In religious relations, like
29:00
a sovereign regent, the sovereign people too would be reached by no law.
29:06
Edgar Bure's whole attempt comes to a change of masters. Instead of wanting to
29:12
make the people free, he should have had his mind on the sole realizable
29:18
freedom his own in the constitutional state. Absolutism itself has at last come in
29:25
conflict with itself, as it has been shattered into adulity. The government wants
29:32
to be absolute and the people wants to be absolute. These two absolutes will
29:37
wear out against each other. End of Section twenty five