Latest / Logic Library / 23 - My Power - part 3 - The Ego and His Own - Max Stirner

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23 - My Power - part 3 - The Ego and His Own - Max Stirner · Logic Library

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My power heart free. What is the ordinary criminal but one who has committed
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the fatal mistake of endeavoring after what is the peoples instead of seeking for what
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is his. He has sought despicable alien goods, has done what believers do,
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who seek after what is God's. What does the priest who admonishes the
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criminal do? He sets before him the great wrong of having desecrated by his
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act what was hallowed by the state, its property, in which of course
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must be included even the life of those who belong to the state. Instead
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of this, he might rather hold up to him the fact that he has
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befound himself in not despising the alien thing, but thinking it worth stealing if
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he could, if he were not a parson. Talk with a so called
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criminal as well an egoist, and he will be ashamed, not that he
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transgressed against your laws and goods, but that he considered your laws worth evading,
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your goods worth desiring. He will be ashamed that he did not despise
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you and yours together, that he was too little an egoist. But you
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cannot talk egoistically with him, for you are not so great as a criminal.
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You commit no crime you do not know that an ego who is his
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own cannot desist from being a criminal. That crime is his life. And
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yet you should know it, since you believe that we are all miserable sinners.
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But you think surreperteously to get beyond sin. You do not comprehend,
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for you are devil fearing that guilt is the value of a man. Oh,
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if you are guilty, but now you are righteous, Well, just
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put everything nicely to rights for your master. When the Christian consciousness or the
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Christian man draws up a criminal code, what can the concept of crime be
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there but simply heartlessness. Each severing and wounding of a heart relation, each
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heartless behavior toward a sacred being is crime. The more heartfelt the relation is
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supposed to be, the more scandalous is the deriding of it, and the
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more worthy of punishment the crime. Everyone who is subject to the Lord should
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love him. To deny this love is a high treason worthy of death.
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Adultery is a heartlessness worthy of punishment. One has no heart, no enthusiasm
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feeling for the sakeredness of marriage. So long as the heart or soul detects
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laws, only be heartful or soulful man enjoys the protection of the laws.
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That the man of soul makes laws means probably that the moral man makes them
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what contradicts these men's moral feeling. This they penalize, how e g.
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Should disloyalty, secession, reach of oaths, in short or radical breaking off,
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or tearing asunder of venerable ties, not being fligitous and criminal. In
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their eyes, he who breaks with these demands of the soul has for enemies
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all the moral or the men of soul. Only criminature and his mates are
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the right people to set up consciously a penal code of the heart, as
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a certain bill sufficiently proves the consistent legislation of the Christian state must be placed
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wholly in the hands of the parsons, and will not become pure and coherent
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as long as it is worked out only by the parsion ridden, who are
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always only half parsons. Only then will every lack of soulfulness, every heartlessness,
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be certified as an unpardonable crime. Only then will every agitation of the
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soul become condemnable, every objection of criticism and doubt be alithematized. Only then
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is the only man before the Christian consciousness a convicted criminal. To begin with,
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the men of the revolution often spoked of the people's just revenge as its
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right. Revenge and right coincide. Here is this an attitude of an ego
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to an ego. The people cries that the opposite part has committed crimes against
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it. Can I assume that one commits a crime against me without assuming that
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he has to act as icy fit? And this action I call the right,
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the good, etc. The divergence action a crime. So I think
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that the others must aim at the same goal with me. I e.
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I do not treat them as unique beings who bear their law in themselves and
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live according to it, but as beings who are to obey some rational law
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as set up what man is and what acting in a truly human way is.
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And I demand of everyone that this law become normal and ideal to him,
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otherwise he will expose himself as a sinner and criminal. But upon the
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guilty fools the penalty of the law. One sees here how it is man
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against who sets on foot. Even the concept of crime of sin and therewith
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that of right. A man in whom I do not recognize man is a
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sinner, a guilty one only against a sacred thing? Are their criminals?
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You against me can be never a criminal, but only an opponent. But
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not to hate him who injures a sacred thing is in itself a crime,
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as Saint just cries out against Danton. Are you not a criminal and responsible
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for not having hated the enemies of the fatherland. If, as in the
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Revolution, what man is apprehended as good citizen, then from this concept of
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man we have the well known political offenses and crimes. In all of this
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the individual, the individual man is regarded as refuse, and on the other
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hand, general man is honored. Now according to how this ghost is named
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as Christian, Jew, Marsuliman, good citizen, lawyer, subject, freeman,
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patriarch, et cetera. Just so do those who would like to carry
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through the divigent concept of man, as well as those who want to put
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themselves through fall behind victorious man. And with what function the butchery goes on
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here in the name of the law of the sovereign people of God, etc.
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Now, if the persecuted tripoly concealed and protect themselves from the stern parsinical
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judges, people stigmatize them as Saint just E g does not those whom he
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accuses in a speech against Ganton, one is to be a fool and deliver
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himself up to their moloch. Crimes spring from fixed idea. The sacredness of
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marriage is a fixed idea. From the sacredness, it follows that infidelity is
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a crime, and therefore a certain marriage law imposes upon it a shorter or
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longer penalty. But by those who proclaim freedom as sacred, this penalty must
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be regarded as a crime against freedom, And only in this sense has public
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opinion in fact granted the marriage law. Society would have everyone come to his
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right. Indeed, but yet only to that which is sanctioned by society,
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to the society right, not really to his right. But I gave,
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or take to myself the right out of my own penitude of power, and
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against every superior power. I am the most impenitive, criminal, owner and
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creator of my right. I recognize no other source of right than me,
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neither God, nor the state, nor nature, nor even man himself with
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his eternal rights of man, neither divine nor human rights right in and for
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itself without relation to me. Therefore absolute right separated from me therefore a thing
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that exists in and for itself, an absolute, an eternal right, like
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an eternal truth. According to the liberal way of thinking, right is to
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be obligatory for me because it is thus established by human reason, against which
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my reason is unreason. Formerly people invade in the name of divine reason against
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weak human reasons. Now in the name of a strong human reason, against
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egoistic reason, which is rejected as unreason. And yet none is real because
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this very unreason, neither divine nor human reason. But only you and my
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reason, existing at my given time, is real as and because you and
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I are real. The thought of right is originally my thought, or it
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has its origin in me. But when it has sprung from me, when
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the word is out, then it has become flesh. It is a fixed
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idea. Now I no longer get rid of the thought. However I turn,
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it stands before me. Thus men have not become masters the gain of
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the thought right, which they themselves created. Their creature is running away with
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them. This is absolute right. That which is absorbed or unfastened from me,
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we revere it. It has absolute cannot devour it again, and it
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takes from us the creative power their creature is more than the creator. It
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is in and for itself. Once you no longer let write one around three,
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once you draw it back into its origin, into you, it is
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your right, and that is right which suits you. Right has had to
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suffer an attack within itself i e. From the standpoint of right or being
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declared on the part of liberalism against privilege. Privileged and endowed with equal rights.
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On these two concepts turns a stubborn fight. Excluded or admitted would mean
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the same. But where should there be a power, be it in an
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imaginary one like God, law, or real one like I you, of
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which it should not be true that before it all are endowed with equal rights
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i e. No respect of personal holes. Everyone is equally dear to God
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if he adores him, equally agreeable to the law if only he is a
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law abiding person. Whether the lover of God and the law is humpbacked and
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lame, whether poor or rich, et cetera. That amounts to nothing for
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God and the law. Just so, when you are at the point of
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drowning, you like a negro as rescuer as well as the most excellent occasion.
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Yes, in this situation you esteem a dog not less than a man,
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but to whom will not every one be also punctuise a preferred or disregarded
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person. God pledges the wicked with his wrath, the lordasises the lawless.
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You let one visit you every moment, and show the other the door.
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The equality of right is a phantom, just because right is nothing more and
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nothing less than admission, a matter of grace, which be it said one
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may also acquire by his dessert, For dessert and grace are not contradictory,
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since even grace wishes to be deserved, and our gracious smile falls only to
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him who knows how to force it from us. So people dream all of
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citizens of the state having to stand side by side with equal rights. As
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citizens of the state. They are certainly all equal for the state, But
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it will divide them and advance them or put them in the rear, according
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to its special ends, if on no other account, And still more,
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must it distinguish them from one another as good and bad citizens. Brunobierre disposes
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of the due question from the standpoint that privilege is not justified because jew and
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Christian have each some point of advantage over the other, and in having this
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point of a advantage are exclusive. Therefore, before the critics gaze, they
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crumble into lookingness with them. This state was under the like blame since it
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justifies their having advantages and stamps it as a privilege, all proberative, but
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thereby derogates from its calling to become a free state. But now everyone has
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something of advantage over another, this himself or his individuality. In this everybody
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remains exclusive. And again before a third party, everyone makes his pecuniarity count
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for as much as possible, and if he wants to win him at all,
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tries to make it appear attractive before him. Now is the third party
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to be insensible to the differences of the one from the other. Do they
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ask that of the free state or of human Then these would have to be
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absolutely without self interest and incapable of taking an interest in any one whatever.
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Neither God, who di guides his own from the wicked, nor the state,
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which knows how to separate good citizens from bad was bought of as so
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indifferent. But they are looking for this very third party that distows no more
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privilege. Then it is called perhaps the free state, or humanity, or
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whatever else it may be. As Christian and jew are ranked low by BRUNOBIAU
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on account of their certain privileges. It must be that they could and should
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free themselves from the narrowest standpoint by self renunciation or unselfishness. If they threw
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off their egoism, the mutual wrong would cease, and with it Christian and
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Jewish religiousness in general. It would be necessarily only that either of them should
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any longer want to be anything peculiar. But if they gave up this exclusiveness,
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with that the grant on which their hostilities were waged would in truth not
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yet be forsaken. In case of need, they would indeed find a third
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thing on which they could unite, a general religion, a religion of humanity,
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et cetera. In short, an equalization which need not be better than
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that which would result if all Jews became Christians. By this. Likewise,
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the privilege of one over the other would have an end. The tension would
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indeed be done away. But in this consisted not of the essence of the
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two, but only their neighborhood. As being distinguished from each other, they
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must necessarily be mutually resistant, and the disparity will always remain. Truly,
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it is not a failing in you that you stiffen yourselves against me and assert
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your distinctness or peculiarity. You need not give away or reunites yourself. People
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conceive the significance of the opposition too formally and weakly, when they want only
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to dissolve it in order to make room for a third thing that shall unite.
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The opposition deserves rather to be sharpened. As jew and Christian, you
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are into sight and opposition, and are contending only about religion, as it
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were about the Emperor's beard, about a fiddlestick's end enemies in religion. Indeed,
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in the rest you still remain good friends and equal to each other e
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g. As men. Nevertheless, the rest, too is unlike in each
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and the time when you no longer merely descend your opposition will be only when
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you entirely recognize it, and everybody asserts himself from top to toe as unique.
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Then the former opposition will assuredly be dissolved, but only because a stronger
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has taken it up into itself. Our weakness consists not in this that we
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are in opposition to others, but in this that we are not completely so
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that we are not entirely severed from them, or that we seek a communion,
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a bond, that in communion we have an ideal, one faith,
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one god, one idea, one hat for all. If all were brought
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under one hat, certainly no one would any longer need to take off his
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hat before another. The last and most decided opposition, that of unique against
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unique, is at bottom beyond what is called decision. But without having slunk
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back into the unity and unison as unique, you have nothing in common with
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the other any longer, and therefore nothing to visit or hostile either. You
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are not seeking to be in the right against him before a third party,
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and are standing with him neither on the ground of right, nor on any
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other common ground. The opposition vanishes incomplete severance or singleness. This might indeed
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be regarded as the new point in common or a new parity. But here
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the parity consists precisely in the disparity, and it's itself nothing but a disparity,
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a part of disparity, and that only for him who institutes a comparison.
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The polemic against privilege forms a characteristic feature of liberalism, which fumes again
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privilege, because it itself appeals to write further than perfuming. It cannot carry
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this, For privileges do not fall before right falls, as they are only
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forms of right. But right falls apart into its nuttingness when it is swallowed
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up by might, i e. When one understands what is meant I,
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might goes before right. All right explains itself then as privilege, and privilege
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itself as power, as superior power. But must not the mighty combat against
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superior power show quite another face than the modest combat against privilege, which is
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to be thought out before a first judge. Right according to the judge's mind.
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Now, in conclusion, I have still to take back the halfway form
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of expression of which I was willing to make use only so long as I
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was still routing among the entrails of right and letting the word at least stand.
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But in fact, with the concept the word too uses its meaning.
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What I call it my right is no longer right at all, because right
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can be bestowed only by a spirit, be it the spirit of nature or
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that of the species of mankind, the spirit of God, or that of
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His Holiness or His Highness, et cetera. What have I without an entitling
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spirit? I have without right. I have it solely and alone through my
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power. I do not demand any right. Therefore I need not recognize any
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either. What I can get by force I get by force, and what
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I do not get by force I have no right to. Nor do I
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give myself airs or consolation with my imperceptible right. With absolute right, right
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itself passes away. The dominion of the concept of right is canceled at the
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same time. For it is not to be forgotten that hitherto concepts, ideas,
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or principles ruled us, and that among these rulers the concept of right
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or of justice played one of the most important parts. Entitled or unentitled,
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that does not concern me. If I am only powerful, I am of
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myself empowered and need no other empowering or entitling. Right is a real in
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the head, put there by a spook power that am by myself. I
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am the powerful one and owner of power. Right is above me, is
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absolute and exists in one hire as whose grace it flows to me. Right
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is a gift of grace from the judge. Power and might exists only in
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me, the powerful and mighty. End of Section twenty three