The web of present-day hypocrisy is attached to the edges of two realms, between which our time swings back and forth, attaching its fine threads of deception and self-deception. No longer firm enough to serve morality without doubting of weakening, not yet reckless enough to live entirely through egoism, it dithers now toward one side and now toward the other in the spider-web of hypocrisy, and, paralyzed by the curse of half-measures, catches only stupid, wretched gnats. If one has dared once to make a "free" petition, one immediately waters it down again with loving assurances, and-feigns resignation; on the other hand, if one has had the nerve to fight back against the "free" petition with moral references to trust, the moral courage also immediately declines, and one assures the petitioner that they hear the free words with special pleasure, one-feigns appreciation. In short, one wants to have the one, but not do without the other; one would like to have a free will but would not for his life go without the moral will.
Whether you're filthy
rich or dirt poor-the state of the bourgeoisie leaves that up to you-all you
must do is have a "good attitude." It demands this of you and
considers its most urgent task to be to establish this in all. This is why it
will protect you from "evil enticements" by keeping the
"evil-minded" in check and silencing their thrilling speeches under
the censor's slash or press penalties and behind prison walls, and, on the
other hand, will appoint people of "good attitude" to be censors, and
in every way try to exert a moral influence on you, "the well-disposed and
well-meaning" people. If it has made you deaf to evil enticements, it then
opens your ears again all the more diligently to good enticements. With the
time of the bourgeoisie that of liberalism begins. People want to see the
"rational," the "timely" established everywhere. The following
definition of liberalism, which is supposed to be said in its honor, describes
it perfectly: "Liberalism is nothing other than rational knowledge applied
to our current conditions." Its goal is a "rational order" a
"moral behavior" a "limited freedom" not anarchy, lawlessness,
ownness. But if reason rules, then the person is defeated. For a long time, art
has not only taken the ugly into account, but considered it necessary to art's
existence, and taken it up into itself; it needs the villain, etc.
Also in the religious realm, the most extreme liberals go so far that they want to see the most religious person regarded as a citizen, i.e., the religious villain ; they want to hear nothing more of heresy trials. But no one is to rebel against the "rational law" ; otherwise he faces the harshest punishment. They do not want a free movement and currency of the person or of me, but of reason, i.e., a rulership of reason, a rulership. The liberals are zealots, not exactly for the faith, for God, but for reason, their master. They'll tolerate no impertinence, and therefore no self-development and self-determination ; they impose their will despite the most absolute rulers.
Up to the present day, the revolutionary principle has gone no further than to fight against this or that existent, to be reformative. As much as is improved, as strongly as "reflective progress" may be held to, there is always a new master set up in the old one's place, and the overthrow is a reconstruction. It remains at the distinction of the young philistine from the old one. The revolution began in a bourgeois way, with the uprising of the third estate, the middle class; in a bourgeois way it dries up. The individual human being-and this alone is the human being-does not become free, but the bourgeois, the citoyen, the political human being, who for that very reason is not the human being, but a specimen of the human species, and more particularly a specimen of the bourgeois species, a free bourgeois citizen. In the revolution, it was not the individual who acted in world history, but a people; the nation, the sovereign nation, wanted to bring everything about. An imaginary I, which the nation is, appears active ; i.e., the individuals hand themselves over as tools of this idea and act as "bourgeois citizens."
Free-from what ? Oh, what is there that cannot be shaken off? The yoke of bondage, of feudal sovereignty, of aristocracy and prince, the rule of the desires and passions; yes, even the rule of one's own will, of self-will, for the most thorough self-denial is nothing but freedom-freedom, namely, from self-determination, from one's own self; and the urge for freedom as something absolute, worth any price, destroyed our ownness : it created self-denial. But the freer I become, the more constraint piles up before my eyes; the more powerless I feel. The unfree son of the wilderness feels nothing yet of all the limits that press on the educated human being ; he seems freer to himself than the latter. To the extent that I gain freedom for myself, I create new limits and tasks for myself; if I 've invented railroads, I feel weak again because I still can't sail through the air like a bird ; and if I have solved a problem whose obscurity disturbed my mind, I then expect to quickly solve countless others whose mysteriousness hinders my progress, dims my free view, and makes the limits of my freedom too painfully obvious to me. "Now that you have become free from sins, you have become servants of righteousness." Don't republicans, in their broad freedom, become servants of the law ? How true Christian hearts longed at all times to become free, how they pined to see themselves released from the bonds of earthly life! They looked out toward the land of freedom. ( " The Jerusalem that is above is the freewoman ; she is the mother of us all." )
If your efforts are ever to make "freedom" count, then exhaust its demands. Who is supposed to be free ? You, I, we. Free from what ? From everything that is not you, not I, not we. So I am the core that is to be delivered from all wrappings-that is to be set free from all cramping shells. What is left: when I have been freed from everything I am not ? Only I and nothing but I. But freedom has nothing to offer this I itself. As to what more is supposed to happen now, since I have become free, freedom is silent, as our governments, when a prisoner's time is up, just release him and cast him out into desolation. Now why, if one strives for freedom out of love for the I, why not choose the I itself as beginning, middle and end ? Am I not worth more than freedom ? Am I not the one who makes myself free, am I not the first ? Even unfree, even in a thousand fetters, still I am ; and I do not, like freedom, only exist as a future thing, in hopes, but even as the most degraded slave I am also-present. Think it over well and decide whether you want to put on your banner the dream of "freedom" or the resolution of "egoism," of "ownness." "Freedom" rouses your rage against everything that is not you; "egoism" calls you to joy over yourselves, to self-enjoyment. "Freedom" is and remains a longing, a romantic lament, a Christian hope for otherworldliness and the future ; "ownness" is a reality that, from itself, removes just as much unfreedom as hinders you by barring your own way. You will not want to renounce what doesn't bother you, and when it starts to bother you, why, you know that "you must obey yourselves rather than men" ! Freedom only teaches : Get yourselves rid, relieve yourselves, of everything burdensome; it does not teach you who you yourselves are. Rid, rid ! thus its watchword resounds, and you, eager to follow its call, even get rid of yourselves, you "deny yourselves." But ownness calls you back to yourselves, it says, "Come to yourself! " Under the aegis of freedom you get rid of many kinds of things, but something new oppresses you again : "You've gotten rid of the Evil One ; evil is left." As own you are actually rid of everything, and what clings to you you have accepted; it is your choice and your pleasure. The own one is the free-born, the one free from the start; the free one, on the contrary, is only the freedom addict, the dreamer and romantic. The former is free from the beginning, because he recognizes nothing but himself; he does not need to free himself first, because from the start he rejects everything outside himself, because he prizes nothing more than himself, deems nothing higher than himself-in short, because he starts from himself and "comes to himself" Constrained by filial respect, he is still already working to "free" himself of this constraint. Ownness works in the little egoist and gets him the desired freedom. Thousands of years of civilized culture have obscured what you are to you, have made you believe that you are not egoists, but are called to be idealists ("good people") . Shake that off! Don't seek for freedom, which just deprives you of yourselves, in "self-denial" ; but rather seek yourselves, become egoists, each one of you become an almighty I. Or more clearly: recognize yourselves again, recognize what you actually are, and let go of your hypocritical endeavors, your foolish addiction to be something other than what you are. I call them hypocritical, because you have still remained egoists all these thousands of years, but sleeping, self-deceiving, crazy egoists, you Heauton Timorumenoses, you self-tormentors.Religions have never yet been able to dispense with "promises" of one sort or another, whether they refer to the afterlife or to this one("long life",etc. );because the human being is hungry for gain and does nothing "gratis." But what about that "doing good for the sake of the good" without prospect of reward ? As if here too the reward was not contained in the satisfaction it would grant. Thus religion is also founded on our egoism and exploits it ; calculated on our desires, for the sake of one of them, it stifles many others. This then gives the phenomenon of duped egoism, where I don't satisfy myself, but one of my desires, e.g., the desire for blessedness. Religion promises me this: "the highest good" ; to gain this I pay no attention to any of my other desires and do not nourish them. -All your doings are unconfessed, secret; covert and hidden egoism. But because this is egoism that you do not want to confess to yourselves, that you conceal from yourselves, thus not obvious and evident egoism, consequently unconscious egoism, therefore it is not egoism, but slavery, service, self-denial; you are egoists, and you are not, because you deny egoism. Where you most seem to be such, you have drawn loathing and contempt upon the word "egoist". I safeguard my freedom against the world to the extent that I make the world my own, i.e., "win and take it" for myself, by whatever force it requires, by force of persuasion, of request, of categorical demand, yes, even hypocrisy, fraud, etc.; because the means that I use for it depend upon what I am. If I am weak, I have only weak means, like those mentioned above, but which are still good enough for a considerable part of the world. Anyway, fraud, hypocrisy, and lying look worse than they are. Who has not deceived the police, the law ? Who has not quickly put on the appearance of respectable loyalty upon encountering the sheriff's henchman, in order to hide an illegal act he may have committed ? Whoever has not done this has simply let violence to be done to him ; he was a weakling from-conscience. I know that my freedom is already diminished when I cannot exercise my will on an other (whether this other be something without will, like a rock, or something with will, like a government, an individual, etc.) ; I deny my ownness when-in the presence of another-I give myself up, i.e., I give way, stand aside, submit; thus, by devotion, submission. For it is one thing when I give up my present course because it doesn't lead to the goal and so diverts me down a wrong path ; and another when I give myself up. I get around a rock that stands in my way, until I have enough powder to blow it up ; I get around the laws of a people, until I 've gathered the strength to overthrow them. Since I cannot grasp the moon, is it therefore supposed to be "sacred" to me, an Astarte ? If I could only grasp you, I surely would, and if I find a way to come up to you, you shall not frighten me ! You incomprehensible one, you shall remain incomprehensible to me only until I have acquired the power of comprehension for myself and call you my own; I do not surrender before you, but only bide my time. If I am also content for now to touch something of you, I still remember it of you.
Max Stirner - Der Einzige und sein Eigentum
Max Stirner - The Unique
and Its Property
Translated
by Apio Ludd aka Wolfi
Landstreicher
Published by
Underworld Amusements
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