The Ego and His Own by Max Stirner

Author:Max Stirner
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, pdf
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2014-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

A. My Power

Right18 is the spirit of society. If society has a will, this will is simply right: society exists only through right. But, as it endures only exercising a sovereignty over individuals, right is its SOVEREIGN WILL. Aristotle says justice is the advantage of society.

All existing right is—foreign law; some one makes me out to be in the right, “does right by me.” But should I therefore be in the right if all the world made me out so? And yet what else is the right that I obtain in the State, in society, but a right of those foreign to me? When a blockhead makes me out in the right, I grow distrustful of my rightness; I don’t like to receive it from him. But, even when a wise man makes me out in the right, I nevertheless am not in the right on that account. Whether I am in the right is completely independent of the fool’s making out and of the wise man’s.

All the same, we have coveted this right till now. We seek for right, and turn to the court for that purpose. To what? To a royal, a papal, a popular court, etc. Can a sultanic court declare another right than that which the sultan has ordained to be right? Can it make me out in the right if I seek for a right that does not agree with the sultan’s law? Can it, for instance, concede to me high treason as a right, since it is assuredly not a right according to the sultan’s mind? Can it as a court of censorship allow me the free utterance of opinion as a right, since the sultan will hear nothing of this my right? What am I seeking for in this court, then? I am seeking for sultanic right, not my right; I am seeking for—foreign right. As long as this foreign right harmonizes with mine, to be sure, I shall find in it the latter too.

The State does not permit pitching into each other man to man; it opposes the duel. Even every ordinary appeal to blows, notwithstanding that neither of the fighters calls the police to it, is punished; except when it is not an I whacking away at a you, but, say, the head of a family at the child. The family is entitled to this, and in its name the father; I as Ego am not.

The Vossische Zeitung19 presents to us the “commonwealth of right.” There everything is to be decided by the judge and a court. It ranks the supreme court of censorship as a “court” where “right is declared.” What sort of a right? The right of the censorship. To recognize the sentences of that court as right one must regard the censorship as right. But it is thought nevertheless that this court offers a protection. Yes, protection against an individual censor’s error: it protects only the censorship-legislator against false interpretation of his will, at the same time making his statute, by the “sacred power of right,” all the firmer against writers.

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