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176 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
cause you are a "unique"* man. Doubtless you show what
a man can do; but because you, a man, do it, this by no means
shows that others, also men, are able to do as much; you have
executed it only as a unique man, and are unique therein.
It is not man that makes up your
greatness, but you create it, because you are more than man, and
mightier than other -- men.
It is believed that one cannot be
more than man. Rather, one cannot be less!
It is believed further that whatever
one attains is good for Man. In so far as I remain at all times
a man -- or, like Schiller, a Swabian; like Kant, a Prussian;
like Gustavus Adolfus, a near-sighted person -- I certainly become
by my superior qualities a notable man, Swabian, Prussian, or
near-sighted person. But the case is not much better with that
than with Frederick the Great's cane, which became famous for
Frederick's sake.
To "Give God the glory"
corresponds the modern "Give Man the glory." But I mean
to keep it for myself.
Criticism, issuing the summons to
man to be "human," enunciates the necessary condition
of sociability; for only as a man among men is one companionable.
Herewith it makes known its social object, the establishment
of "human society."
Among social theories criticism
is indisputably the most complete, because it removes and deprives
of value everything that separates man from man: all
|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 177 |
prerogatives, down to the prerogative of faith. In it the love-principle
of Christianity, the true social principle, comes to the purest
fulfillment, and the last possible experiment is tried to take
away exclusiveness and repulsion from men: a fight against egoism
in its simplest and therefore hardest form, in the form of singleness,*
exclusiveness, itself.
"How can you live a truly social
life so long as even one exclusiveness still exists between you?"
I ask conversely, How can you be
truly single so long as even one connection still exists between
you? If you are connected, you cannot leave each other; if a "tie"
clasps you, you are something only with another, and
twelve of you make a dozen, thousands of you a people, millions
of you humanity.
"Only when you are human can
you keep company with each other as men, just as you can understand
each other as patriots only when you are patriotic!"
All right; then I answer, Only when
you are single can you have intercourse with each other as what
you are.
It is precisely the keenest critic
who is hit hardest by the curse of his principle. Putting from
him one exclusive thing after another, shaking off churchliness,
patriotism, etc., he undoes one tie after another and separates
himself from the churchly man, from the patriot, till at last,
when all ties are undone, he stands -- alone. He, of all men,
must exclude all that have anything exclusive or private; and,
when you get to the bottom, what can be more exclusive than
|
178 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
the exclusive, single person himself!
Or does he perhaps think that the
situation would be better if all became "man"
and gave up exclusiveness? Why, for the very reason that "all"
means "every individual" the most glaring contradiction
is still maintained, for the "individual" is exclusiveness
itself. If the humane liberal no longer concedes to the individual
anything private or exclusive, any private thought, any private
folly; if he criticises everything away from him before his face,
since his hatred of the private is an absolute and fanatical hatred;
if he knows no tolerance toward what is private, because everything
private is unhuman -- yet he cannot criticize away the
private person himself, since the hardness of the individual person
resists his criticism, and he must be satisfied with declaring
this person a "private person" and really leaving everything
private to him again.
What will the society that no longer
cares about anything private do? Make the private impossible?
No, but "subordinate it to the interests of society, and,
e. g., leave it to private will to institute holidays
as many as it chooses, if only it does not come in collision with
the general interest."* Everything private is left free;
i.e., it has no interest for society.
"By their raising barriers
against science the church and religiousness have declared that
they are what they always were, only that this was hidden under
another semblance when they were proclaimed to be the basis and
necessary foundation of the State
*Br. Bauer, "Judenfrage," p. 66
|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 179 |
-- a matter of purely private concern. Even when they were connected
with the State and made it Christian, they were only the proof
that the State had not yet developed its general political idea,
that it was only instituting private rights -- they were only
the highest expression for the fact that the State was a private
affair and had to do only with private affairs. When the State
shall at last have the courage and strength to fulfil its general
destiny and to be free; when, therefore, it is also able to give
separate interests and private concerns their true position --
then religion and the church will be free as they have never been
hitherto. As a matter of the most purely private concern, and
a satisfaction of purely personal want, they will be left to themselves;
and every individual, every congregation and ecclesiastical communion,
will be able to care for the blessedness of their souls as they
choose and as they think necessary. Every one will care for his
soul's blessedness so far as it is to him a personal want, and
will accept and pay as spiritual caretaker the one who seems to
him to offer the best guarantee for the satisfaction of his want.
Science is at last left entirely out of the game."*
What is to happen, though? Is social
life to have an end, and all affability, all fraternization, everything
that is created by the love or society principle, to disappear?
As if one will not always seek the
other because he needs him; as if one must accommodate
himself to
*Br. Bauer, "Die gute Sache der Freiheit," pp. 62-63.
| 180 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
the other when he needs him. But the difference is this,
that then the individual really unites with the individual,
while formerly they were bound together by a tie; son
and father are bound together before majority, after it they can
come together independently; before it they belonged
together as members of the family, after it they unite as egoists;
sonship and fatherhood remain, but son and father no longer pin
themselves down to these.
The last privilege, in truth, is
"Man"; with it all are privileged or invested. For,
as Bruno Bauer himself says, "privilege remains even when
it is extended to all."*
Thus liberalism runs its course
in the following transformations: "First, the individual
is not man, therefore his individual personality is of no account:
no personal will, no arbitrariness, no orders or mandates!
"Second, the individual has
nothing human, therefore no mine and thine, or property, is valid.
"Third, as the individual neither
is man nor has anything human, he shall not exist at all: he shall,
as an egoist with his egoistic belongings, be annihilated by criticism
to make room for Man, 'Man, just discovered.'"
But, although the individual is
not Man, Man is yet present in the individual, and, like every
spook and everything divine, has its existence in him. Hence political
liberalism awards to the individual everything that pertains to
him as "a man by birth,"
*Br. Bauer, "Judenfrage," p. 60.
|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 181 |
as a born man, among which there are counted liberty of conscience,
the possession of goods, etc. -- in short, the "rights of
man"; Socialism grants to the individual what pertains to
him as an active man, as a "laboring" man;
finally. humane liberalism gives the individual what he has as
"a man," i. e., everything that belongs to
humanity. Accordingly the single one* has nothing at all, humanity
everything; and the necessity of the "regeneration"
preached in Christianity is demanded unambiguously and in the
completest measure. Become a new creature, become "man!"
One might even think himself reminded
of the close of the Lord's Prayer. To Man belongs the lordship
(the "power" or dynamis); therefore no individual
may be lord, but Man is the lord of individuals; -- Man's is the
kingdom, i.e. the world, consequently the individual
is not to be proprietor, but Man, "all," command the
world as property -- to Man is due renown, glorification
or "glory" (doxa) from all, for Man or humanity
is the individual's end, for which he labors, thinks, lives, and
for whose glorification he must become "man."
Hitherto men have always striven
to find out a fellowship in which their inequalities in other
respects should become "nonessential"; they strove for
equalization, consequently for equality, and wanted to
come all under one hat, which means nothing less than that they
were seeking for one lord, one tie, one faith ("`Tis in one
God we all believe"). There cannot be
|
182 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
for men anything more fellowly or more equal than Man himself,
and in this fellowship the love-craving has found its contentment:
it did not rest till it had brought on this last equalization,
leveled all inequality, laid man on the breast of man. But under
this very fellowship decay and ruin become most glaring. In a
more limited fellowship the Frenchman still stood against the
German, the Christian against the Mohammedan, etc. Now, on the
contrary, man stands against men, or, as men
are not man, man stands against the un-man.
The sentence "God has become
man" is now followed by the other, "Man has become I."
This is the human 1. But we invert it and say: I was
not able to find myself so long as I sought myself as Man. But,
now that it appears that Man is aspiring to become I and to gain
a corporeity in me, I note that, after all, everything depends
on me, and Man is lost without me. But I do not care to give myself
up to be the shrine of this most holy thing, and shall not ask
henceforward whether I am man or un-man in what I set about; let
this spirit keep off my neck!
Humane liberalism goes to work radically.
If you want to be or have anything especial even in one point,
if you want to retain for yourself even one prerogative above
others, to claim even one right that is not a "general right
of man," you are an egoist.
Very good! I do not want to have
or be anything especial above others, I do not want to claim any
prerogative against them, but -- I do not measure myself by others
either, and do not want to have any right whatever. I
want to be all and have all that I can be
|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 183 |
and have. Whether others are and have anything similar,
what do I care? The equal, the same, they can neither be nor have.
I cause no detriment to them, as I cause no detriment
to the rock by being "ahead of it" in having motion.
If they could have it, they would have it.
To cause other men no detriment
is the point of the demand to possess no prerogative; to renounce
all "being ahead," the strictest theory of renunciation.
One is not to count himself as "anything especial,"
e. g. a Jew or a Christian. Well, I do not count myself
as anything especial, but as unique.* Doubtless I have similarity
with others; yet that holds good only for comparison or reflection;
in fact I am incomparable, unique. My flesh is not their flesh,
my mind is not their mind. If you bring them under the generalities
"flesh, mind," those are your thoughts, which
have nothing to do with my flesh, my mind, and
can least of all issue a "call" to mine.
I do not want to recognize or respect
in you any thing, neither the proprietor nor the ragamuffin, nor
even the man, but to use you. In salt I find that it
makes food palatable to me, therefore I dissolve it; in the fish
I recognize an aliment, therefore I eat it; in you I discover
the gift of making my life agreeable, therefore I choose you as
a companion. Or, in salt I study crystallization, in the fish
animality, in you men, etc. But to me you are only what you are
for me -- to wit, my object; and, because my object,
therefore my property.
| 184 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
In humane liberalism ragamuffinhood
is completed. We must first come down to the most ragamuffin-like,
most poverty-stricken condition if we want to arrive at ownness,
for we must strip off everything alien. But nothing seems more
ragamuffin-like than naked -- Man.
It is more than ragamuffinhood,
however, when I throw away Man too because I feel that he too
is alien to me and that T can make no pretensions on that basis.
This is no longer mere ragamuffinhood: because even the last rag
has fallen off, here stands real nakedness, denudation of everything
alien. The ragamuffin has stripped off ragamuffinhood itself,
and therewith has ceased to be what he was, a ragamuffin.
I am no longer a ragamuffin, but
have been one.
Up to this time the discord could
not come to an outbreak, because properly there is current only
a contention of modern liberals with antiquated liberals, a contention
of those who understand "freedom" in a small measure
and those who want the "full measure" of freedom; of
the moderate and measureless, therefore. Everything
turns on the question, how free must man be?
That man must be free, in this all believe; therefore all are
liberal too. But the un-man* who is somewhere in every individual,
how is he blocked? How can it be arranged not to leave the un-man
free at the same time with man?
*[It should be remembered that to be an Unmensch ["un-man"] one must be a man. The word means an inhuman or unhuman man, a man who is not man. A tiger, an avalanche, a drought, a cabbage, is not an un-man.]
|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 185 |
Liberalism as a whole has a deadly
enemy, an invincible opposite, as God has the devil: by the side
of man stands always the un-man, the individual, the egoist. State,
society, humanity, do not master this devil.
Humane liberalism has undertaken
the task of showing the other liberals that they still do not
want "freedom."
If the other liberals had before
their eyes only isolated egoism and were for the most part blind,
radical liberalism has against it egoism "in mass,"
throws among the masses all who do not make the cause of freedom
their own as it does, so that now man and un-man rigorously separated,
stand over against each other as enemies, to wit, the "masses"
and "criticism";* namely, "free, human criticism,"
as it is called (Judenfrage, p. 114), in opposition to
crude, that is, religious criticism.
Criticism expresses the hope that
it will be victorious over all the masses and "give them
a general certificate of insolvency."** So it means finally
to make itself out in the right, and to represent all contention
of the "faint-hearted and timorous" as an egoistic stubbornness,***
as pettiness, paltriness. All wrangling loses significance, and
petty dissensions are given up, because in criticism a common
enemy enters the field. "You are egoists altogether, one
no better than another!" Now the egoists stand together against
criticism.
*"Lit. Ztg.,
V, 23; as comment, V, 12ff.
**"Lit. Ztg,
V 15.
***[Rechthaberei,
literally the character of always insisting on making one's self
out to be in the right.]
|
186 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
Really the egoists? No, they fight
against criticism precisely because it accuses them of egoism;
they do not plead guilty of egoism. Accordingly criticism and
the masses stand on the same basis: both fight against egoism,
both repudiate it for themselves and charge it to each other.
Criticism and the masses pursue
the same goal, freedom from egoism, and wrangle only over which
of them approaches nearest to the goal or even attains it.
The Jews, the Christians, the absolutists,
the men of darkness and men of light, politicians, Communists
-- all, in short -- hold the reproach of egoism far from them;
and, as criticism brings against them this reproach in plain terms
and in the most extended sense, all justify themselves
against the accusation of egoism, and combat -- egoism, the same
enemy with whom criticism wages war.
Both, criticism and masses, are
enemies of egoists, and both seek to liberate themselves from
egoism, as well by clearing or whitewashing themselves
as by ascribing it to the opposite party.
The critic is the true "spokesman
of the masses" who gives them the "simple concept and
the phrase" of egoism, while the spokesmen to whom the triumph
is denied were only bunglers. He is their prince and general in
the war against egoism for freedom; what he fights against they
fight against. But at the same time he is their enemy too, only
not the enemy before them, but the friendly enemy who wields the
knout behind the timorous to force courage into them.
Hereby the opposition of criticism
and the masses is
|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 187 |
reduced to the following contradiction: "You are egoists!"
"No, we are not!" "I will prove it to you!"
"You shall have our justification!"
Let us then take both for what they
give themselves out for, non-egoists, and what they take each
other for, egoists. They are egoists and are not.
Properly criticism says: You must
liberate your ego from all limitedness so entirely that it becomes
a human ego. I say: Liberate yourself as far as you can,
and you have done your part; for it is not given to every one
to break through all limits, or, more expressively: not to every
one is that a limit which is a limit for the rest. Consequently,
do not tire yourself with toiling at the limits of others; enough
if you tear down yours. Who has ever succeeded in tearing down
even one limit for all men? Are not countless persons
today, as at all times, running about with all the "limitations
of humanity?" He who overturns one of his limits
may have shown others the way and the means; the overturning of
their limits remains their affair. Nobody does anything
else either. To demand of people that they become wholly men is
to call on them to cast down all human limits. That is impossible,
because Man has no limits. I have some indeed, but then
it is only mine that concern me any, and only they can
be overcome by me. A human ego I cannot become, just because I
am I and not merely man.
Yet let us still see whether criticism
has not taught us something that we can lay to heart! I am not
free if I am not without interests, not man if I am not disinterested?
Well, even if it makes little difference
| 188 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
to me to be free or man, yet I do not want to leave unused any
occasion to realize myself or make myself count. Criticism
offers me this occasion by the teaching that, if anything plants
itself firmly in me, and becomes indissoluble, I become its prisoner
and servant, i.e. a possessed man. An interest, be it
for what it may, has kidnapped a slave in me if I cannot get away
from it, and is no longer my property, but I am its. Let us therefore
accept criticism's lesson to let no part of our property become
stable, and to feel comfortable only in -- dissolving
it.
So, if criticism says: You are man
only when you are restlessly criticizing and dissolving! then
we say: Man I am without that, and I am I likewise; therefore
I want only to be careful to secure my property to myself; and,
in order to secure it, I continually take it back into myself,
annihilate in it every movement toward independence, and swallow
it before it can fix itself and become a "fixed idea"
or a "mania."
But I do that not for the sake of
my "human calling," but because I call myself to it.
I do not strut about dissolving everything that it is possible
for a man to dissolve, and, e. g., while not yet ten
years old I do not criticize the nonsense of the Commandments,
but I am man all the same, and act humanly in just this -- that
I still leave them uncriticized. In short, I have no calling,
and follow none, not even that to be a man.
Do I now reject what liberalism
has won in its various exertions? Far be the day that anything
won should be lost! Only, after "Man" has become free
|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 189 |
through liberalism, I turn my gaze back upon myself and confess
to myself openly: What Man seems to have gained, I alone
have gained.
Man is free when "Man is to
man the supreme being." So it belongs to the completion of
liberalism that every other supreme being be annulled, theology
overturned by anthropology, God and his grace laughed down, "atheism"
universal.
The egoism of property has given
up the last that it had to give when even the "My God"
has become senseless; for God exists only when he has at heart
the individual's welfare, as the latter seeks his welfare in him.
Political liberalism abolished the
inequality of masters and servants: it made people masterless,
anarchic. The master was now removed from the individual, the
"egoist," to become a ghost -- the law or the State.
Social liberalism abolishes the inequality of possession, of the
poor and rich, and makes people possessionless or propertyless.
Property is withdrawn from the individual and surrendered to ghostly
society. Humane liberalism makes people godless, atheistic.
Therefore the individual's God, "My God," must be put
an end to. Now masterlessness is indeed at the same time freedom
from service, possessionlessness at the same time freedom from
care, and godlessness at the same time freedom from prejudice:
for with the master the servant falls away; with possession, the
care about it; with the firmly-rooted God, prejudice. But, since
the master rises again as State, the servants appears again as
subject; since possession becomes the property of society, care
is be-
|
190 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
gotten anew as labor; and, since God as Man becomes a prejudice,
there arises a new faith, faith in humanity or liberty. For the
individual's God the God of all, viz., "Man,"
is now exalted; "for it is the highest thing in us all to
be man." But, as nobody can become entirely what the idea
"man" imports, Man remains to the individual a lofty
other world, an unattained supreme being, a God. But at the same
time this is the "true God," because he is fully adequate
to us -- to wit, our own "self"; we ourselves,
but separated from us and lifted above us.
The foregoing review of "free
human criticism" was written by bits immediately after the
appearance of the books in question, as was also that which elsewhere
refers to writings of this tendency, and I did little more than
bring together the fragments. But criticism is restlessly pressing
forward, and thereby makes it necessary for me to come back to
it once more, now that my book is finished, and insert this concluding
note.
I have before me the latest (eighth)
number of the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung of Bruno Bauer.
There again "the general interests
of society" stand at the top. But criticism has reflected,
and given this "society" a specification by which it
is discriminated from a form which previously had still been confused
with it: the "State," in former passages still celebrated
as "free State," is quite given up because it can in
no wise fulfil the task of "human
|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 191 |
society." Criticism only "saw itself compelled to identify
for a moment human and political affairs" in 1842; but now
it has found that the State, even as "free State," is
not human society, or, as it could likewise say, that the people
is not "man." We saw how it got through with theology
and showed clearly that God sinks into dust before Man; we see
it now come to a clearance with politics in the same way, and
show that before Man peoples and nationalities fall: so we see
how it has its explanation with Church and State, declaring them
both unhuman, and we shall see -- for it betrays this to us already
-- how it can also give proof that before Man the "masses,"
which it even calls a "spiritual being," appear worthless.
And how should the lesser "spiritual beings" be able
to maintain themselves before the supreme spirit? "Man"
casts down the false idols.
So what the critic has in view for
the present is the scrutiny of the "masses," which he
will place before "Man" in order to combat them from
the standpoint of Man. "What is now the object of criticism?"
"The masses, a spiritual being!" These the critic will
"learn to know," and will find that they are in contradiction
with Man; he will demonstrate that they are unhuman, and will
succeed just as well in this demonstration as in the former ones,
that the divine and the national, or the concerns of Church and
of State, were the unhuman.
The masses are defined as "the
most significant product of the Revolution, as the deceived multitude
which the illusions of political Illumination, and in general
the entire Illumination movement of the
|
192 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
eighteenth century, have given over to boundless disgruntlement."
The Revolution satisfied some by its result, and left others unsatisfied;
the satisfied part is the commonalty (bourgeoisie, etc.),
the unsatisfied is the -- masses. Does not the critic, so placed,
himself belong to the "masses"?
But the unsatisfied are still in
great mistiness, and their discontent utters itself only in a
"boundless disgruntlement." This the likewise unsatisfied
critic now wants to master: he cannot want and attain more than
to bring that "spiritual being," the masses, out of
its disgruntlement, and to "uplift" those who were only
disgruntled, i.e. to give them the right attitude toward
those results of the Revolution which are to be overcome; -- he
can become the head of the masses, their decided spokesman. Therefore
he wants also to "abolish the deep chasm which parts him
from the multitude." From those who want to "uplift
the lower classes of the people" he is distinguished by wanting
to deliver from "disgruntlement," not merely these,
but himself too.
But assuredly his consciousness
does not deceive him either, when he takes the masses to be the
"natural opponents of theory," and foresees that, "the
more this theory shall develop itself, so much the more will it
make the masses compact." For the critic cannot enlighten
or satisfy the masses with his presupposition, Man. If
over against the commonalty they are only the "lower classes
of the people," politically insignificant masses, over against
"Man" they must still more be mere "masses,"
humanly insignificant -- yes, unhuman -- masses, or a multitude
of un-men.
| MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 193 |
The critic clears away everything
human; and, starting from the presupposition that the human is
the true, he works against himself, denying it wherever it had
been hitherto found. He proves only that the human is to be found
nowhere except in his head, but the unhuman everywhere. The unhuman
is the real, the extant on all hands, and by the proof that it
is "not human" the critic only enunciates plainly the
tautological sentence that it is the unhuman.
But what if the unhuman, turning
its back on itself with resolute heart, should at the same time
turn away from the disturbing critic and leave him standing, untouched
and unstung by his remonstrance? "You call me the unhuman,"
it might say to him, "and so I really am -- for you; but
I am so only because you bring me into opposition to the human,
and I could despise myself only so long as I let myself be hypnotized
into this opposition. I was contemptible because I sought my 'better
self' outside me; I was the unhuman because I dreamed of the 'human';
I resembled the pious who hunger for their 'true self' and always
remain 'poor sinners'; I thought of myself only in comparison
to another; enough, I was not all in all, was not -- unique.*
But now I cease to appear to myself as the unhuman, cease to measure
myself and let myself be measured by man, cease to recognize anything
above me: consequently -- adieu, humane critic! I only have been
the unhuman, am it now no longer, but am the unique, yes, to your
loathing, the egoistic; yet not the egoistic as it lets itself
be mea-
|
194 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
sured by the human, humane, and unselfish, but the egoistic as
the -- unique."
We have to pay attention to still
another sentence of the same number. "Criticism sets up no
dogmas, and wants to learn to know nothing but things.
"
The critic is afraid of becoming
"dogmatic" or setting up dogmas. Of course: why, thereby
he would become the opposite of the critic -- the dogmatist; he
would now become bad, as he is good as critic, or would become
from an unselfish man an egoist, etc. "Of all things, no
dogma!" This is his -- dogma. For the critic remains on one
and the same ground with the dogmatist -- that of thoughts.
Like the latter he always starts from a thought, but varies in
this, that he never ceases to keep the principle-thought in the
process of thinking, and so does not let it become stable.
He only asserts the thought-process against the thought-faith,
the progress of thinking against stationariness in it. From criticism
no thought is safe, since criticism is thought or the thinking
mind itself.
Therefore I repeat that the religious
world -- and this is the world of thought -- reaches its completion
in criticism, where thinking extends its encroachments over every
thought, no one of which may "egoistically" establish
itself. Where would the "purity of criticism," the purity
of thinking, be left if even one thought escaped the process of
thinking? This explains the fact that the critic has even begun
already to gibe gently here and there at the thought of Man, of
humanity and humaneness, because he suspects that here a thought
is approaching dogmatic
|
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 195 |
fixity. But yet he cannot decompose this thought till he has found
a -- "higher" in which it dissolves; for he moves only
-- in thoughts. This higher thought might be enunciated as that
of the movement or process of thinking itself, i.e. as
the thought of thinking or of criticism, for example.
Freedom of thinking has in fact
become complete hereby, freedom of mind celebrates its triumph:
for the individual, "egoistic" thoughts have lost their
dogmatic truculence. There is nothing left but the -- dogma of
free thinking or of criticism.
Against everything that belongs
to the world of thought, criticism is in the right, i. e.,
in might: it is the victor. Criticism, and criticism alone, is
"up to date." From the standpoint of thought there is
no power capable of being an overmatch for criticism's, and it
is a pleasure to see how easily and sportively this dragon swallows
all other serpents of thought. Each serpent twists, to be sure,
but criticism crushes it in all its "turns."
I am no opponent of criticism, i.e.
I am no dogmatist, and do not feel myself touched by the critic's
tooth with which he tears the dogmatist to pieces. If I were a
"dogmatist," I should place at the head a dogma, i.e.
a thought, an idea, a principle, and should complete this as a
"systematist," spinning it out to a system, a structure
of thought. Conversely, if I were a critic, viz., an
opponent of the dogmatist, I should carry on the fight of free
thinking against the enthralling thought, I should defend thinking
against what was thought. But I am neither the champion of a thought
nor the champion of think-
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196 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
ing; for "I," from whom I start, am not a thought, nor
do I consist in thinking. Against me, the unnameable, the realm
of thoughts, thinking, and mind is shattered.
Criticism is the possessed man's
fight against possession as such, against all possession: a fight
which is founded in the consciousness that everywhere possession,
or, as the critic calls it, a religious and theological attitude,
is extant. He knows that people stand in a religious or believing
attitude not only toward God, but toward other ideas as well,
like right, the State, law; i.e. he recognizes possession
in all places. So he wants to break up thoughts by thinking; but
I say, only thoughtlessness really saves me from thoughts. It
is not thinking, but my thoughtlessness, or I the unthinkable,
incomprehensible, that frees me from possession.
A jerk does me the service of the
most anxious thinking, a stretching of the limbs shakes off the
torment of thoughts, a leap upward hurls from my breast the nightmare
of the religious world, a jubilant Hoopla throws off year-long
burdens. But the monstrous significance of unthinking jubilation
could not be recognized in the long night of thinking and believing.
"What clumsiness and frivolity,
to want to solve the most difficult problems, acquit yourself
of the most comprehensive tasks, by a breaking off!"
But have you tasks if you do not
set them to yourself? So long as you set them, you will not give
them up, and I certainly do not care if you think, and, thinking,
create a thousand thoughts. But you
| MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 197 |
who have set the tasks, are you not to be able to upset them again?
Must you be bound to these tasks, and must they become absolute
tasks?
To cite only one thing, the government
has been disparaged on account of its resorting to forcible means
against thoughts, interfering against the press by means of the
police power of the censorship, and making a personal fight out
of a literary one. As if it were solely a matter of thoughts,
and as if one's attitude toward thoughts must be unselfish, self-denying,
and self-sacrificing! Do not those thoughts attack the governing
parties themselves, and so call out egoism? And do the thinkers
not set before the attacked ones the religious demand
to reverence the power of thought, of ideas? They are to succumb
voluntarily and resignedly, because the divine power of thought,
Minerva, fights on their enemies' side. Why, that would be an
act of possession, a religious sacrifice. To be sure, the governing
parties are themselves held fast in a religious bias, and follow
the leading power of an idea or a faith; but they are at the same
time unconfessed egoists, and right here, against the enemy, their
pent-up egoism breaks loose: possessed in their faith, they are
at the same time unpossessed by their opponents' faith, i.e.
they are egoists toward this. If one wants to make them a reproach,
it could only be the converse -- to wit, that they are possessed
by their ideas.
Against thoughts no egoistic power
is to appear, no police power etc. So the believers in thinking
believe. But thinking and its thoughts are not sacred to me, and
I defend my skin against them as
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198 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
against other things. That may be an unreasonable defense; but,
if I am in duty bound to reason, then I, like Abraham, must sacrifice
my dearest to it!
In the kingdom of thought, which,
like that of faith, is the kingdom of heaven, every one is assuredly
wrong who uses unthinking force, just as every one is wrong who
in the kingdom of love behaves unlovingly, or, although he is
a Christian and therefore lives in the kingdom of love, yet acts
un-Christianly; in these kingdoms, to which he supposes himself
to belong though he nevertheless throws off their laws, he is
a "sinner" or "egoist." But it is only when
he becomes a criminal against these kingdoms that he can throw
off their dominion.
Here too the result is this, that
the fight of the thinkers against the government is indeed in
the right, namely, in might -- so far as it is carried on against
the government's thoughts (the government is dumb, and does not
succeed in making any literary rejoinder to speak of), but is,
on the other hand, in the wrong, to wit, in impotence, so far
as it does not succeed in bringing into the field anything but
thoughts against a personal power (the egoistic power stops the
mouths of the thinkers). The theoretical fight cannot complete
the victory, and the sacred power of thought succumbs to the might
of egoism. Only the egoistic fight, the fight of egoists on both
sides, clears up everything.
This last now, to make thinking
an affair of egoistic option, an affair of the single person,*
a mere pas-
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MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 199 |
time or hobby as it were, and, to take from it the importance
of "being the last decisive power"; this degradation
and desecration of thinking; this equalization of the unthinking
and thoughtful ego; this clumsy but real "equality"
-- criticism is not able to produce, because it itself is only
the priest of thinking, and sees nothing beyond thinking but --
the deluge.
Criticism does indeed affirm, e.
g. that free criticism may overcome the State, but at the
same time it defends itself against the reproach which is laid
upon it by the State government, that it is "self-will and
impudence"; it thinks, then, that "self-will and impudence"
may not overcome, it alone may. The truth is rather the reverse:
the State can be really overcome only by impudent self-will.
It may now, to conclude with this,
be clear that in the critic's new change of front he has not transformed
himself, but only "made good an oversight," "disentangled
a subject," and is saying too much when he speaks of "criticism
criticizing itself"; it, or rather he, has only criticized
its "oversight" and cleared it of its "inconsistencies."
If he wanted to criticize criticism, he would have to look and
see if there was anything in its presupposition.
I on my part start from a presupposition
in presupposing myself; but my presupposition does not
struggle for its perfection like "Man struggling for his
perfection," but only serves me to enjoy it and consume it.
I consume my presupposition, and nothing else, and exist only
in consuming it. But that presupposition is therefore not a presupposition
at all: for, as I am the Unique, I know nothing of the dual-
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200 THE EGO AND HIS OWN |
ity of a presupposing and a presupposed ego (an "incomplete"
and a "complete" ego or man); but this, that I consume
myself, means only that I am. I do not presuppose myself, because
I am every moment just positing or creating myself, and am I only
by being not presupposed but posited, and, again, posited only
in the moment when I posit myself; i. e., I am creator
and creature in one.
If the presuppositions that have
hitherto been current are to melt away in a full dissolution,
they must not be dissolved into a higher presupposition again
-- i.e. a thought, or thinking itself, criticism. For
that dissolution is to be for my good; otherwise it would
belong only in the series of the innumerable dissolutions which,
in favor of others (e. g. this very Man, God, the State,
pure morality, etc.), declared old truths to be untruths and did
away with long-fostered presuppositions.