DJ2000
Member
- Apr 23, 2020
- 51
It's a major point in Stirner's book "The Individual and his property" that the tendencies of Old School Christianity were not eliminate by the enlightenment but simply specialized, and one of his applications to this was our attitude towards life, death and suicide:
"We stand at the boundary of a period. The world hitherto took thought for nothing but the gain of life, took care for—life. For whether all activity is put on the stretch for the life of this world or of the other, for the temporal or for the eternal, whether one hank[Pg 426]ers for "daily bread" ("Give us our daily bread") or for "holy bread" ("the true bread from heaven"; "the bread of God, that comes from heaven and gives life to the world"; "the bread of life," John 6), whether one takes care for "dear life" or for "life to eternity,"—this does not change the object of the strain and care, which in the one case as in the other shows itself to be life. Do the modern tendencies announce themselves otherwise? People now want nobody to be embarrassed for the most indispensable necessaries of life, but want every one to feel secure as to these; and on the other hand they teach that man has this life to attend to and the real world to adapt himself to, without vain care for another.
Let us take up the same thing from another side. When one is anxious only to live, he easily, in this solicitude, forgets the enjoyment of life. If his only concern is for life, and he thinks "if I only have my dear life," he does not apply his full strength to using, i. e. enjoying, life. But how does one use life? In using it up, like the candle, which one uses in burning it up. One uses life, and consequently himself the living one, in consuming it and himself. Enjoyment of life is using life up."
Stirner did not believe in any kind of "Objective Self Interest" unlike Rands "Objectivist" Egoism, and instead followed his own Subjective Egoism, wherein he sees the whole of reality, his own mind and his own life as his playthings. For Stirner this meant using his wife's inheritance to start a milk delivery company which went bankrupt because he forgot to advertise it then spend the rest of his life running from creditors and eventually dying alone in Berlin from an insect bite, but there's no evidence that Stirner regretted any of it. For he was the stirn. Nonetheless, he provides a defense of suicide based on this new perspective on life, for those of us who cannot live up to the Stirn's Legacy of Epicness.
"In short, one has a calling in life, a task in life; one has something to realize and produce by his life, a something for which our life is only means and implement, a something that is worth more than this life, a something to which one owes his life. One has a God who asks a living sacrifice. Only the rudeness of human sacrifice has been lost with time; human sacrifice itself has remained unabated, and criminals hourly fall sacrifices to justice, and we "poor sinners" slay our own selves as sacrifices for "the human essence," the "idea of mankind," "humanity," and whatever the idols or gods are called besides.
But, because we owe our life to that something, therefore—this is the next point—we have no right to take it from us.
The conservative tendency of Christianity does not permit thinking of death otherwise than with the purpose to take its sting from it and—live on and preserve oneself nicely. The Christian lets everything happen and come upon him if he—the arch-Jew—can only haggle and smuggle himself into heaven; he must not kill himself, he must only—preserve himself and work at the "preparation of a future abode." Conservatism or "conquest of death" lies at his heart; "the last enemy that is abolished is death." "Christ has taken the power from death and brought life and imperishable being to light by the gospel." "Imperishableness," stability...
"The moral man acts in the service of an end or an idea: he makes himself the tool of the idea of the good, as the pious man counts it his glory to be a tool or instrument of God. To await death is what the moral commandment postulates as the good; to give it to oneself is immoral and bad: suicide finds no excuse before the judgment-seat of morality. If the religious man forbids it because "you have not given yourself life, but God, who alone can also take it from you again" (as if, even talking in this conception, God did not take it from me just as much when I kill myself as when a tile from the roof, or a hostile bullet, fells me; for he would have aroused the resolution of death in me too!), the moral man forbids it because I owe my life to the fatherland, etc., "because I do not know whether I may not yet accomplish good by my life." Of course, for in me good loses a tool, as God does an instrument. If I am immoral, the good is served in my amendment; if I am "ungodly," God has joy in my penitence. Suicide, therefore, is ungodly as well as nefarious. If one whose standpoint is religiousness takes his own life, he acts in forgetfulness of God; but, if the suicide's standpoint is morality, he acts in forgetfulness of duty, immorally...
"What holds good of piety and morality will necessarily apply to humanity also, because one owes his life likewise to man, mankind or the species. Only when I am under obligation to no being is the maintaining of life—my affair. "A leap from this bridge makes me free!"...
"A man is "called" to nothing, and has no "calling," no "destiny," as little as a plant or a beast has a "calling.""
All quotes are from "The Individual and his property," Second Part, Chapter 2 :3.
"We stand at the boundary of a period. The world hitherto took thought for nothing but the gain of life, took care for—life. For whether all activity is put on the stretch for the life of this world or of the other, for the temporal or for the eternal, whether one hank[Pg 426]ers for "daily bread" ("Give us our daily bread") or for "holy bread" ("the true bread from heaven"; "the bread of God, that comes from heaven and gives life to the world"; "the bread of life," John 6), whether one takes care for "dear life" or for "life to eternity,"—this does not change the object of the strain and care, which in the one case as in the other shows itself to be life. Do the modern tendencies announce themselves otherwise? People now want nobody to be embarrassed for the most indispensable necessaries of life, but want every one to feel secure as to these; and on the other hand they teach that man has this life to attend to and the real world to adapt himself to, without vain care for another.
Let us take up the same thing from another side. When one is anxious only to live, he easily, in this solicitude, forgets the enjoyment of life. If his only concern is for life, and he thinks "if I only have my dear life," he does not apply his full strength to using, i. e. enjoying, life. But how does one use life? In using it up, like the candle, which one uses in burning it up. One uses life, and consequently himself the living one, in consuming it and himself. Enjoyment of life is using life up."
Stirner did not believe in any kind of "Objective Self Interest" unlike Rands "Objectivist" Egoism, and instead followed his own Subjective Egoism, wherein he sees the whole of reality, his own mind and his own life as his playthings. For Stirner this meant using his wife's inheritance to start a milk delivery company which went bankrupt because he forgot to advertise it then spend the rest of his life running from creditors and eventually dying alone in Berlin from an insect bite, but there's no evidence that Stirner regretted any of it. For he was the stirn. Nonetheless, he provides a defense of suicide based on this new perspective on life, for those of us who cannot live up to the Stirn's Legacy of Epicness.
"In short, one has a calling in life, a task in life; one has something to realize and produce by his life, a something for which our life is only means and implement, a something that is worth more than this life, a something to which one owes his life. One has a God who asks a living sacrifice. Only the rudeness of human sacrifice has been lost with time; human sacrifice itself has remained unabated, and criminals hourly fall sacrifices to justice, and we "poor sinners" slay our own selves as sacrifices for "the human essence," the "idea of mankind," "humanity," and whatever the idols or gods are called besides.
But, because we owe our life to that something, therefore—this is the next point—we have no right to take it from us.
The conservative tendency of Christianity does not permit thinking of death otherwise than with the purpose to take its sting from it and—live on and preserve oneself nicely. The Christian lets everything happen and come upon him if he—the arch-Jew—can only haggle and smuggle himself into heaven; he must not kill himself, he must only—preserve himself and work at the "preparation of a future abode." Conservatism or "conquest of death" lies at his heart; "the last enemy that is abolished is death." "Christ has taken the power from death and brought life and imperishable being to light by the gospel." "Imperishableness," stability...
"The moral man acts in the service of an end or an idea: he makes himself the tool of the idea of the good, as the pious man counts it his glory to be a tool or instrument of God. To await death is what the moral commandment postulates as the good; to give it to oneself is immoral and bad: suicide finds no excuse before the judgment-seat of morality. If the religious man forbids it because "you have not given yourself life, but God, who alone can also take it from you again" (as if, even talking in this conception, God did not take it from me just as much when I kill myself as when a tile from the roof, or a hostile bullet, fells me; for he would have aroused the resolution of death in me too!), the moral man forbids it because I owe my life to the fatherland, etc., "because I do not know whether I may not yet accomplish good by my life." Of course, for in me good loses a tool, as God does an instrument. If I am immoral, the good is served in my amendment; if I am "ungodly," God has joy in my penitence. Suicide, therefore, is ungodly as well as nefarious. If one whose standpoint is religiousness takes his own life, he acts in forgetfulness of God; but, if the suicide's standpoint is morality, he acts in forgetfulness of duty, immorally...
"What holds good of piety and morality will necessarily apply to humanity also, because one owes his life likewise to man, mankind or the species. Only when I am under obligation to no being is the maintaining of life—my affair. "A leap from this bridge makes me free!"...
"A man is "called" to nothing, and has no "calling," no "destiny," as little as a plant or a beast has a "calling.""
All quotes are from "The Individual and his property," Second Part, Chapter 2 :3.
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