The Ego and Its Own

Part 2, Chapter 3 : The Unique One
The Unique One Pre-Christian and Christian times pursue opposite goals; the former wants to idealize the real, the latter to realize the ideal; the former seeks the "holy spirit," the latter the "glorified body." Hence the former closes with insensitiveness to the real, with "contempt for the world"; the latter will end with the casting off of the ideal, with "contempt for the spirit." The opposition of the real and the ideal is an irreconcilable one, and the one can never become the other: if the ideal became the real, it would no longer be the ideal; and, if the real became the ideal, the ideal alone would be, but not at all the real. The opposition of the two is not to be vanquished otherwise than if some one annihilates both. Only in this "some one," the third party, does the opposition find its end; otherwise idea and reality will ever fail to coincide. The idea cannot be so realized as to remain idea, but is realized only when it dies as idea; and it is the... (From : WikiSource.)

Part 2, Chapter 2, Section 3 : My Self-Enjoyment
My Self-Enjoyment 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 hankers 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... (From : WikiSource.)

Part 2, Chapter 2, Section 2 : My Intercourse
My Intercourse In society the human demand at most can be satisfied, while the egoistic must always come short. Because it can hardly escape anybody that the present shows no such living interest in any question as in the "social," one has to direct his gaze especially to society. Indeed, if the interest felt in it were less passionate and dazzled, people would not so much, in looking at society, lose sight of the individuals in it, and would recognize that a society cannot become new so long as those who form and constitute it remain the old ones. If, for example, there was to arise in the Jewish people a society which should spread a new faith over the earth, these apostles could in no case remain Pharisees. As you are, so you present yourself, so you behave toward men: a hypocrite as a hypocrite, a Christian as a Christian. Therefore the character of a society is determined by the character of its members: they are its creators. So much at least one mu... (From : WikiSource.)

Part 2, Chapter 2, Section 1 : My Power
My Power Right 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 th... (From : WikiSource.)

Part 2, Chapter 2 : The Owner
The Owner I - do I come to myself and mine through liberalism? Whom does the liberal look upon as his equal? Man! Be only man - and that you are anyway - and the liberal calls you his brother. He asks very little about your private opinions and private follies, if only he can espy "Man" in you. But, as he takes little heed of what you are privatim - indeed, in a strict following out of his principle sets no value at all on it - he sees in you only what you are generatim. In other words, he sees in you, not you, but the species; not Tom or Jim, but Man; not the real or unique one, but your essence or your concept; not the bodily man, but the spirit. As Hans you would not be his equal, because he is Kunz, therefore not Hans; as man you are the same that he is. And, since as Hans you virtually do not exist at all for him (so far, namely, as he is a liberal and not unconsciously an egoist), he has really made "brother-love" very easy for himself: he loves in... (From : WikiSource.)

Humane Liberalism
Humane Liberalism As liberalism is completed in self-criticizing, critical liberalism - in which the critic remains a liberal and does not go beyond the principle of liberalism, Man - this may distinctively be named after Man and called the "humane." The laborer is counted as the most material and egoistical man. He does nothing at all for humanity, does everything for himself, for his welfare. The commonalty, because it proclaimed the freedom of Man only as to his birth, had to leave him in the claws of the un-human man (the egoist) for the rest of life. Hence under the regime of political liberalism egoism has an immense field for free utilization. The laborer will utilize society for his egoistic ends as the commoner does the state. You ... (From : WikiSource.)

Men of the Old Time and the New
Men of the Old Time and the New How each of us developed himself, what he strove for, attained, or missed, what objects he formerly pursued and what plans and wishes his heart is now set on, what transformation his views have experienced, what perturbations his principles - in short, how he has today become what yesterday or years ago he was not - this he brings out again from his memory with more or less ease, and he feels with especial vividness what changes have taken place in himself when he has before his eyes the unrolling of another's life. Let us therefore look into the activities our forefathers busied themselves with.

Postscript 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 confu... (From : WikiSource.)

The Possessed
The Possessed Have you ever seen a spirit? "No, not I, but my grandmother." Now, you see, it's just so with me too; I myself haven't seen any, but my grandmother had them running between her feet all sorts of ways, and out of confidence in our grandmothers' honesty we believe in the existence of spirits. But had we no grandfathers then, and did they not shrug their shoulders every time our grandmothers told about their ghosts? Yes, those were unbelieving men who have harmed our good religion much, those rationalists! We shall feel that! What else lies at the bottom of this warm faith in ghosts, if not the faith in "the existence of spiritual beings in general," and is not this latter itself disastrously unsettled if saucy men of the underst... (From : WikiSource.)

The Moderns
The Moderns If any man be in Christ, he is a newcreature; the old is passed away, behold, all is become new. As it was said above, "To the ancients the world was a truth," we must say here, "To the moderns the spirit was a truth"; but here, as there, we must not omit the supplement, "a truth whose untruth they tried to get back of, and at last they really do." A course similar to that which antiquity took may be demonstrated in Christianity also, in that the understanding was held a prisoner under the dominion of the Christian dogmas up to the time preparatory to the Reformation, but in the pre-Reformation century asserted itself sophistically and played heretical pranks with all tenets of the faith. And the talk then was, especially in Ita... (From : WikiSource.)