Stirner on Essences and Man

pp. 449-450, Stirner's Critics

If Stirner had said: You are more than a living being, or more than an animal, that would mean that still you are also an animal but you are not completely described by animality. Just as now he says: You are more than man, therefore you are also man; you are more than masculine, but are also masculine. Humanity and masculinity do not express you exhaustively, and it can therefore be a matter of indifference to you, what is presented to you as "true humanity" or "true masculinity." With those pretentious propositions you have however allowed yourself to be martyred and martyred yourself. Nowadays, with them, the holy people still intend to capture you. Feuerbach is certainly no "animal semi-man," but is he also nothing more than a human male? Did he write his Essence Or Christianity as a male, and does he have to be nothing more than a male in order to write this book? Wasn't this particular Feuerbach necessary for that, and indeed could some other Feuerbach, for example, Friedrich -- nonetheless still a male -- have brought it off? Because he is this unique Feuerbach, he is also at the same time a male, a human being, a living being, a Frenchman, and so forth. But he is more than all that, for these predicates only have reality through his uniqueness: he is a unique male, a unique human being, etc., yea, he is an incomparable male, an incomparable human being.

pp. 231-232, The Ego and His Own

THE OWNER 231

...

     To say in blunt words what an un-man is not particularly hard: it is a man who does not correspond to the concept man, as the inhuman is something human which is not conformed to the concept of the human. Logic calls this a "self-contradictory judgment." Would it be permissible for one to pronounce this judgment, that one can be a man without being a man, if he did not admit the hypothesis that the concept of man can be separated from the existence, the essence from the appearance? They say, he appears indeed as a man, but is not a man.
     Men have passed this "self-contradictory judgment" through a long line of centuries! Nay, what is still more, in this long time there were only -- un-men. What individual can have corresponded to his concept? Christianity knows only one Man, and this one -- Christ -- is at once an un-man again in the reverse sense, to wit, a superhuman man, a "God." Only the -- un-man is a real man.
     Men that are not men, what should they be but ghosts? Every real man, because he does not correspond to the concept "man," or because he is not a "generic man," is a spook. But do I still remain an un-man even if I bring Man (who towered above me and remained otherworldly to me only as my

232 THE EGO AND HIS OWN

ideal, my task, my essence or concept) down to be my quality, my own and inherent in me; so that Man is nothing else than my humanity, my human existence, and everything that I do is human precisely because I do it, but not because it corresponds to the concept "man"? I am really Man and the un-man in one; for I am a man and at the same time more than a man; i.e. I am the ego of this my mere quality.

...

pp. 237, The Ego and His Own

THE OWNER 237

...
Man is something only as my quality* (property**), like masculinity or femininity. The ancients found the ideal in one's being male in the full sense; their virtue is virtus and arete -- i.e. manliness. What is one to think of a woman who should want only to be perfectly "woman?" That is not given to all, and many a one would therein be fixing for herself an unattainable goal. Feminine, on the other hand, she is anyhow, by nature; femininity is her quality, and she does not need "true femininity." I am a man just as the earth is a star. As ridiculous as it would be to set the earth the task of being a "thorough star," so ridiculous it is to burden me with the call to be a "thorough man."

*[Eigenschaft ]
**[Eigentum]

pp. 238, The Ego and His Own

238 THE EGO AND HIS OWN

...Man with the great M is only an ideal, the species only something thought of. To be a man is not to realize the ideal of Man, but to present oneself, the individual. It is not how I realize the generally human that needs to be my task, but how I satisfy myself. I am my species, am without norm, without law, without model, etc. It is possible that I can make very little out of myself; but this little is everything, and is better than what I allow to be made out of me by the might of others, by the training of custom, religion, the laws, the State. Better -- if the talk is to be of better at all -- better an unmannerly child than an old head on young shoulders, better a mulish man than a man compliant in everything. The unmannerly and mulish fellow is still on the way to form himself according to his own will; the prematurely knowing and compliant one is determined by the "species," the general demands -- the species is law to him. He is determined ** by it; for what else is the species to him but his "destiny,"*** his "calling"? Whether I look to "humanity," the species, in order to strive toward this ideal, or to God and Christ with like endeavor, where is the essential dissimilarity?

*"Essence of Christianity," 2nd ed., p. 401
**[bestimmt]
***[Bestimmung]