Part 12 (2/2)
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.”[95]
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,” 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[96] 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 _lords.h.i.+p_ (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,” commands 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 fellows.h.i.+p in which their inequalities in other respects should become ”non-essential”; 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 G.o.d we all believe”).
There cannot be for men anything more fellowly or more equal than Man himself, and in this fellows.h.i.+p 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 fellows.h.i.+p decay and ruin become most glaring. In a more limited fellows.h.i.+p 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 ”G.o.d has become man” is now followed by the other, ”Man has become I.” This is _the human I_. 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 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,” such as _e. g._ a Jew or a Christian. Well, I do not count myself as anything especial, but as _unique_.[97] 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 anything, neither the proprietor nor the ragam.u.f.fin, 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.
In humane liberalism ragam.u.f.finhood is completed. We must first come down to the most ragam.u.f.fin-like, most poverty-stricken condition if we want to arrive at _ownness_, for we must strip off everything alien. But nothing seems more ragam.u.f.fin-like than naked--Man.
It is more than ragam.u.f.finhood, however, when I throw away Man too because I feel that he too is alien to me and that I can make no pretensions on that basis. This is no longer mere ragam.u.f.finhood: because even the last rag has fallen off, here stands real nakedness, denudation of everything alien. The ragam.u.f.fin has stripped off ragam.u.f.finhood itself, and therewith has ceased, to be what he was, a ragam.u.f.fin.
I am no longer a ragam.u.f.fin, 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[98] who is somewhere in every individual, how is he blocked? flow can it be arranged not to leave the un-man free at the same time with man?
Liberalism as a whole has a deadly enemy, an invincible opposite, as G.o.d 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 ma.s.s,” throws among the ma.s.ses 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 ”ma.s.ses” and ”criticism”;[99] namely, ”free, human criticism,” as it is called (”_Judenfrage_,” p. 114), in opposition to crude, _e. g._ religious, criticism.
Criticism expresses the hope that it will be victorious over all the ma.s.ses and ”give them a general certificate of insolvency.”[100] 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_,[101] 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.
Really the egoists? No, they fight against criticism precisely because it accuses them of egoism; they do not plead guilty to egoism.
Accordingly criticism and the ma.s.ses stand on the same basis: both fight against egoism, both repudiate it for themselves and charge it to each other.
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