{"id":243885,"date":"2024-08-21T14:03:48","date_gmt":"2024-08-21T19:03:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mindseyemag.com\/magazine\/?p=243885"},"modified":"2026-05-02T05:07:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T10:07:32","slug":"the-philosophy-of-egoism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mindseyemag.com\/magazine\/the-philosophy-of-egoism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Philosophy of Egoism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Moralism reaches its acme in the craze for a supposed perfection the opposite way from individuality. Even when philosophy has pronounced that its aim is to lead man to find himself, the spirit of perversion is such that it takes Man, the general idea of the species, as an ideal for the individual and teaches individuals to torture their personal mind in order to conform to the idea formed about the species. Thus it is said our “mission” is to be true men, more perfect men, more perfect women. This notion prompts to imitation of what has been exemplified in others, not to development of that which is most genuinely myself or yourself. If I am to be a conforming man, striving to be something set before me, I cannot be I. As Stirner remarks, “every man who is not deformed is a true or perfect man, but each one is more than this. He is this unique man.'” What he is that another is not, we cannot say in advance of knowing him. Egoism is this: that this man acts out himself. Every woman may be assumed to be a true or perfect woman, and she is cheated if taught to assume otherwise. That is not the aim; that is the starting point with us Egoists. Be easy about perfection of Man. The individual needs first to be free from any yoke or assigned task, in order to normally possess, enjoy, develop and exhibit himself or herself. I shall develop the species, if I have nothing more distinctive to develop. A woman will be merely a “true and perfect woman” if she has nothing of her own, only the species. The very moment, however, that she knows herself to be already a “true and perfect woman,” as the zero or horizon of individuality, that moment is the individual energy set free to work out whatever it takes pleasure in,–or as free as conscious reflection can make us while old habits and affections persist in some degree. To come to ourselves, to find ourselves, is to know that what we have of the species is ours, so far as it suits us to keep it and that we have neither obligation nor mission but what each one may give himself.
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