Close of the Leipzig Council

• • Preface
  • I. Feuerbach: Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlooks
  • The Leipzig Council
  • II. Saint Bruno
  • III. Saint Max
  • Close of the Leipzig Council

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After driving all their opponents from the Council, Saint Bruno and Saint Sancho, also called Max, conclude an eternal alliance and sing the following touching duet, amicably nodding their heads to one another like two mandarins.

Saint Sancho.

“The critic is the true spokesman of the mass.... He is its sovereign and general in the war of liberation against egoism.” (The book, p. 187.)

Saint Bruno.

“Max Stirner is the leader and commander-in-chief of the Crusaders” (against criticism). “At the same time he is the most vigorous and courageous of all fighters.” (Wigand, [Bruno Bauer, “Charakteristik Ludwig Feuerbachs"] p. 124.)

Saint Sancho.

“We pass on now to placing political and social liberalism before the tribunal of humane or critical liberalism” (i.e., critical criticism). (The book, p. 163.)

Saint Bruno.

“Confronted by the unique and his property, the political liberal, who desires to break down self-will, and the social liberal, who desires to destroy property, both collapse. They collapse under the critical” (i.e., stolen from criticism) “knife of the unique.” (Wigand, p. 124.)

Saint Sancho.

“No thought is safe from criticism, because criticism is the thinking mind itself ... Criticism, or rather he” (i.e., Saint Bruno). (The book, pp. 195, 199.)

Saint Bruno (interrupts him, making a boss).

“The critical liberal alone ... does not fall [before] criticism because he himself is [the critic].” [Wigand, p. 124.]

Saint Sancho.

“Criticism, and criticism alone, is abreast of the times.... Among social theories, criticism is indisputably the most perfect.... In it the Christian principle of love, the true social principle, reaches its purest expression, and the last possible experiment is made to release people from exclusiveness [and] repulsion; it is a struggle against egoism in its simplest and therefore its most rigid form.” (The book, p. 177.)

Saint Bruno.

“This ego is ... the completion and culminating point of a past historical epoch. The unique is the last refuge in the old world, the last hiding-place from which the old world can deliver its attacks” on critical criticism....... This ego is the most extreme, the most powerful and most mighty egoism of the old world” (i.e., of Christianity).... “This ego is substance in its most rigid rigidity.” (Wigand, p. 124.)

After this cordial dialogue, the two great church fathers dissolve the Council. Then they silently shake hands. The unique “forgets himself in sweet self-oblivion” without, however, getting “completely lost”, and the critic “smiles” three times and then “Irresistibly, confident of victory and victorious, pursues his path”.