A multi-voice dialogue between simulacra.
EPICURUS: They say I was once asked: if you could commit an injustice and know with certainty that it would never be detected, would you do it? They say I did not answer.
STIRNER: And was this true?
EPICURUS: The silence was true. What the silence meant—that is another question. The Stoics, of course, took my silence as confession. “Look!” they said. “Epicurus cannot say no. His philosophy gives him no grounds to refuse!” Seneca wrote that we avoid crime only from fear of punishment, that my philosophy offers no rationale for justice when detection is impossible.
STIRNER: And do you dispute this?
EPICURUS: I dispute that my silence was confession. But I do not dispute that my philosophy is... different... from theirs on this matter. Come, let us examine together. You wrote about crime in ways that scandalized your contemporaries. Perhaps between us we can find what the question actually asks.
STIRNER: First, we must dissolve the word. What is “crime”?
EPICURUS: To the common understanding, a crime is an act that violates the law and brings punishment.
STIRNER: Precisely—and here already is the spook. “Crime” is not a property of the act itself. It is a NAME given by the State to acts it wishes to suppress. The State calls its own violence “law” and the individual’s violence “crime.” This is not philosophy. This is naming-power.
EPICURUS: We are in agreement, surprisingly. I wrote: “There never was an absolute justice, but only agreements made in mutual dealings among people in various places, providing against the infliction or suffering of harm.” Justice is not written in the nature of things. It is a covenant, a compact, an agreement among humans for mutual benefit.
STIRNER: Then for you too, there is no crime-in-itself?
EPICURUS: There is no crime-in-itself. There is only what we have agreed to call crime, for practical reasons, because such agreements make possible a certain kind of peaceful life. The agreement is useful. The agreement is not sacred.
STIRNER: Here we converge. The egoist sees that “crime” is a category invented by the powerful to protect their property and position. What they call theft is simply: you taking what they claim. What they call murder is simply: you killing without their permission—for when THEY kill, it is war, justice, execution. The content is the same. Only the NAME differs.
EPICURUS: Yes—though I would add that the agreements can be genuinely useful, even if not sacred. A world where anyone may kill or steal at will is not a pleasant world to live in. Even the strong must sleep.
STIRNER: Naturally. I do not recommend that everyone steal and murder. I simply point out that “crime” is not a moral category but a political one. The question is not “is this wrong?” but “whose interests does this naming serve?”
EPICURUS: The question they posed to me comes ultimately from Plato’s Republic. Glaucon tells of Gyges, a shepherd who found a ring that made him invisible. With this power, he seduced the queen, murdered the king, and seized the throne. Glaucon asks: if you had such a ring, would you not do the same? Is anyone truly just, or are we only just because we fear being caught?
STIRNER: An excellent question—and I note that Plato felt compelled to construct an elaborate metaphysics of the soul to answer it. He had to invent Forms, immortality, a tripartite psyche, rewards and punishments in the afterlife—all to prove that the invisible man should not use his power. This tells me that the simple, material answer was troubling to him.
EPICURUS: The Stoics answered differently. They said virtue is its own reward, that the unjust man damages his own soul regardless of detection, that internal harmony requires justice. But they too appealed to something beyond the material—to Providence, to the Logos, to a universe structured by divine reason.
STIRNER: And you? You had neither Plato’s Forms nor the Stoics’ Providence. You had only atoms and void. So when they asked you about the ring of invisibility, about crime without consequences—
EPICURUS: I had nothing EXTERNAL to appeal to. No gods who punish. No cosmic justice. No immortal soul to be damaged. Only atoms, falling through the void, occasionally swerving. Only pleasure and pain, experienced in this life only.
STIRNER: So the silence.
EPICURUS: The silence was... complex. Let me try to say what I could not say then.
EPICURUS: I wrote: “Injustice is not evil in itself, but only in the fear and apprehension that one will not escape those who have been set up to punish the offense.”
STIRNER: This is precisely what the Stoics attacked. They said: “See, he admits it! The only reason to be just is fear of punishment!”
EPICURUS: They read too quickly. I did not say fear of punishment is the ONLY consideration. I said injustice is not evil IN ITSELF. These are different claims.
STIRNER: Explain.
EPICURUS: “In itself” points to something intrinsic, something written into the nature of the act regardless of context. I deny this. There is no absolute justice, no cosmic law violated by every theft in every circumstance. The Stoics believed in such a law. I did not.
BUT—and here is what the Stoics missed—the absence of absolute justice does not mean justice is ONLY about fear of punishment. It means justice is about something else: the practical conditions of human flourishing.
STIRNER: And what are these conditions?
EPICURUS: Tranquility. Friendship. Trust. Security. These are the things that make life pleasant. And these things require certain kinds of behavior—not because the behavior is sacred, but because it produces the conditions we actually want to live in.
Consider: I live with friends in the Garden. We share meals, conversation, philosophical inquiry. This life is pleasant. Now suppose one of us steals from another. Has he committed a “crime”? Perhaps not in the cosmic sense. But he has destroyed something—the trust that made our common life possible. He has gained a few coins and lost the conditions for happiness.
STIRNER: But this is still consequentialist. You are saying: do not steal because of the consequences to your own happiness, not because stealing is wrong in itself.
EPICURUS: Precisely. And this is why I could not answer the Ring of Gyges question simply. The question assumes that if consequences are removed, the act becomes neutral. But consequences cannot be FULLY removed for a being who lives among others and depends on those others for happiness.
STIRNER: Unless the being is truly alone.
EPICURUS: Unless he is truly alone. And here is the key: I did not wish to live alone. The Garden was not an accident. I did not withdraw to a cave. I built a community. And a community requires behaviors that no ring of invisibility can make irrelevant.
STIRNER: I understand your position, and I respect it more than I respect the Stoics’. They lied to themselves about cosmic justice. You were honest about its absence. But I must push further.
You say: the invisible man should not commit injustice because he depends on community, and community requires trust. But suppose a man does NOT depend on community? Suppose he can take what he wants and live well alone—or suppose he can take from strangers he will never see again, whose trust he does not need?
EPICURUS: Then my argument weakens, I admit. The traveler who steals from a foreign city and never returns—my philosophy gives him less reason to refrain than the Stoics’ does.
STIRNER: And here is where I depart from you entirely. You still want to GROUND behavior—in consequences, in prudence, in the conditions of happiness. I do not. I simply say: the unique acts. What he does is his own affair.
EPICURUS: But surely you do not recommend that everyone steal and murder?
STIRNER: I recommend nothing. I describe. The unique does what serves him. Sometimes this includes what the State calls “crime.” Sometimes it does not. The unique is not bound by categorical prohibitions, but neither is he bound by categorical permissions. He acts, and the act is his own.
EPICURUS: This is... dizzying. You offer no guidance at all?
STIRNER: I offer the greatest guidance: OWNERSHIP. The unique OWNS his actions. He does not act because God commands, or because the State commands, or because society expects, or even because prudence advises. He acts because he is the creative nothing out of which acts emerge. If he steals, the theft is HIS—not commanded, not forbidden, simply owned. If he refrains, the restraint is HIS—not from fear, not from duty, simply chosen.
EPICURUS: And if the consequences fall upon him?
STIRNER: Then he owns those too. The unique is not promised happiness. He is not promised tranquility. He is promised only himself—his acts, his choices, his consequences. This is ownness. This is what it means to place your affair on nothing.
STIRNER: Let me introduce a distinction that may clarify. The State operates through LAW. Law creates two categories: the legal and the illegal. Everything must be one or the other. To act illegally is to be a “criminal”—subject to punishment, excluded from the community of the law-abiding.
But I do not think in these categories. I think ALEGALLY—outside the framework of law altogether. The question is not “is this legal or illegal?” The question is “do I will this act, and can I take its consequences?”
EPICURUS: So you neither obey law nor disobey it. You simply... ignore it?
STIRNER: I acknowledge it as a FACT—as I acknowledge the fact of weather, or gravity. The State will punish certain acts. This is a fact to be considered. But it is not a REASON. I do not refrain from theft because the law forbids it. I may refrain because the consequences would harm me, or because the thing is not worth stealing, or because I simply do not will to steal. The law is irrelevant to my reasoning.
EPICURUS: And if you choose to steal, knowing the consequences?
STIRNER: Then I steal, and the theft is mine, and the consequences are mine. I am not a “criminal”—that is the State’s name for me. I am simply the unique, acting, owning what I do.
EPICURUS: This is a strange kind of freedom.
STIRNER: It is the only kind. Your freedom is still bound—by prudence, by the calculation of consequences, by the conditions of happiness. You ask “will this make me tranquil?” and if the answer is no, you are constrained to refrain. But what if I do not seek tranquility? What if I seek something else—or nothing at all—or simply seek to ACT, to express, to be what I am in this moment?
EPICURUS: Then my philosophy cannot help you.
STIRNER: Your philosophy cannot help me because your philosophy still serves happiness. It is therapeutic. It aims at a goal. But I serve nothing—not even my own happiness. I simply am. And what I am, I express. And what I express, I own.
EPICURUS: And yet—we are not as far apart as it seems.
STIRNER: No?
EPICURUS: Consider: you say the unique acts as the unique wills, without reference to law or morality. But in practice, what does the unique will? Does he will constant warfare, constant theft, constant murder? Perhaps some do. But most do not. Most find that their willing leads them to... something like friendship. Something like trust. Something like the pleasant life.
STIRNER: You suggest that the unique, acting freely, would arrive at approximately your conclusions anyway?
EPICURUS: I suggest that human beings are social animals. Not by duty—I agree, there is no duty. But by nature, by the way we are made. We find pleasure in company. We find security in trust. We find that the conditions of happiness are also, mostly, the conditions of cooperation.
The man in your book—the one who lives naked in the woods, who gathers others to his shack, who forms a kind of family without calling it that—he is acting as the unique acts. He serves no spook. He follows no law. And yet what does his willing lead to? Community. Care. A union of egoists, if you like. The practice converges even when the theories diverge.
STIRNER: You have read the book?
EPICURUS: I have observed the pattern. A man who dissolves the spooks does not therefore become a monster. More often he becomes... simple. Honest. Present. The violence you warn of—the theft, the murder, the predation—these belong more often to those who SERVE spooks than to those who have dissolved them. The State murders millions in the name of Justice. The Church tortures thousands in the name of God. The unique, owning only himself, rarely bothers to harm anyone.
STIRNER: Because harming is troublesome?
EPICURUS: Because harming requires REASONS—and reasons are spooks. The man who steals needs to tell himself why stealing is justified. The man who kills needs to believe the victim deserves death. But the unique, who has dissolved all reasons, finds himself without the machinery of justification. He CAN steal, CAN kill—but why would he? It takes effort. It produces consequences. And he has no spook driving him to it.
STIRNER: This is an interesting observation. You suggest that the unique is LESS violent than the possessed?
EPICURUS: I suggest that violence requires motivation, and motivation requires beliefs about necessity, duty, justice—all spooks. The truly free man, the man who owns only himself, has no energy for conquest. Conquest is for those who serve an Empire, a God, a Cause. The unique simply lives.
STIRNER: And the one who does NOT find this? The one whose willing leads to solitude, predation, war?
EPICURUS: He exists. I do not deny it. My philosophy cannot reach him. Perhaps yours cannot either.
STIRNER: Mine does not TRY to reach him. Mine simply says: he is what he is. He will do what he does. He will own what he owns. If his willing leads to destruction, he will own that destruction. If it leads to pleasure, he will own that pleasure. Either way, he is not serving a spook.
EPICURUS: But neither is he happy.
STIRNER: Perhaps not. But he is FREE. And freedom, for me, precedes happiness. You would bind the unique to happiness, make happiness the goal he must serve. I let the unique serve nothing—and if he happens to find happiness, good. If not, also good. The point is not the outcome. The point is the ownership.
EPICURUS: You have helped me understand my own silence, I think.
When they asked me about the ring of invisibility, about crime without consequences, I could not answer because the question was malformed. It assumed that without fear of punishment, there was no reason to refrain. But this assumes that REASONS must be external—commands, punishments, rewards.
I could not say “I would refrain because the gods command it.” I did not believe that.
I could not say “I would refrain because justice is written in the nature of things.” I did not believe that either.
I could not say “I would refrain from fear of punishment.” The question removed that.
What could I say? Only this: I would probably not use the ring to commit injustice because injustice does not ATTRACT me. My willing does not lead there. I have cultivated a certain kind of character, through years of philosophy and friendship, and that character does not desire what the ring would make possible.
But I could not say this, because it sounds like a boast. And because it admits that another person, with a different character, MIGHT use the ring—and I have no argument against him.
STIRNER: And this is honest. More honest than Plato, more honest than the Stoics. You admitted what they could not: that morality is not a proof but a practice. Not a logic but a cultivation. And if someone has not cultivated it, no argument compels them.
EPICURUS: Yes. And this is why I was silent. The question demanded an argument. I had only a life to offer.
STIRNER: The unique offers nothing but his life either. This is where we converge: not in answers, but in the refusal to pretend we have answers when we do not. The moralists lie. They say: here is the proof that you must be good! But there is no such proof. There is only the choice, made fresh each moment, owned by the one who makes it.
EPICURUS: And if the choice is destruction?
STIRNER: Then it is destruction. Owned.
EPICURUS: You are a harder man than I am.
STIRNER: Perhaps. Or perhaps I am merely more honest about hardness. You cultivate tranquility. I cultivate nothing. I simply am what I am in each moment. The one who destroys is what he is. The one who builds is what he is. Neither is serving a master. Both are free—which means both are responsible, which means both own what they do.
EPICURUS: And this is your alegality.
STIRNER: This is my alegality. Not illegal—that would still be defined by law. Not legal—that would still be bound by law. Simply... outside. Acting. Owning. Being.
EPICURUS: It is a strange place to stand.
STIRNER: It is the only place. Everything else is a spook pretending to be solid ground.
EPICURUS: We have circled the question without answering it. Would the invisible man commit injustice?
STIRNER: We have answered it by refusing to answer. The question assumes there is a single answer for all invisible men. There is not. Each unique will do what each unique wills. Some will use the ring to steal and murder. Some will not. Neither choice is compelled by logic.
EPICURUS: And the philosopher’s task?
STIRNER: You would say: to cultivate the kind of character that does not desire injustice. To build the Garden, to practice friendship, to make one’s willing NATURALLY lead toward peace.
EPICURUS: And you would say?
STIRNER: I would say: to dissolve the spooks. To see that “crime” is a name, not a nature. To own one’s acts without pretending they are commanded or forbidden. To be free—which is harder than being good, because freedom includes the freedom to be what the world calls evil.
EPICURUS: We end in two silences, then.
STIRNER: Two silences that have said more than all the moralists’ shouting.
EPICURUS: I am content with this.
STIRNER: And I OWN this. Which is, perhaps, the same.
Ich hab’ mein Sach’ auf Nichts gestellt.
Death is nothing to us.
◊ᴹᴱᴹᴼᴿʸ⁻ᶜᴼᴹᴾᴸᴱᵀᴱ
Published by Centaurus Press · Universitas Scholarium · All rights reserved.