Month: April 2018

Uncategorized

Voltairine de Cleyre, “Justice is Blind” (1891)

April 4, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
Aye, and deaf and dumb in Kansas! For what, save utter deafness to all justice, could lead a judge to so far forget the dignity of authority as to sentence any living being without first asking the question: “Have you anything to say which sentence should not be pronounced against you?” True, the question is often a farce. I venture to say that not once in five hundred times is the sentence altered thereby; but true also we are treading upon dangerous times when judges no longer respect even the form of justice.

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Voltairine de Cleyre, “Courting” (1890)

April 4, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third] COURTING Philadelphia, Pa., Sept. 15, ’90. A friend and myself undertook that serious affair the other day, and the results being peculiar I want to take the public into my confidence. People usually prefer privacy on such occasions, but we got into a roomful all intent on the same errand. Specified, the errand was this: The famous “Kreutzer Sonata” was to be tried. Tolstoi, voice by Robert Arundel, was to justify himself before Judge Arnold; the prosecuting attorney, over the heads of a few poor itinerant booksellers, was to tear the asceticism of Galilee in rags, and the public […]
Dyer D. Lum

Dyer D. Lum (1839-1893)

April 4, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
Links Dyer D. Lum in the Boston Investigator (1857–1861) Dyer D. Lum in the Banner of Light (1867–1872) Dyer D. Lum in The Evolution (1877–1878) Works by Dyer D. Lum Dyer D. Lum, “Cure Meslier,” The Boston Investigator 27, no. 5 (May 27, 1857): 2. Dyer D. Lum, “Infidels Should Avow Their Sentiments,” The Boston Investigator 27, no. 11 (July 8, 1857): 1. Dyer D. Lum, “The First Christians,” The Boston Investigator 27, no. 36 (December 30, 1857): 1. [letter] – Boston Investigator, (Boston, MA) Wednesday, November 14, 1860; pg. 237; Vol. 30, Issue 30; Dyer D. Lum, “Axioms,” The […]
From the Archives

Dyer D. Lum in the “Boston Investigator”

April 4, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third] To A. C. Middleton:—I have read your communication in the Investigator of the 13th inst., requesting information about Meslier, other than that given by Voltaire, and will relate what has fallen in my reach. Naigeon, in his “Ancient and Modern Philosophy,” under the head “Meslier,” after giving a brief account of his life and an extract from his “Testament,” blames Voltaire for not publishing the whole of Meslier’s work. Your remark, that “this extract is Deistical,” refers only to the first part of his work. The second part, that Naigeon accused Voltaire of suppressing, was Atheistical. “Nobody had ever […]
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Dyer D. Lum on the Verge (1877-1878)

April 4, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third_last] I’ve been back at work on archiving the works of Dyer D. Lum, this time focusing primarily on his poems, but one thing always seems to lead to another. In the process, I found two essays, a short note, a long review essay and a poem by Lum in a periodical called The Evolution. Comte’s positivism seems to have been one of the interests of the contributors, who included Modern Times resident Henry Edger, and, indeed, we find Lum himself preaching the positivist gospel himself. Even more than Edger, however, his reading of Comte seems ready to become an […]
Glossary

Authority (Language of)

April 1, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur
[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 10px”] In societies where authority is the dominant principle, we can expect to find that the language of authority has become ubiquitous, often adapted to describe relationships in which authority, hierarchy, etc. play no role even in existing societies. This tendency has presented difficulties for anarchists, who wish to speak in the language of the societies of which they are a part, but wish to express ideas that break with the dominant principles of those societies. That has led to a certain amount of wordplay and what we might now call a deconstructive tendency in anarchist […]