Blog - Page 12 of 287 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

P.-J. Proudhon, “Revolutionary Ideas” (1849)

March 17, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur

These draft translations are part of on ongoing effort to establish an edition of Proudhon’s works in English. They are very much a first step, as there are lots of decisions about how best to render the texts which can only be answered in the course of the translation process. It seems important to share the work as it is completed, even in rough form, but the drafts are not necessarily suitable for scholarly work, particularly without consultation of the original French sources, and are not for publication elsewhere in their present state. A collection of draft translations of all […]

Third study—Biens—Parallel French

March 1, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur

— Formatting in Progress — TROISIÈME ÉTUDE LES BIENS CHAPITRE PREMIER. Position du problème de la répartition des biens, ou problème économique. I DE LA JUSTICE DANS LA RÉVOLUTION ET DANS L’ÉGLISE. TROISIÈME ÉTUDE. LES BIENS. CHAPITRE PREMIER. Position du problème de la répartition des biens, oa problème économique. Monseigneur, Je suis vraiment désolé d’avoir à vous parler encore de M. de Mirecourt. Mais, je vous l’ai dit, M. de Mirecourt est un signe de l’époque : c’est tant pis pour l’époque. M. de Mirecourt reçoit les communications de l’épiscopat : tant pis pour l’épiscopat, Mon biographe débute en ces termes : « Pierre-Joseph… » — […]

Second Study—Persons—Parallel English

February 28, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur

[These draft translations are part of on ongoing effort to translate both editions of Proudhon’s Justice in the Revolution and in the Church into English, together with some related works, as the first step toward establishing an edition of Proudhon’s works in English. They are very much a first step, as there are lots of decisions about how best to render the texts which can only be answered in the course of the translation process. It seems important to share the work as it is completed, even in rough form, but the drafts are not suitable for scholarly work or […]

Auguste Beauchery, “Solution of the Problem of Certainty”

February 14, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur

We would have liked to offer the reader a summary, however succinct, of the solution to the problem of certainty provided by M. Proudhon using the serial method; but this serious question—which offers to legitimize our knowledge in an absolute way, which claims nothing less than to demonstrate the certainty of our judgments, which has been declared unapproachable by philosophy, which has been attacked on all sides by the greatest geniuses who have elightened humanity, and which has been abandoned after having watched the most profound intelligences follow one after another in vain, for centuries, and die at the task—cannot be accepted as resolved in a quintessence.

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Justice in the Revolution and in the Church: First Study (Parallel English)

February 6, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur

The theory of Immanence, while resolving the apparent contradictions of morality, still explains all the fictions of the allegedly revealed system. It gives, so to speak, the natural history of theology and worship, the reason for the mysteries, the biography of the gods. It shows us how religion was born from the preponderance given in society to one of the essential elements of the soul, an element which, sovereign in metaphysics, must remain secondary in practice, the Ideal. It is only of yesterday, and we already owe to it that spark which makes the lights of the old faith pale; slandered excessively, it will save us from the corruptions in extremis of a reaction to despair and a religiosity that is dying out.

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P.-J. Proudhon, “Warning to the Proprietors” (Third Memoir on Property, 1841)

February 3, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur

I have read the brochure entitled: Défense du fourièrisme, Réponse à MM. Proudhon, Lamennais, Reybaud, Louis Blanc, etc., and I am pleased with this publication, the author, despite the aberrations of his logic and the injustice of his reproaches, showing himself almost always a friend of progress and full of zeal for science and truth.

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Louis Prat, “Harmonisme / Harmonism” (1927)

January 29, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur

Each person is who they are. Their truths are personal to them, living like themselves, and therefore changing. But if souls are reasonable, their thoughts, their passions and their acts can, assembled and combined, present visions that are doubtless diverse, but always beautiful, of universal beauty.

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Emile de Girardin, “Mutualisme / Mutualism” (1852)

January 18, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur

Solidarity is to liberty what immobility is to movement, what darkness is to light, what community is to reciprocity, what the old formula, association, is to the new formula, assurance. Solidarity, raised to its highest power, is Communism. Liberty, reduced to its simplest expression, is Mutualism.

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Eugène de Mirecourt, “Proudhon” (1855)

January 12, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur

In Besançon, homeland of General Moncey, the Jesuit Nonotte, the academician Suard, Charles Nodier and Victor Hugo, a male child was born on January 15, 1809. The earth trembled, the sky hid its azure. A shiver of terror shook the men.

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“Justice” — A Second Attempt

January 7, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur

The goal is to translate the twelve studies in Justice in the Revolution and in the Church—and to do so, where necessary, twice, producing translations of both the 1858 first edition and the expanded and corrected 1860 edition. I’m revising my 2009 translation of the 1860 “Program” for about the third time and will I will tackle the extensive notes and “Nouvelles de la Révolution” (which make up two of the six volumes of the second edition) as I complete the relevant studies, including La Pornocratie, which appears in manuscript form as one more of the “Nouvelles” sections and was originally intended by Proudhon to follow the two studies on “Love and Marriage.”

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