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Proudhon Library

Note on Revolutionary Practice (March, 1851)

January 19, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
[These notes appear to refer to Ms. 2857 in the Besançon archives, “De la Pratique des révolutions,” a draft for a work abandoned in favor of The General Idea of the Revolution in the 19th Century. This is, of course, just one of the places where Proudhon uses “Destruam et ædificabo” as a kind of motto, but it is interesting to find it here, close to the “watershed” between Proudhon’s “critical” and “constructive” projects.] P.-J. Proudhon, Carnets, Vol. 4 (Carnet no. 9, 27-28; March 1851): 215. Revolutionary practice. — Book I, chapter I. — If I start with cannibalism, it […]
Proudhon Library

Note on Revolutionary Practice (March, 1851)

January 19, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
[These notes appear to refer to Ms. 2857 in the Besançon archives, “De la Pratique des révolutions,” a draft for a work abandoned in favor of The General Idea of the Revolution in the 19th Century. This is, of course, just one of the places where Proudhon uses “Destruam et ædificabo” as a kind of motto, but it is interesting to find it here, close to the “watershed” between Proudhon’s “critical” and “constructive” projects.] P.-J. Proudhon, Carnets, Vol. 4 (Carnet no. 9, 27-28; March 1851): 215. Revolutionary practice. — Book I, chapter I. — If I start with cannibalism, it […]
Proudhon Library

On the Absolute (1851)

January 14, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
P.-J. Proudhon, Carnets, Vol. 4 (Carnet no. 9, 112-115): 287-290 [112] July 26 [1851]. — On the Absolute. — All the religions, all the old metaphysics, are based on the notion of the absolute, on the concepts of Substance-Cause, indivisibly united. Now, that conception is nothing other than a datum or hypothesis of the understanding, according to the first experience. It is soon contradicted by a more attentive observation of phenomena and their laws. Enlightened by the sequence and series of natural and human facts, the mind soon abandons this inexact, chimerical point of view, full of obscurities and contradictions, […]
Proudhon Library

On the Absolute (1851)

January 14, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
P.-J. Proudhon, Carnets, Vol. 4 (Carnet no. 9, 112-115): 287-290 [112] July 26 [1851]. — On the Absolute. — All the religions, all the old metaphysics, are based on the notion of the absolute, on the concepts of Substance-Cause, indivisibly united. Now, that conception is nothing other than a datum or hypothesis of the understanding, according to the first experience. It is soon contradicted by a more attentive observation of phenomena and their laws. Enlightened by the sequence and series of natural and human facts, the mind soon abandons this inexact, chimerical point of view, full of obscurities and contradictions, […]
Proudhon Library

On the Absolute (1851)

January 14, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
P.-J. Proudhon, Carnets, Vol. 4 (Carnet no. 9, 112-115): 287-290 [112] July 26 [1851]. — On the Absolute. — All the religions, all the old metaphysics, are based on the notion of the absolute, on the concepts of Substance-Cause, indivisibly united. Now, that conception is nothing other than a datum or hypothesis of the understanding, according to the first experience. It is soon contradicted by a more attentive observation of phenomena and their laws. Enlightened by the sequence and series of natural and human facts, the mind soon abandons this inexact, chimerical point of view, full of obscurities and contradictions, […]
Proudhon Library

On the Absolute (1851)

January 14, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
P.-J. Proudhon, Carnets, Vol. 4 (Carnet no. 9, 112-115): 287-290 [112] July 26 [1851]. — On the Absolute. — All the religions, all the old metaphysics, are based on the notion of the absolute, on the concepts of Substance-Cause, indivisibly united. Now, that conception is nothing other than a datum or hypothesis of the understanding, according to the first experience. It is soon contradicted by a more attentive observation of phenomena and their laws. Enlightened by the sequence and series of natural and human facts, the mind soon abandons this inexact, chimerical point of view, full of obscurities and contradictions, […]
Proudhon Library

On Repression (and cannibalism) (1851)

January 11, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
P.-J. Proudhon, Carnets, Vol. 4 (Carnet No. 8, 311): 154 Revolutionary Practice. — Repression, [can] perhaps [be] employed with success against the whimsies of the sects, contagious mental illnesses. — Against a revolution, it can only transmit them, i.e. by making the explosion more terrible. — Anthropophagy was the first phase of progress, necessary to all the progress that followed. So it has been a relative good. It was necessary that man eat man before he could eat God. If anthropophagy had only existed in the case of famine, it would have ceased with famine. That was not the case. […]
Proudhon Library

Of the Ideal, and of Supernaturalism in Nature (1851)

January 11, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
P.-J. Proudhon, Carnets, Vol. 4 (Carnet No. 8, 311-312): 154-155. — The Marvelous [or the Supernatural] in Humanity, third cause of revolution. — Subordinate to the common sense, but distinct from it. — It is not a malady, a pathological state or transition, like teething or puberty in individuals: it is a faculty, a real function of the soul, [but one that is] little known, like the spleen or tonsils in animals. Everything provided by that faculty constantly vanishes before analysis, but it still exerts the greatest influence on the acts of the Species. Already we have seen that God […]
Proudhon Library

On human emancipation (1850)

January 8, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
P.-J. Proudhon, Carnets, Vol. 4, Carnet No. 8, P. 43-44. __________ The history of the human race has only been one long effort of the working classes to free themselves from tyranny and theft.– All government is tyrannical. All property is theft. All religion is mystification. [177] It seems that tyranny, theft and illusion are eternal in the human race. As for me I would dare to affirm otherwise! In any case, this is what takes place. That effort of emancipation is the very life of our species. – The economic order is beneath all that; and itself, steeped in […]
Proudhon Library

On the necessity of following the revolution

January 8, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
[From Proudhon’s Carnets] Necessity of renouncing every utopia, every system, and of following the revolution. If not, nothing. There are Communists who still say every day: I am a communist first, a revolutionary after. — I have not, after February, proposed the abolition of property, although I have posited and confirmed on several occasions that proposition: Property is theft. Neither have I proposed to the equality of wages, of consumption, and of all goods: although I have constantly repeated that absolute equality is the law of society, because it is its tendency. That is because we do not make revolution […]