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Bakunin Library

Sacher-Masoch, “Bakunin” (1888)

September 28, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur
The only one who impressed me, among the agitators and leaders of the Slavs, at the pan-Slavist congress in Prague, was Mikhail Bakunin. Like all notable Russians of that time, he was from a good family, a gentleman, an officer, very educated, rich, and therefore absolutely independent, as were Pushkin, Lermontoff, Tourguéneff. He was not bothered by any material question and was not obliged to reckon with anyone. He could be the enthusiastic idealist he remained until the end of his days.

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New Proudhon Library

P.-J. Proudhon, Correspondence related to the Studies in Popular Philosophy

September 6, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur
Under the general title of Popular Philosophy, I begin an indefinite series of publications on all sorts of subjects, history, literature, political economy, morals, biography, etc., men and things. All this judged, appreciated, explained, interpreted with the aid of the new philosophical principle, the highest and most fruitful, at once objective and subjective, idea and sentiment, law of man and law of nature, justice. Give me five years of this popularization, and I dare say that the public, today tired, disgusted, skeptical, will again take courage and conceive what a philosophical system is, a kind of encyclopedia, whose principle, law, method, end, means, is right.

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Featured articles

Justice in the Revolution and in the Church, Volume One: Translator’s Notes

September 3, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur
Revised drafts (pdf): Volume One: Program, Preliminary Address, First, Second and Third Studies Volume Two: Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Studies I have just uploaded the first volume of my working translation of Proudhon’s Of Justice in the Revolution and in the Church, which includes the Program, the Preliminary Address and first three Studies. These are revised drafts, with most of the problem passages resolved, but the following notes should give an idea of the present state and possible future revisions of the text.  I’ll begin working on the revision of the next three Studies tomorrow, but will also try to […]
New Proudhon Library

P.-J. Proudhon, “The Creation of Order in Humanity” — Chapter III

August 23, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur
I must admit it at this solemn moment: what worries me is less the uncertainty of my route than the deep feeling of my weakness; the distractions of my life, and the misfortune of an entirely philosophical and religious education have hardly allowed me to learn anything. It’s not the design, it’s the materials that I lack for the reconstruction. All I know I owe to despair; fortune depriving me of the means of acquiring, I want one day, from shreds picked up during my short studies, to create a science by myself alone.

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Working Translations

E. Armand, The Anarchist Individualist Initiation — V

August 21, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur
The Anarchist Individualist Initiation E. ARMAND [ENGLISH TEXT ONLY] ☜ 4. The individualists and the reformers of the milieu social. The law of continuous progress. 6. Authority, Domination, Exploitation: Origin, Evolution, Aspects and Definitions. ☞ DEUXIÈME PARTIE LES THÈSES PRATIQUES DE L’INDIVIDUALISM ANARCHISTE 5. Le Christianisme et les Individualists. La tournure d’esprit païenne. 47) Le christianisme primitif. Y a-t-il un lien de parenté quelconque entre le christianisme et l’anarchism ? Peut-on les concilier ? Peut-on soutenir que les anarchists — individualists ou communists — sont ce que seraient devenus les chrétiens si le christianisme avait suivi son évolution normale au […]
New Proudhon Library

P.-J. Proudhon, “The Creation of Order in Humanity” — Chapter II

August 19, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur
Through Religion, the mind remains absorbed in substance: through Philosophy, it frees itself from this passive contemplation, and begins to seek the cause of the phenomena that pass before it, the force that incessantly moves and changes the stage of the world. Hence it is that Philosophy has been defined by some as the science of causes, a lying title, since the cause is as impenetrable to us as the substance.

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Black and Red Feminism

Feminist Responses to Proudhon

August 1, 2023 Shawn P. Wilbur
The effort to translate Proudhon’s Justice in the Revolution and in the Church is just one step in the much larger project of coming to terms with the fundamental tensions in his thought, which have their clearest expression in his discussions of love, marriage and the alleged biological differences between men and women.

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