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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 (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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

P.-J. Proudhon, The Creation of Order in Humanity

March 31, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

Related links: Auguste Beauchery, “Solution of the Problem of Certainty” THE CREATION OF ORDER IN HUMANITY, OR, PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ORGANIZATION —————————- DEFINITIONS 1. I call Order every seriated or symmetrical arrangement. Order necessarily presupposes division, distinction, difference. Nothing undivided, indistinct, undifferentiated, can be understood as ordered: these notions are mutually exclusive. [1] 2. The ideas of intelligence and final cause are foreign to the idea of order. In fact, order can appear to us as an unforeseen result of properties inherent in the various parts of a whole: intelligence cannot, in this case, be designated as a principle of […]

Proudhon, Justice: Eleventh Study

March 29, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[two_third padding=”0 10px 0 10px”] JUSTICE IN THE REVOLUTION AND IN THE CHURCH ELEVENTH STUDY LOVE AND MARRIAGE [continued] […] CATECHISM OF MARRIAGE Question. — What is the conjugal couple? Answer. — Every power of nature, every faculty of life, every affection of the soul, every category of the intelligence, needs an organ, in order to manifest itself and act. The sentiment of Justice can be no exception to that law. But Justice, which rules all the other faculties and surpasses liberty itself, not being able to have its organ in the individual, would remain for man a notion without […]

P.-J. Proudhon, “War and Peace,” Volume II

March 28, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 10px”] War and Peace, Vol. I How Business Goes in France and Why We Will Have War [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 10px 0 10px”] WAR AND PEACE INVESTIGATIONS REGARDING THE PRINCIPLE AND CONSTITUTION OF THE RIGHTS OF NATIONS BOOK THREE WAR IN ITS FORMS [continued] […] BOOK FIVE TRANSFORMATION OF WAR Pacis imponers morem. Virgil. SUMMARY. THESIS. — War, according to its partisans, primitive form of justice with its basis in nature and consciousness, is susceptible to reform. The abuse that sullies it is no more an argument against it than the aberrations of love, paternity or […]

E. Armand, “Without Amoralization, No Anarchization” (1926)

March 27, 2018 Shawn P. Wilbur

The Larousse dictionary defines the word morality as: the relation of an act, of the sentiments of a person, with the rule of morals. From this comes the expression “certificate of morality,” to designate an official confirmation of a clean criminal record. Each time that I hear morality spoken of in a publication that calls itself anarchist, to whatever degree, there comes to my mind, unbidden, the idea of a “certificate of good behavior,” delivered by the police chief of the district.

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