Bakunin Library

Bakunin Library

Mikhail Bakunin, “Philosophical Considerations on the Divine Phantom, the Real World and Man” (1870)

June 13, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur
Bakunin’s great unfinished work, The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution, covers a lot of ground, but one of its more interesting sections, the “Appendix” called “Philosophical Considerations on the Divine Phantom, the Real World and Man,” is concerned with questions that will be familiar to readers of its best-known fragment, “God and the State.” It is again a question of Bakunin’s elaboration and defense of materialism, with sections on “The System of the World” and “Religion.” Much of the focus is on the nature and proper subject matter of science. Part of the account takes the form of a critique of positivist philosophy, as pursued by the followers of Auguste Comte. 

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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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Bakunin Library

Bakunin — Article for “Il popolo d’Italia” (1865)

April 8, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur
A letter from Paris, published in your newspaper on September 2, contains a serious attack against a little paper by the name of Candide, written by young Parisians, whose publication was immediately interrupted by order of the imperial censor. Your correspondent, who does not seem to be an enthusiastic admirer of the illustrious exterminator of thought and freedom who reigns over France today, takes his side this time to the point of almost congratulating him on having avenged religion and public morals by suppressing a newspaper written by young people “uneducated or unexperienced, who, impelled by base culpable vanity, have dared to calmly affirm things that will sow eternal doubt in the minds of all decent people.”

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