encyclopedia entries

encyclopedia entries

Anarchist Encyclopedia: Antinomy

September 26, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
Entries from the Anarchist Encyclopedia [one_half padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] ANTINOMIE (Etym. : gr. anti, et Nomos, lois) Impossibilité d’accorder le pour et le contre, le oui et le non. Opposition de deux sentiments, de deux phénomènes inconciliables. Ainsi, l’individu ne fera pas bon ménage avec l’autorité, le génie ne supportera pas la médiocrité (et la médiocrité supportera encore moins le génie), la beauté et la laideur ne s’accorderont jamais. Il est impossible d’aimer à la fois le néant et la vie. Il faut être pour ou contre. Pas d’attitude équivoque, pas de compromis. La rupture est inévitable entre le […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Sébastien Faure, “Anarchy” (1934) (excerpt)

October 18, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
From the Anarchist Encyclopedia, Vol. I ANARCHY n. (from the Greek: a privative and archè, command, power, authority) Preliminary observation. The object of this Anarchist Encyclopedia being to make known the full range of conceptions—political, economic, philosophical, moral, etc.—that arise from the anarchist idea or lead there, it is in the course of this work and in the very place that each of them must occupy within it, that the multiples theses contained in the exact and complete study of this subject will be explained. So it is only by drawing and joining together, methodically and with continuity, the various […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Arthur Ranc, “Anarchy” (1869)

August 29, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
ANARCHY. — D’Alembert, after having defined anarchy as “a disorder in the State, which consists of no one having enough authority to commander and make the laws respected, as a consequence of which the people behave as they wish, without subordination and without police,” concludes thus: “We can be sure that all government in general tends to despotism or to anarchy.” That thought which seems at first glance to place political society between two equally depressing alternatives, is at bottom, if we look closely, only a careless conception of the theory formulated in this way by Proudhon: “the first term […]