New Proudhon Library

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

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. […]

Black and Red Feminism

Jenny P. d’Héricourt, “La Femme affrancie / Woman Emancipated” — Volume II

A daughter of my century, raised with the doctrines summarized by our glorious Revolution, I will not seek the sources of Right and Duty in the world of Supernaturalism. No. I will leave to the last echoes of the ancient world the irrational fantasy of using their argumentation, based on the unknown, to prove that Right is granted and Duty imposed by some God. On the contrary, I say that both have their origins within us; that they result from the ensemble of our faculties, from our destiny, from the necessary relations that sustain us with ourselves, with our fellows, and with nature. […]

Black and Red Feminism

André Léo, “Woman and Mores” (1869)

It is almost overnight that this question rejected at first as chimerical, then combated by ridicule, which however, today, in spite of so many prejudices and sarcasms, is agitated in the two worlds, and each day grows. It was born out of the French Revolution, which created or renewed all questions by the new principle that it proclaimed, in which the equality of woman, like all the others, is contained. […]

New Proudhon Library

Proudhon before the Court of Assizes (1849)

Citizen jurors, you have heard the accusation; you will evaluate the defense. You will judge the good faith of the first; allow me to begin by expressing gratitude for the devotion of the second. The Advocate General made a mistake just now when he believed that if I was not speaking after him, it was because I had in reserve a few arguments that I wanted to present to you in all their freshness, without allowing him to answer them. I repeat, the Citizen Advocate-General was mistaken; I have nothing to say to you regarding the accusation and I have nothing to add to the defence; I have only to tell you about the origin of this lawsuit. […]