Proudhon, What is Government? What is God?

May 26, 2011 Shawn P. Wilbur Contr'un, translations

Proudhon’s essay “What is Government? What is God?” appeared first in the Voix du Peuple, November 5, 1849, then as the preface to The Confessions of a Revolutionary, as well as in the Melanges volumes of the Lacroix collected works. It was the occasion for one of the more important responses by Pierre Leroux—a response which seems to have influenced William Batchelder Greene.

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Independent scholar, translator and archivist.

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More Proudhon on the origin of property

October 27, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur translations, Working Translations
[one_third][/one_third][two_third_last] Here’s another little bit from “Justice,” which immediately follows the last passages linked. In it, Proudhon explains how, in the very early phases of the “shock of ideas,” property emerged as a social convention precisely because human beings had not yet learned to question their own absolutism. Elsewhere, however, he makes it clear that our “absolutism” is not simply something we need to “get over” or grow out of, but an important enabling component in ethical evolution. This is part of the revision of the material Rafael posted, once Proudhon had decided that the antinomies did not resolve themselves. […]
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Proudhon seminar: Onward!

July 2, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur Uncategorized
[Links to the main discussion list and project page are now in the sidebar. Please join the list if you want to take advantage of the discussion. -shawn] Plan of Attack As I said, I would like to start my discussion of the material with Chapter 5, Part II, Section 3. I intend to deal with that final section in two posts, taking them in reverse order: 1) Proudhon’s ten point program (below)2) The nature of “liberty” I’ll follow that with some discussion of Chapter One, Proudhon’s discussion of method, probably on Thursday. By that time, I hope to have […]
Contr'un

Proudhon on method, and the “system” of society

May 18, 2013 Shawn P. Wilbur Contr'un
[The bolded section is a great bit of clarification by Proudhon.] Justice in the Revolution and in the Church from the Study on Ideas LVIII. — System of public reason, or social system.  How many times have I heard addressed this compliment that the jealous critic would undertake, for the honor of the century, to withdraw, if he comprehended its scope: You are an admirable destroyer, but you do not build anything. You throw people in the road, and you do not offer them the least assistance. What do you put in the place of religion? What do you put […]

1 Comment

  1. “Who knows if we could not discover then that all these governmental formulas, for which the Peoples and citizens have slit each others’ throats for sixty centuries, are only a phantasmagoria of our mind, that the first duty of a free reason is to return to the museums and libraries?”

    Authority is indeed an illusion. It’s simply amazing how people project the state as the institution which grants them their freedom, but it’s not surprising when you understand how people have been conditioned to believe so, and how the most arrogant view the state as an extension of themselves.

    I think I will share this with a friend from college (who is also a philosophy major) since she is interested in anarchism.

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