Justice in the Revolution and in the Church

mutualism

Justice: The definition of philosophy

January 1, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Justice in the Revolution and in the Church, Volume I, “Program,” section II. § II. — The definition of philosophy. Philosophy is composed of a certain number of questions that have been regarded at all times as the fundamental problems of the human mind, and that for that reason have been declared inaccessible to the common people. Philosophy, it was said, is the science of the universal, the science of principles, the science of causes; this is why we can speak of universal science, the science of things visible and invisible, the science of God, of man and […]
Anarchism

Kicking off a year of Justice

January 1, 2009 Shawn P. Wilbur
2008 was a transitional year for my various projects, and some, like the English-language archiving, suffered a bit from my relocation and the various transitions that surrounded it. I hope that an equivalent service to the movement has been rendered by the translation that has taken up so much of my time. The progress seems glacial in comparison to the years where I was able to add thousands of pages of material, but, as ought to be apparent, developing the skills to dig back into the early French texts has had some very important effects on my overall thinking about […]
translations

More Proudhon on the origin of property

October 27, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
[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. […]
Contr'un

“It is the shock of ideas that casts the light”

October 27, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
[ezcol_1third] [Commentary coming soon.] [/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end] One good Proudhon tidbit deserves another, so here are the first couple of sections from Chapter 6 of the Seventh Study (“Ideas”) in Justice in the Revolution and in the Church. The chapter covers “Intellectual discipline, or method of elimination of the Absolute according to the principle of the Revolution. — Constitution of the public reason,” and it is here that Proudhon, having proven, to his own satisfaction at least, the existence of “collective beings” corresponding to the “collective force” which was such an important part of his critique of property, tackles the question […]
Contr'un

Proudhon, Liberty, Satan, and The Ladies Repository (oh, my!)

September 18, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
Very little of Proudhon’s 6-volume work on Justice in the Revolution and in the Church has been translated, but one in/famous passage has been treated to a number of English renderings. Section XLVII, which ends Chapter 5, “Function of Liberty,” which is itself the final chapter of the Eighth Study, “Conscience and Liberty” (which appears in Justice, Tome III in the Lacroix collected works) contains a passage that begins “Come, Satan, come. . . ,” and which has naturally been handy for those who wanted to demonstrate what an evil dude that French socialist Proudhon was. There is a really […]
Uncategorized

Proudhon on freedom and free will

September 12, 2008 Shawn P. Wilbur
[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”][/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] I’m working away at the translation of Proudhon’s chapter (in Justice in the Revolution and in the Church) on “The Nature and Function of Liberty.” It’s a key piece in his overall work, and includes an explanation of the nature and function of “free will,” along with some suggestions about how that explanation would scale up to the realm of social or political liberty. Remember that Proudhon was, from the earliest of his works, concerned with the “collective force” which arises from associated production and exceeds the productive power of the […]