At any given point in my research, there are always a few texts that top the list of things I would love to read, but am unlikely to get my hands on. Some are of more general interest than others. I remember, for example, that during my early work on mutualism, I was equally keen to track down William Batchelder Greene’s “Omega” articles articles in the Worcester Palladium — arguably one of the key early contributions to the tradition — and a little book called Money and Banking, or Their Nature and Effects Considered, Together with a Plan for the Universal Diffusion of Their Legitimate Benefits Without Their Evils, by “A Citizen of Ohio.” Having eventually tracked down both, I can heartily recommend the former. Even I have some trouble remembering why the latter seemed quite so important at the time.
But that’s the way it goes. Sometimes the most pressing research questions just involve checking texts off the list of things to look at. Sometimes it’s a matter of “lost classics” of some real significance to the tradition.
Félix P…..’s Philosophy of Insubmission, which I am happy to share in a full English translation, is arguably one of those “lost classics.” Published in New York in 1854, this French-language pamphlet will be familiar to some regulars here from a partial translation that I did in 2012, under the title “The Philosophy of Defiance.” Those sections, translated from a selection published by Max Nettlau in 1922, were promising enough to give the full text its place on the must-find list — and that promise seems to me to be fulfilled in the complete work.
The translation (available as a pdf file) is followed by notes and documents relating to the life of Félix Pignal, the likely author of the work, along with some material related to the new title.
