These writings come from a manuscript held by the French national library, with the title “Economy.” Like the other manuscripts with that title, it appears to be from the early 1850s. This particular set of […]
Proudhon’s Philosophy of Progress is one of those books that has simply become part of my basic intellectual toolkit, but in ways that I often forget — at least until I read it again and re-encounter all the delightful ideas and turns of phrase it contains. Returning to it over the last week has been a pleasure, but I’ve also felt a bit pressured to wrap up the preliminaries and get on to the notes on Justice in the Revolution and in the Church. […]
I’m a few days behind schedule getting the first notes on Justice together. Among other things, I’ve been trying to make the most of a narrow fall window to get our yard a little bit better adapted to changing conditions. But work is progressing. I should have test prints of the “text” editions of the first two volumes within a week, at which point I’ll make ordering copies an option for others, and I’ve been trying to shoehorn in the time to put together a companion volume collecting some pre-1858 texts that provide useful context. […]
I have now uploaded the second volume of my working translation of Proudhon’s Of Justice in the Revolution and in the Church, which includes the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Studies, the second part of the essay “Bourgeoisie and Plebs” and two passages from the 1858 edition not included in the revised edition. These are revised drafts, with most of the problem passages resolved, but, as with the first volume, some notes will probably help to orient readers. […]
Under the general title of Popular Philosophy, I begin an indefinite series of publications on all sorts of subjects, history, literature, political economy, morals, biography, etc., men and things. All this judged, appreciated, explained, interpreted with the aid of the new philosophical principle, the highest and most fruitful, at once objective and subjective, idea and sentiment, law of man and law of nature, justice. Give me five years of this popularization, and I dare say that the public, today tired, disgusted, skeptical, will again take courage and conceive what a philosophical system is, a kind of encyclopedia, whose principle, law, method, end, means, is right. […]
Revised drafts (pdf): Volume One: Program, Preliminary Address, First, Second and Third Studies Volume Two: Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Studies I have just uploaded the first volume of my working translation of Proudhon’s Of Justice […]
I must admit it at this solemn moment: what worries me is less the uncertainty of my route than the deep feeling of my weakness; the distractions of my life, and the misfortune of an entirely philosophical and religious education have hardly allowed me to learn anything. It’s not the design, it’s the materials that I lack for the reconstruction. All I know I owe to despair; fortune depriving me of the means of acquiring, I want one day, from shreds picked up during my short studies, to create a science by myself alone. […]
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. […]
I call Order every seriated or symmetrical arrangement. Order necessarily presupposes division, distinction, difference. Nothing undivided, indistinct, undifferentiated, can be understood as ordered: these notions are mutually exclusive. […]
The effort to translate Proudhon’s Justice in the Revolution and in the Church is just one step in the much larger project of coming to terms with the fundamental tensions in his thought, which have their clearest expression in his discussions of love, marriage and the alleged biological differences between men and women. […]
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