250 Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume 1
to the Holy Other: that is, to a God who is revealed through
kenotic love as otherwise than the God of Providential theism
against which Proudhon struggles. However, this free submission
is not tantamount to total abjection. As the self before God is con-
summated in relationship with others—a relation grounded in the
liberating grace of love—so too does Kierkegaardian submission
to God (becoming nothing before God; or resting transparently
in God) also entail becoming something in relation to God. This
something is namely a self in freedom, a self as Spirit.
Before proceeding further, however, certain caveats ought to
be noted. For one, it should be observed that Kierkegaard’s own
knowledge of Proudhon’s thought is extremely modest.^42 While
Kierkegaard may have heard the dreadful echoes of Proudhon’s
promethean judgement that “God is evil”,^43 he gives no sense that
he is cognisant of its ultimately dialectical meaning.^44 Nonetheless,
in a profound sense Kierkegaard also struggles in his darkest mo-
ments with a similar abyssal possibility: how is one to uphold faith
in divine love when it appears that God is evil? However, whereas
Proudhon’s practical yet dialectically provocative philosophy in-
tends the negation of the idea of “God” in the name of human
justice, Kierkegaard’s agonistic spiritual interiority seeks to affirm
the Absolute yet subjective reality of God in the name of a fearful
and trembling faith. In other words, while Kierkegaard’s ultimate
concern is with the subjective self-God-relationship, Proudhon is
essentially engaged with indicting the theistic conception of the
God of Providence (an objective ideal in which, for Kierkegaard,
the single individual becomes lost).
According to what might be called Proudhon’s quasi apophatic
anti-theology, God (if there is such a “being”) remains essentially
unknowable, whether by kataphasis (positive assertions) or
apophasis (negation). Consequently, “God” cannot be meaning-
fully invoked within human ethical concerns: “we cannot legiti-
mately deny anything or affirm anything of the absolute; that is
one of the reasons why I rule the divine concept out of morality.”^45
This radical anti-theological position allows Proudhon to evacu-
ate God from “the alpha and omega” of his argument: Justice.^46
“If God is outside knowledge for us,” Proudhon infers that “he
must remain outside practical matters [...] When religion, through