The Anarchē of Spirit^255and anti-theism. In radical and perennial struggle, the human and
the divine retain an inexorable alterity (a radical otherness irre-
ducible to sameness or reconciliation). In terms of Kierkegaard’s
own refusal of Hegelian sublation (Aufheben), there remains an
“infinite qualitative difference” between humanity and divinity.
Or, in Proudhon’s words, there remains a refusal to “make God
into humanity”, a sublation which, after all, “[...] would be slan-
der of both”.^71 Yet while Kierkegaard aspires towards a restless
“synthesis” of the human and the divine realised through a self-
God relationship which retains the agonistic tension of infinite
alterity, Proudhon refuses any spiritual horizon of reconciliation
between the human and the divine. “God and man hold each
other in perpetual check and continually avoid each other”.^72
Whereas Kierkegaard hopes for a personalised relationship
between self and God beyond the realm of ideality, Proudhon
remains within the principle of irascible antinomy. Divinity and
humanity are each the shadow-side of the other: “Humanity is a
spectre to God, just as God is a spectre to humanity; each of the
two is the other’s cause, reason, and end of existence”.^73 Each is
incomplete without the other who it both haunts and is haunted
by; and yet, according to the eternal antinomy, the other will nev-
er complete it nor reconcile it to itself.^74 God may be “the com-
plement of man”,^75 but God is also the contradiction of Man.
While Kierkegaard contemplates the revelation of an impossible
reconciliation of the infinite qualitative difference in personal re-
lationship with the paradox of Christ, Proudhon remains within a
principle of justice which continues to regard God and humanity
as mutually, antagonistically, and irreconcilably wholly other.^76
To recapitulate: Proudhon’s refusal to reconcile the antinomy
of anti-theism is ultimately a struggle against theism and atheism,
as well as a refusal of the benign concessions of deistic théophilan-
thropisme. In its striving to re-appropriate the image of God,
Proudhon discerns that atheist humanism merely expresses the de-
sire to sublate theism. In light of this desire, “Humanism” becomes
nothing but “the most perfect theism”.^77 Opposing both atheism
and theism (which are implicitly just two sides of the same coin),
Proudhon’s asserts anti-theism as a struggle in which “God is in-
exhaustible, and our contest eternal.”^78 In its intentional rejection