Essays in Anarchism and Religion

262 Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume 1

The vision of freedom and independence presented here seeks
to exceed human notions of inter-subjectivity, insofar as they
are typically enslaved to a dialectic approximate to Hegel’s ac-
count of the relation between Master and Slave (Herrschaft und
Knechtschaft – or “Lordship and Bondage”^94 ):

This is why one human being cannot make another person wholly

free, because the one who has power is himself captive in having

it and therefore continually has a wrong relationship to the one

whom he wants to make free. Moreover, there is a finite self-love

in all finite power (talent etc.). Only omnipotence can withdraw

itself at the same time it gives itself away, and this relationship is

the very independence of the receiver. God’s omnipotence is there-

fore his goodness [rather than the evil Proudhon identifies with the

God of Providence]. For goodness is to give away completely, but

in such a way that by omnipotently taking oneself back one makes

the recipient independent. All finite power makes [a being] depen-

dent; only omnipotence can make [a being] independent, can form

from nothing [creation ex nihilo] something that has its continu-

ity in itself through the continuous withdrawing of omnipotence.

Omnipotence is not ensconced in a relationship to another, for

there is no other to which it is comparable [Proudhon may agree

with this point]—no, it can give without giving up the least of its

power, that is, it can make [a being] independent.^95

Such a vision, however, conflicts with merely mundane capacities
for relative dependence and independence, as habitually encoun-
tered in the world:

It is incomprehensible that omnipotence is able not only to create

the most impressive of all things—the whole visible world—but

is able to create the most frail of all things—a being independent

of that very omnipotence. Omnipotence, which can handle the

world so toughly and with such a heavy hand, can also make itself

so light that what it has brought into existence receives indepen-

dence. Only a wretched and worldly conception of the dialectic

of power holds that it is greater and greater in proportion to its

ability to compel and to make dependent.^96

Omnipotence is not expressed, as human power typically is,
in the mastery of slaves or even as a direct Providence which