270 Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume 1
this relation is extensive. In particular, see further Mark C. Taylor,
Journeys to Selfhood: Hegel and Kierkegaard (California: University
of California Press, 1989); Niels Thulstrup, Kierkegaard’s Relation
to Hegel, trans. George L. Stengren (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1980); and Kierkegaard’s Relation to Hegel Reconsidered
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) in which Stewart
contends that Kierkegaard’s ire is directed more towards contempo-
rary Hegelian thought than towards Hegel himself. On Proudhon’s
relation to Hegel, see further René Berthier, Études proudhoniennes,
L’Économie politique (Paris: Éditions du Monde libertaire, 2009).
Berthier shows how Proudhon’s ambivalent and often second-hand
knowledge of Hegel was more significant than many, particularly
owing to Karl Marx, have given credence for. Both Marx and his
enemy Karl Grün had attempted to train Proudhon in Hegelianism.
I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer of this essay for providing
me with a translation of Berthier’s chapter on ‘Proudon and German
Philosophy’.
- Henri de Lubac, The Un-Marxian Socialist: A Study of Proudhon,
trans. R. E. Scantlebury (London: Steed and Ward, 1948), p. 178. - Françoise Meltzer, Seeing Double: Baudelaire’s Modernity
(Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2011), p. 51 n.69.
However, since Proudhon did not read German, and since by the
decisive date of 1848 Hegel’s works had not yet been translated into
French, his knowledge of Hegelian thought was formed principally
from conversations with Charles Grün, “a German, who had come
to France to study the various philosophical and socialistic systems.”
J. A. Langlois, ‘P. J. Proudhon: His Life and His Works’, What is
Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government,
trans Benj. R. Tucker (New York: Dover, 1970), p. xxxvi. - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: His Life and Work (New York: Schocken
Books, 1972), p. 205. - JP 4:4350.
- “I am without authority. I make no proposal in relation to
the established order, not a single one. I think that for the sake of
the cause it can continue as it stands, except that each individual
should make a confession before God and compel oneself to remem-
ber it.” Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks: Volume 7, Journals