The Anarchē of Spirit^253deism, theism, or anti-theism, the thought of God and humanity
appear within a mutually inter-dependent configuration.
Though anti-theism seeks the negation of the theistic idea of
God, Proudhon tempers his polemic with the avowal that his
“criticism of the idea of God [theism] is similar to all the criti-
cisms I have made of authority, property, etc.; it is a systematic
negation, which is meant to come to a higher affirmation, equal-
ly systematic.”^60 In striving for an almost apophatic negation
Proudhon desires a further dialectical via negativa which rises
above the self-delusions of atheism’s denial of God’s existence. In
Proudhon’s eyes, atheism attempts a self-apotheosis which thinks
itself “intelligent and strong”, but which, by failing to discover
a higher systematic negation of both the idea of “God” and of
itself, is in reality merely “stupid and timid.”^61 Proudhon and
Kierkegaard are allied in discerning an unconscious irony in athe-
ism’s denial of the existence of God. Despite its self-aggrandising
claims to a Promethean form of freedom, humanist atheism mere-
ly seeks to re-internalise the idea of God which it had projected
and alienated from itself.^62 As such, atheism’s negation of the idea
of God cannot aspire towards a higher systematic affirmation be-
yond itself, as sought by Proudhon’s anti-theism.
However, anti-theism operates under the caveat that consum-
mate realisation of this “higher affirmation” remains eternally
elusive. The dialectic is never resolved, the system is never com-
plete; and so the struggle continues. Anti-theism will not find rest
with the distant God of deism, according to which “God” serves
a merely hypothetical or social purpose. While it may strive be-
yond atheism’s deicidal re-appropriation of theism (as Feuerbach
sought to reclaim statements about God as statements about
Man), Proudhon’s anti-theism itself is motivated by an irascible
sense of Misotheism (hatred of God^63 ). In contrast to the late
revolutionary deistic beliefs of théophilanthropie (a sect affirm-
ing friendship of God and man), anti-theism is unmoved by the
promise of rapprochement, preferring instead to struggle against
the God of Providence “like Israel against Jehovah [Genesis 32],
until death.”^64 However, by desiring its own elusive higher sys-
tematic negation, anti-theism, developing Proudhon’s principle,
also seeks something beyond itself which in turn struggles against