The Anarchē of Spirit^265the heteronomy of theism, it simultaneously invites a systematic
negation of itself which may raise thinking up to a higher affir-
mation in the eternal struggle between the human and the divine.
Kierkegaard, for his part, might suggest of Proudhon that insofar
as it is continually re-assigning itself within this eternal struggle,
anti-theism cannot, or will not, break itself free from the imagery
of a religion which it professes to despise. Proudhon’s ultimate de-
spair may reside in the fact that he cannot say that God does not
exist. He does not believe in God; but he cannot free himself from
the idea of “God” which resides as an insidious presence within
the human imagination.^105
In Proudhon’s demonic antagonism of theology, however,
“God” effectively becomes “Satan”: the adversary, the evil one
against whom one struggles in the name of the human good.^106 As
Proudhon may wish to retain some dialectical notion of “God”, I
wish to uphold the freedom of anti-theism’s “offence” against evil
perpetrated in the name of a “God” who appears more demonic
than divine. In such cases, the cry of the anti-theist, as Proudhon
himself sensed, can speak prophetic truth to the idols of power.
Latent in Proudhon’s demonic struggles against God, Meltzer, like
Marx, suspects a nostalgia for religion which recurs in Proudhon’s
enduring rhetoric of redemption and in “a style of dialectics pro-
fessing to ‘cure’ contradiction through ascension (with vestigial
religious undertones) rather than Aufhebung [sublation].”^107 In
this respect, Proudhon’s preference for renewed antinomy over
sublation can be compared with Kierkegaard’s preference for the
unresolved tension of a paradoxical “synthesis” which nonethe-
less refuses to sublate the “infinite qualitative difference” between
humanity and divinity.^108 Furthermore, both Kierkegaard and
Proudhon oppose any idea of “God” which upholds the provi-
dence of the powerful over the weak, the impoverished, and the
oppressed: namely, the God of evil.
However, insofar as it exposes Christendom’s construct of a God
of Providence as a projection of human delusions of power, I sug-
gest that Kierkegaard’s theology might offer a higher negation of
Proudhon’s anti-theism. Both the theism of Christendom and the
anti-theism of Proudhon are ultimately realised via Kierkegaard’s
lens as manifestations of despair. And yet, in the irrepressible spirit