Biography:
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin (1814-76) was a Russian revolutionary and
anarchist whose posthumously published book Dieu et l'état (God
and the State, 1882) is still popular today in anarchist circles.
Bakunin started out as a military officer but left that behind to study abroad
where he actively supported and participated in the 1848 revolution in Germany.
He was arrested and condemend to death, but Bakunin was later turned over to the
Russians who imprisoned him in Siberia. He managed to escape to England where he
spent the rest of his life promoting his brand of anarchist ideas. He also
participated in the First International with Marx, but the two men disagreed on
both means and goals - this lead to the disintegration of the First International
and the expulsion of Bakunin and the anarchists.
Select Quotes:
The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most
decisive negation of human liberty and necessarily ends in the enslavement of
mankind both in theory and practice. He who desires to worship God must harbor no
childish illusions about the matter but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity.
[Bakunin, Federalism, Socialism, and Anti-Theologism]
All religions, with their gods, demigods, prophets, messiahs and saints, are the
product of the fancy and credulity of men who have not yet reached the full
development and complete personality of their intellectual powers. [Bakunin, God and the
State (1874), quoted in 2000 Years of Disbelief, Famous People with the
Courage to Doubt, edited by James A. Haught]
For ten centuries Christianity, armed with the omnipotence of the Church and State and
opposed by no competition, was able to deprave, debase, and falsify the mind of
Europe. It had no competitors, because outside the Church there was neither thinkers
nor educated persons. It along taught, it alone spoke and wrote, it alone taught.
[Bakunin, Church and State, 1872]
The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of
God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth. [Bakunin, God
and the State, quoted in 2000 Years of Disbelief, Famous People with the
Courage to Doubt, edited by James A. Haught]
God, or rather the fiction of God, is thus the sanction and the intellectual and
moral cause of all the slavery on earth, and the liberty of men will not be
complete, unless it will have completely annihilated the inauspicious fiction of a
heavenly master. [Bakunin, Oeuvres, quoted in 2000 Years of Disbelief, Famous
People with the Courage to Doubt, edited by James A. Haught]
Also Known As: none
Alternate Spellings: none
Common Misspellings: none
Related Resources:
What are Political and Legal Philosophy
The Philosophy of Politics and the Philosophy of Law are often studied separately, but
they are presented here jointly because they both come back to the same thing: the
study of force. Politics is the study of political force in the general community,
while jurisprudence is the study of how laws can and should be used to achieve
political and social goals.
What is Philosophy?
What is philosophy? Is there any point in studying philosophy, or is it a useless
subject? What are the different branches of philosophy - what's the difference
between aestheitcs and ethics? What's the difference between metaphysics and
epistemology?
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