3. Anarchist Concept of God

48 Pages·2017·0.65 MB·English

by  Terminal Klient11

UNIVERZITA KARLOVA

HUSITSKÁ TEOLOGICKÁ FAKULTA

Anarchistické pojetí Boha

An Anarchist concept of God

Bakalářská práce

Vedoucí práce: Autor:

Gerald Ostdiek, M.A., Ph.D. Ondřej Mazura

Praha 2017
Acknowledgment
I would like to thank all those who helped me with this work. I especially
thank my thesis supervisor Gerald Ostdiek for his patient and constructive critique
of my bachelor thesis, I also thank to Magdalena Šipka, Adam Borzič and Lukáš
Senft for their valuable advice.

1
Prohlášení
Prohlašuji, že jsem předkládanou bakalářskou práci Anarchistické pojetí Boha
vypracoval samostatně s použitím níže uvedených pramenů a literatury. Dále
prohlašuji, že tato práce nebyla využita k získání jiného nebo stejného titulu.

V Praze dne Ondřej Mazura

2
Annotation
This work, entitled: An anarchist concept of God concerns itself with the
interconnection of religiosity and spirituality with anarchism. However, the
introduction and definition of various anarchist schools of thought is its secondary
objective. The main objective is to propose a concept of God that will correspond
to the values of this broad social and political movement by comparing different
historical and contemporary approaches that combine spirituality with the desire for
freedom. From this comparison, I then compile the concept itself

Anotace
Tato práce, nazvaná Anarchistické pojetí Boha, se zabývá propojením
religiozity a spirituality s anarchismem. Představení a vymezení různých
anarchistických myšlenkových škol je však až jejím sekundárním cílem. Hlavním
cílem je navrhnout nové, anarchisické pojetí Boha, které bude korespondovat s
hodnotami tohoto širokého sociálního a politického hnutí. Tohoto cíle se pokusím
dosáhnout prostřednictvím komparace rozličných historických i současných
přístupů, které kombinují spiritualitu s touhou po svobodě. Z této komparace poté
sestavím samotný koncept.

3
Keywords
Anarchism, freedom, power, religion, spirituality, concept of God, Taoism,
Buddhism, Process theology, heresy in Christianity

Klíčová slova
Anarchismus, svoboda, moc, náboženství, spiritualita, pojetí Boha, Taoismus,
Buddhismus, Procesuální teologie, hereze v křesťanství
4
Table of contents
Introduction 7
1. What is anarchism? 9
1.1 Definition of Anarchism 9
1.2 What is Anarchism against? 10
1.2.1 State and Government 10
1.2.2 Ownership and Capitalism 11
1.2.3 Religion and Church 13
1.3 Freedom as a key positive value 15
1.4 From freedom to diversity 16
1.4.1 Individual anarchism 17
1.4.2 Social anarchism 18
1.4.3 Pacifist anarchism 19
1.4.4 Anarchism without adjectives 20
1.4.5 Contemporary anarchism 20
2. Anarchism and religion? 22
2.1 First religious forerunners of Anarchism 23
2.1.1 Taoism 23
2.1.2 Buddhism 25
2.2 Anarchist tendencies in Christianity 27
2.2.1 God against rulers 28
2.2.2 Jesus Christ 29
2.2.3 Heresy in the middle ages 29
2.3 Reflections of spirituality and religion within Anarchism 31
5
2.3.1 Two representatives from 19th and 20th century 32
2.3.2 Reflections in contemporary Anarchism 33
3. Anarchist Concept of God 36
3.1 What concepts of God are in contrast to anarchist values? 37
3.1.1 God's characteristics contradicting Anarchism 37
3.1.2 An anarchistic God can’t be strictly Biblical 38
3.2 A possible anarchistic concept of God 39
Conclusion 42

6
Introduction
Anthropological theory teaches us that the graduation ceremony at high
school is a rite of passage, by which we leave childhood and enter adulthood. This
ritual led me to Prague, where the world was full of possibilities. As a person
interested in politics, I soon found myself at the center of socio-political events
where I met the Czech anarchist movement. At the same time, my studies at the
Hussite Theological Faculty were my first major contact with religion. I come from
a family of two baptized atheists, so my Alma mater was an important environment
for me to think deeply about my own spirituality for the first time in my life. These
two factors were the main motive for the writing of this bachelor thesis, the subject
of which is the Anarchist concept of God. The chosen title of this work may seem
nonsense, since anarchists are, after all, great critics of religion. I will describe this
critique throughout my work, but at the same time I am going to show that many
anarchistic schools are in fact highly religious or spiritual. The main aim of this
work is to present a concept of God that best matches the religious and spiritual
theory and practice of anarchism, that corresponds with this theory and practice,
and might therefore find acceptance by some anarchists as their own.
The word anarchism is nowadays burdened with negative connotations. The
idea commonly raises resistance or even hatred in people. This is, perhaps, due to
the way in which anarchism is presented by the media, where it is presented to a
great extent only in connection with crime or some other field of conflict. The
media love conflicts. The secondary aim of this work is to present anarchism
without these media shortcuts, as an inexorable critique of any form of human
oppression, as a wide social movement and political philosophy, as a way of life.
In the first chapter I broadly define anarchism both negatively, as a critique
of various forms of domination and coercion, and positively, as a movement and
philosophy that understands freedom as its key value.
In the second chapter, I will outline an eventual accord between diverse
religious thoughts and anarchist theory by pointing to the traces of anarchistic ideas
7
in several religions that existed long before anarchism was formulated as a political
philosophy. I then introduce spiritually anarchistic thinkers, and show the influence
of those religions on diverse contemporary anarchist schools of thought.
In the third chapter I define a possible anarchist concept of God, first by
excluding certain known concepts, then, after narrowing the field and together with
my knowledge of the defined theory and praxis of anarchism and its values, I
propose the concept itself.

8
1. What is anarchism?
1.1 Definition of Anarchism
“That which Western man secretly desires and is the core of his religious
feeling of civilized exclusivity, is precisely why we are afraid of anarchists, namely
that which we ourselves never dare, but look up to and we swear by. This is why it
is useful to know the anarchist’s truth” Martin Škabraha (Tomek; Slačálek, 2006a).

As with many other terms, there is no such thing as a simple definition of
anarchism. It can be described as a social and political philosophy coherently
formulated in 19th century, but it is more-likely a wide range of social and political
ideas influenced and formed by many movements and personalities, some of which
existed and lived long before that date, while others reflect those ideas to this day,
long after that date.
One of the earliest definitions of anarchism comes from the eleventh edition
of Encyclopaedia Britannica, and it is written by the Russian revolutionary Peter
Kropotkin, one of the important representatives of anarchism. Kropotkin (1911)
describes it as a “principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is
conceived without government - harmony in such a society being obtained, not by
submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements
concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely
constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction
of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being.”
This definition demonstrates the core of our problem. Anarchism is, to a
certain extent, a theory, but at the same time, a principle of life. In other words, it is
simultaneously a utopian thought and a social practice aimed at trying to get us as
close as possible to that utopia (Bertolo, 1993, s. 101). Its interest is primarily
focused on various forms of praxis, as the quote suggests, that in his social
relations, a man has need to embody the society he wishes to create. Nor can he
9