An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, Vol. I
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Selection or partial work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~130,000 words · 630 passages
Cite this work
- APAWilliam Godwin. (n.d.). An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, Vol. I. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/william-godwin/an-enquiry-concerning-political-justice-vol-i
- MLAWilliam Godwin. "An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, Vol. I." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/william-godwin/an-enquiry-concerning-political-justice-vol-i.
- ChicagoWilliam Godwin. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, Vol. I. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/william-godwin/an-enquiry-concerning-political-justice-vol-i.
What it is about
The first volume of the 1793 book with which Godwin founded, without using the word, philosophical anarchism: the thesis that government is always an evil, however necessary it may be for the present.
Context and history
The argument is rationalist to the limit: if men are perfectible by reason, then any institution that makes them obey instead of convincing them holds them back. Hence his criticism not only of the state but of accumulated property, of promises, and even of marriage, as commitments that bind future judgement. The book appeared in the midst of the British reaction against the French Revolution and escaped suppression, so the story goes, because it cost three guineas and the government decided that no one who could pay that was dangerous. It influenced Shelley — who became his son-in-law — and his wife was Mary Wollstonecraft, who is also in the corpus.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
ened age is progreffive ; and the bell elementary treatifes after a certain time are reduced in their value by the operation of fubfequent difcoveries. Hence it has always been defired by candid en- quirers, that preceding works of this kind fhould from time to time be fuperfeded, and that other produ6tions including the larger views that have fmce offered themfelves, ftiould be fubftituted in their place-It would be llransje if fomethingr of this kind were not dehrable in politics, after the great change that has been produced in men's minds upon this fubjeftj and the light that has been 1 thrown vi PREFACE. thrown upon it by the recent difcuffions of America and France. A fenfe of the value of fach a work, if properly executed, was the motive which o-ave birth to thefe volumes. Of their execution the reader muft judge. Authors who have formed the defign of fuper- feding the works of their predeceffors, will be found, if they were ii;i any degree equal to the defign, not merely to have Golle6ted the fcattered information that had been produced upon the fubje6l, but to have increafed the fcience with the fruit of their own meditations. In the following work principles will occafionally be found, which it will not be juft to rejeft without examination, merely becaufe they are new. It was impoflible perfeveringly to refleft upon fo prolific a fcience, and a fcience which may be faid to be yet in its infancy, without being led into ways of thinking that were in fome degree uncommon. Another PREFACE. vli'