William Godwin
William Godwin (born March 3, 1756 in Wisbech , Cambridgeshire , † April 7, 1836 ) was an English writer and social philosopher and the husband of Mary Wollstonecraft . Due to his main work Inquiry Concerning Political Justice , which appeared in 1792, he is considered the founder of philosophical anarchism . In his work he celebrated the French Revolution and denounced marriage as a nonsensical monopolyon. In his later editions he moderated these radically progressive views considerably.
Life
William Godwin was born in Wisbech, North Cambridgeshire , in 1756, the seventh of thirteen children. His father was a free church pastor. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Guestwick. When Godwin was eleven years old, he came to Norwich as a student of Samuel Newton . At the age of 17 he began to study at the Academy in Hoxton . Here he came into contact with the philosophy of John Locke . But he didn't stay long at the academy. Godwin was initially a preacher in a dissenting church in Suffolk , which also included his family. Realizing that he was not the right man for the preaching profession, he went to London to lead a life as a writer. As a writer, he first appeared with his Sketches of history in six sermons (London 1784). But his most important work of this era was: An Account of the Seminary .
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Not getting much from his work, Godwin began working for a magazine criticizing the Pitt government . His Inquiry Concerning Political Justice received more attention . It is considered his main work. When the high treason trials began around 1794 , he took on the courts with ruthless severity, while at the same time attacking English criminal law in his novel Caleb Williams .
In 1796 he married the writer and suffragette Mary Wollstonecraft , who brought a daughter - Fanny Imlay - into the marriage from the relationship with the US speculator Gilbert Imlay . After the birth of Mary Godwin , she died of puerperal fever. William Godwin married Mary Jane Clairmont a short time later, who brought two illegitimate children into the marriage. The younger of them went down in literary history under the name of Claire Clairmont as the brief mistress of Lord Byron .
Since the income from the sale of his author's rights was insufficient to support the family of seven, Godwin and Clairmont opened a publishing bookstore in London. In 1801 Godwin's book Thoughts was published. Occasioned by the Perusal of Dr Parr's Spital Sermon . Godwin, who was at times considered to be the leading theorist of the liberal Whig party, was increasingly forgotten. In 1812 an intensive correspondence began between Percy Bysshe Shelley and Godwin. Shelley was one of the admirers of Godwin's major work Inquiry Concerning Political Justice , but had only dealt with the first version, in which Godwin et al. a. completely refused marriage. Shelley began a love affair with 16-year-old Mary Godwin in 1814, which culminated in a secret escape to Europe. It wasn't until December 1816 that Percy Shelley, Mary Godwin, and William Godwin reached a reconciliation when, following the suicide of Shelley's wife, Harriet Westbrook, the two were able to legalize their relationship. William Godwin's eldest stepdaughter, Fanny Imlay, committed suicide in the early fall of 1816. Claire Clairmont, his youngest stepdaughter, had given birth to an illegitimate daughter to be conceived by Lord Byron in January 1816.
Godwin died on April 7, 1836 at the age of 80. His last will was to be buried next to his great love, Mary Wollstonecraft.
Godwin the anarchist
Already a well-known scholar, Godwin published his most important political-philosophical work in 1793 , “Political justice and its influence on general virtue and happiness”. In his main work - in German: "Political Justice" - he makes a name for himself as a passionate critic of capitalist society. In addition to his book - which due to its complexity only attracts attention in intellectual circles - he writes several utopian novels and thus reaches a larger readership.
As a believer in reason and rationality, Godwin believes that people are always accessible to reason and logical arguments - the only way to individual happiness is to practice virtue. The only rule that man should accept is reason. This can only be maintained through the trust of the ruled in their system. Trust in the system results from people's ignorance. The general education of all people must therefore be promoted.
Godwin rejects the violent revolution , because violence only promotes the emergence of a new authority , because revolution is not shaped by reason, but by passion. Revolutions must be carried out with justice rather than violence - forcing the rich to destroy their privileges, Godwin believes, is the wrong means. Bringing the revolution prematurely violent would, if this succeeded, lead to a negative anarchy , since the people would not know how to deal with their new freedom - a disorientation would be the consequence of a premature violent revolution. This rejection of violence is also reflected in Godwin's concept of revolution. For him, revolution is a state of constant evolution. Godwin imagines the revolution and the transition to anarchism as a process that is "casually" realized. He sees democracy as a transition phase to anarchy, because in it people's ignorance can be eliminated. People will simply no longer communicate with the state, no longer cooperate with it. Because they do not present themselves as a countervailing power, they are not open to attack and state power is now in vain. The revolution will remove the main source of conflict - the state - from the world.
Godwin's means of revolution is free discussion, in which he believes the truth will ultimately prevail. He wants to spread anarchism with the “written and spoken word” - he wants to arouse people's attention, not to make them anarchists by “persuasion”, but to remove every barrier of thought in order to “everyone the temple of science and the field for to open own studies ”.
Godwin does not believe in the classic model of marriage . It is built on the illusion of eternal love. Marriage is a tyrannical institution, it is the consequence of the cowardice of men who, in order to prevent the loss of their wives to a superior, monopolize her as property . Godwin's version of the future of the relationship between man and woman was the "search" practiced today for the one with whom one feels happiest, which at that time was still largely revolutionary terms, such as divorce and changing partnerships, i.e. a very free and modern attitude, included.
Like other philosophers and masterminds of his time, he demanded full equality for women at the end of the 18th century . Godwin himself married twice in his life. His first wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the first women's rights activists, was best known for her work Defense of Women's Rights, published in 1792 .
Godwin's social criticism also included a criticism of the penal system. He criticized prisons, and especially solitary confinement, for lacking the sense of punishment. Rather, he relied on “social rehabilitation” to give a perpetrator the opportunity to repent. He relies on a "mild severity" - an alternative strategy, the use of which for criminal policy is only today e.g. T. be implemented in reality.
Technical progress was also important for the revolution proclaimed by Godwin. Godwin believed that this would in a short time lead to a great deal of relief for people - machines would take over the work so that people only had to work half an hour a day. Above all, Godwin is disturbed by the need for human cooperation to operate machines, as he experienced in his time with emerging capitalism. You have to switch to automation as quickly as possible - people have to become masters of machines again - and thus also their time management.
As a supporter of egalitarianism , Godwin does not demand the collectivization of property or the abolition of private property (which the communists wanted), but the equal distribution of it to all people.
Godwin's lines of thought were too complex for the time to reach a larger audience and therefore only found dissemination among intellectuals - perhaps one of the reasons why his main work "Political justice and its influence on general virtue and happiness" was written by the monarchical authority was not banned. Godwin already calls for a society without constraints, without a state, and he rejects egoism. A society based on these principles and on generosity and reason is the ideal society for Godwin. That is why he is seen by many as one of the founders of individualistic anarchism.
Quotes
“With what delight the well-educated philanthropist must look forward to that happy time when the state will have disappeared, this crude machine which has been the only perpetual cause of human vices and which brings with it so many errors which can only be eliminated by its total annihilation can."
"The best guarantee of a happy result lies in free, unlimited discussion."
“Our verdict will always suspect weapons that can be used by both sides. Therefore we have to view all violence with aversion. "
"The real principle that must take the place of law is the unrestricted development of reason."
Works
- Inquiry concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Modern Morals and Manners (1793)
-
Things as they Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams
- German by Alexander Pechmann : The adventures of Caleb Williams or: The things as they are , 2 volumes in a slipcase. Achilla Presse, Butjadingen 2011.
- The enquirer: reflexions on education, manners and literature (1797, 1823)
- History of the life of Geoffrey Chaucer (1803, 2 vols.)
- Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
- Inquiry concerning the power of increase in the numbers of mankind (1821)
- Thoughts on man (1831)
- History of the Commonwealth of England (1824-28, 4 vols.)
- Lives of the necromancers (1834)
His novels Saint-Leon (1799, 4 vols.), FleetWood (1805, 3 vols.), Mandeville (1817, 3 vols.) And Cloudesley (1830, 3 vols.) Met with great acclaim; with the tragedies Antonio (1801) and Faulkner (1807) he failed. The Roman Valperga , written by his daughter, was clearly edited by him. Its adaptation underlines the role of the female protagonist.
literature
- Charles Kegan Paul: William Godwin, his friends and contemporaries , London 1876, 2 volumes.
- Max Nettlau: The early spring of anarchy. Their historical development from the beginning up to the year 1864. (Berlin 1993, Vol. 1)
- Theodor Michaltscheff : Changes and contradictions in the philosophy of Godwin . Dissertation to obtain a doctorate at the Philosophical Faculty of the Hanseatic University of Hamburg, Evert, Hamburg 1937, DNB 570591252 (Philosophical dissertation University of Hamburg 1937, 50 pages, 8).
- Helene Saitzeff (1881–?): William Godwin and the beginnings of anarchism in the XVIII. Century: a contribution to the history of political individualism . Dissertation, University of Heidelberg, 1907. archive.org (full text)
- Carl Brinkmann (editors): William Godwin and Robert Malthus : Economic freedom and economic law in the English economic classic, Verlag Ernst Klett, Stuttgart 1949
Web links
- Literature by and about William Godwin in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about William Godwin in the German Digital Library
- Entry in Edward N. Zalta (Ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
- Godwin William: Inquiry concerning political Justice (full text)
- [1] Writings of Godwin at the University of Adelaide
- [2] Writings by Godwin at Project Gutenberg
- Godwin, William in the database of German-speaking anarchism (DadA)
Individual evidence
- ^ Mark Philp: William Godwin . In: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Summer 2017 edition. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, January 1, 2017 ( stanford.edu [accessed May 11, 2017]).
- ↑ Lond. 1792; 3rd edition 1797, 2 vol .; German, Frankf. 1803
- ↑ Lond. 1794, 3 vol., U. more often; German, Leipz. 1797-98, 2 parts.
- ↑ http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/godwin/pj.html
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Godwin, William |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 3, 1756 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Wisbech , Cambridgeshire |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 7, 1836 |