"Therefore, if God existed, only in one way could he serve human liberty - by ceasing to exist"
About this Quote
Bakunin doesn’t argue against God so much as he stages a jailbreak. The line is engineered as a provocation: if liberty is the highest political good, then any all-seeing, all-judging authority - even a benevolent one - is structurally incompatible with it. The syllogism is blunt, almost gleeful in its severity: omnipotence implies hierarchy; hierarchy implies obedience; obedience hollows out freedom until it becomes permission.
The rhetorical trick is that Bakunin grants the premise his opponents cherish (“if God existed”) and then flips it into an indictment. It’s less atheism-as-science than atheism-as-insurrection. God becomes the ultimate monarch: not merely a theological claim but a political technology, a cosmic warrant for priests, kings, and bosses. In that reading, religion isn’t a private consolation; it’s an upstream power source that makes downstream domination feel natural, moral, even grateful.
Context sharpens the blade. Writing in the mid-19th century, Bakunin is watching Europe churn with revolutions, restorations, and industrial exploitation, while church institutions often align with state power. His anarchism doesn’t just distrust governments; it distrusts the very idea of legitimate authority. So “ceasing to exist” isn’t metaphysics, it’s strategy: dismantle the sacred ceiling and you lower every earthly throne beneath it.
The subtext is psychological too. Belief can train people to outsource responsibility, to treat suffering as ordained and inequality as deserved. Bakunin’s line dares readers to see obedience not as virtue but as a habit - and to treat freedom as something that can’t be delegated, even to heaven.
The rhetorical trick is that Bakunin grants the premise his opponents cherish (“if God existed”) and then flips it into an indictment. It’s less atheism-as-science than atheism-as-insurrection. God becomes the ultimate monarch: not merely a theological claim but a political technology, a cosmic warrant for priests, kings, and bosses. In that reading, religion isn’t a private consolation; it’s an upstream power source that makes downstream domination feel natural, moral, even grateful.
Context sharpens the blade. Writing in the mid-19th century, Bakunin is watching Europe churn with revolutions, restorations, and industrial exploitation, while church institutions often align with state power. His anarchism doesn’t just distrust governments; it distrusts the very idea of legitimate authority. So “ceasing to exist” isn’t metaphysics, it’s strategy: dismantle the sacred ceiling and you lower every earthly throne beneath it.
The subtext is psychological too. Belief can train people to outsource responsibility, to treat suffering as ordained and inequality as deserved. Bakunin’s line dares readers to see obedience not as virtue but as a habit - and to treat freedom as something that can’t be delegated, even to heaven.
Quote Details
| Topic | God |
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