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