Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

.. EnCi !J litenment And Revo{ution
4. William Godwin: Enquiry Concerning Poiiticaljustice (1793-97)
William Godwin (1756- 1836) is the author of the first compre/lensive argument for philosophical
anarchism. Godwin began writing his work, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice,
and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness, in 1791 during the initial phase
of the Frencll Revolution. By the time An Enquiry Concerning PoliticalJustice came out in
1793, France had become a republic, and King Louis XVI had lost his head along with his
crown. Although Godwin's book was initially well received, within a few years both Godwin
alld his book were roundly vilified. In 1794, he wrote his groulldbreaking novel, Things as
They Are; or, the Adventures of Caleb Williams, a vivid illustration of his ideas imaginatively
applied to English society. In 1796 he became the lover and later husband of the early
feminist writer, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759- 1797), author of A Vindication of the Rights of
Men (1790) and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), who died after giving
birth to their daughter .rt/fary. lv1ary Godvin "vent on to many- hef fa tlier's youthfu i discipie,
the poet Shelley, who put Godwin's philosophical anarchism to verse, and she wrote the classic
novel Frankenstein (1818).
Godwin revised An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice in 1795 and 1797, reissuing it under
the title of An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Morals and
Happiness. The following excerpts are from the third, 1797, edition (dated 1798), with the
exception of the section on property, which is from the first, 1793, edition. As Kropotkin argued
in his article on "Anarchism" in the Encyclopedia Britannica (11th edition), Godwin's
views on property in the first edition are more radical, hence their inclusion here. Unlike
Gerrard Winstanley, who advocated and practiced a form of nonviolent direct action,
Godwin's anarchism was almost entirely philosophical, seeing the eventual dissolution of
government as the result of a gradual and patient process of enlightenment.