In this article I tease out a conception of reason in Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s writings that is both decoupled from Enlightenment notions of human nature, progress, and transcendental truth, as well as auto-critically engaged with the anti-authoritarian Enlightenment ethos of anarchist thought. In so doing, I hope to reveal how the Proudhonian deployment of reason retained a healthy skepticism of foundationalism, philosophical systems-building, and the intellectualism bred of its dogmatic excesses as well as reconsider Proudhon’s relation to our most privileged faculty.

In this article I tease out a conception of reason in Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s writings that is both decoupled from Enlightenment notions of human nature, progress, and transcendental truth, as well as auto-critically engaged with the anti-authoritarian Enlightenment ethos of anarchist thought. In so doing, I hope to reveal how the Proudhonian deployment of reason retained a healthy skepticism of foundationalism, philosophical systems-building, and the intellectualism bred of its dogmatic excesses as well as reconsider Proudhon’s relation to our most privileged faculty.