By placing the Roman-law maxim "Adversus hostem aeterna auctoritas esto" ("Against the enemy, revendication is eternal") at the head of the First Memoir, Proudhon signals that, in matters of fundamental injustice, the right to reclaim what has been taken is perpetual and never extinguished by time or legality.
By Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, from What Is Property?
Key Arguments
- The maxim treats the "enemy" as someone against whom ordinary limits on claims (such as prescription, delay, or legal time-bars) do not apply, implying that an injury of a certain kind grounds an endless right of revendication.
- By invoking a classical juridical formula at the outset of a treatise attacking property, Proudhon frames proprietors (or the property regime) as a kind of juridical "enemy" against whom the oppressed retain an eternal claim to restitution.
- The phrase "revendication is eternal" aligns conceptually with Proudhon's broader project in What Is Property? of denying that long-standing legal recognition, habit, or civil law can legitimate an originally unjust appropriation.
Source Quotes
First Memoir Adversus hostem aeterna auctoritas esto. Against the enemy, revendication is eternal.
First Memoir Adversus hostem aeterna auctoritas esto. Against the enemy, revendication is eternal.
Key Concepts
- Adversus hostem aeterna auctoritas esto.
- Against the enemy, revendication is eternal.
Context
Epigraph opening the First Memoir of What Is Property?, where Proudhon uses a Roman-law style maxim to foreshadow his argument that no lapse of time or civil sanction can legitimate unjust property and that the right to reclaim from such an 'enemy' is perpetual.