Key Arguments

• He asserts two paradoxical facts: 'Property is impossible; equality does not exist,' summarizing prior arguments (impossibility of property) and stating the empirical non-existence of equality.
• He then describes our conflicted attitudes: 'We hate the former, and yet wish to possess it; the latter rules all our thoughts, yet we know not how to reach it,' highlighting that our conscience rejects property but our will still desires it, whereas our thoughts are ruled by equality that remains unattainable.
• By posing the question, 'Who will explain this profound antagonism between our conscience and our will?' he characterizes this tension between hatred and desire for property, and idealization yet inaccessibility of equality, as a deep psychological and moral contradiction requiring explanation.

Source Quotes

V Psychological exposition of the idea of justice and injustice, and a determination of the principle of government and of right. Property is impossible; equality does not exist. We hate the former, and yet wish to possess it; the latter rules all our thoughts, yet we know not how to reach it.

Property is impossible; equality does not exist. We hate the former, and yet wish to possess it; the latter rules all our thoughts, yet we know not how to reach it. Who will explain this profound antagonism between our conscience and our will?

We hate the former, and yet wish to possess it; the latter rules all our thoughts, yet we know not how to reach it. Who will explain this profound antagonism between our conscience and our will? Who will point out the causes of this pernicious error, which has become the most sacred principle of justice and society?

Key Concepts

• Property is impossible; equality does not exist.
• We hate the former, and yet wish to possess it; the latter rules all our thoughts, yet we know not how to reach it.
• this profound antagonism between our conscience and our will

Context

Opening sentences of Part V, where Proudhon transitions from economic-legal critique to a psychological problem: our simultaneous hatred and desire for property and our fixation on yet failure to realize equality, which he has just restated as non-existent.