Resist Everything Except Temptation: The Anarchist Philosophy of Oscar Wilde

by Kristian Williams, Alan Moore (Contributor)

A book that penetrates the surface of the Oscar Wilde mythos to uncover the radical politics that propelled his art.

Oscar Wilde is remembered as a wit and a dandy, as a gay martyr, and as a brilliant writer, but his philosophical depth and political radicalism are often forgotten. Resist Everything Except Temptation locates Wilde in the tradition of left-wing anarchism, and argues that only when we take his politics seriously can we begin to understand the man, his life, and his work. Drawing from literary, historical, and biographical evidence, including archival research, the book outlines the philosophical influences and political implications of Wilde's ideas on art, sex, morality, violence, and above all, individualism. Williams raises questions about the relationships between culture and politics, between utopian aspirations and practical programs, and between individualism, group identity, and class struggle. The resulting volume represents, not merely a historical curiosity, but a contribution to current debates within political theory and a salvo in the broader culture wars.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Politics, Anarchism

288 pages, Paperback

Published June 2, 2020

About the author

member of Rose City Copwatch in Portland, Oregon, and of the National Writers Union (UAW Local 1981)

Reviews

[Niklas Pivic · Rating 4 out of 5]

In one interview about the play, a journalist commented on “the monstrous injustice of the social code.” Wilde agreed, “it is indeed a burning shame that there should be one law for men and another law for women.”

However, against the demands of the purity crusaders and a certain sort of feminist, who argued that marriage should bind man as well as woman— one law for both—Wilde offered this alternative: “I think that there should be no law for anybody.”

This is a much-needed book: I’ve not come across a book prior that’s handled Wilde’s anarchistic sides, and one’s probably not been published since George Woodcock’s The Paradox of Oscar Wilde, which was in 1950.

Alan Moore makes a typically boisterous entry in his introduction:

Here is cognitive dissonance, with the faintest redolence of absinthe: Oscar Wilde and anarchy. How are we to reconcile the privileged aesthete—who reputedly turned everything into an epigram and for whom seriousness was apparently anathema—with the mutable, demanding, and entirely straightfaced doctrines of Bakunin, Proudhon, Godwin, or Kropotkin? Where can we forge a connection between the ideal of each human being as their own sole leader, and the decadent icon whose experience was far removed from that of the working-class youngsters that he favoured, although patently not far enough? Surely, other than in some unlikely parlour-game, there is no reason why the champion of artificiality should share even a sentence with the planet’s oldest and perhaps most castigated form of politics.

In this essay Oscar Wilde makes many striking pronouncements, among them: “the form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all”; “there is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad”; and “all modes of government are failures.”

In the poem Libertatis Sacra Fames published in 1880, Wilde had written: Better the rule of One, whom all obey, Than to let clamourous demagogues betray Our freedom with the kiss of anarchy.

This book isn’t a biography. It delves into Wilde’s work, his conversation, speeches, letters, and other sources to provide ammunition for people who want to discover how Wilde evolved in an anarchic sense, and how he was both a complex, wondrous, and disturbing person.

Wilde was on friendly terms with anarchists like John Barlas, Peter Kropotkin, and Stepniak (Sergei Mikhailovich Kravchinskii), and was, at least at times, snobbish, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, and racist.

Though Wilde was in many respects a man ahead of his time, he was also very much a man of his time, and to accuse a nineteenth-century British gentleman of being elitist, sexist, racist, and anti-Semitic is practically redundant. Of course, recognizing that such faults were general does nothing to excuse them in the particular case, but it may mean that individual indictments are less meaningful than they first seem. As Wilde wrote in “The Rise of Historical Criticism,” “On est de son siecle même quant on y proteste.” (“A man belongs to his age even when he struggles against it.”)

What was important to Wilde was the notion that people—including whole groups of people—have the right to determine their own affairs without being ruled by others. His mother was a famous poet who did affect Wilde a lot, but his being Irish may have had more to do with his initial idea of politics. Then, as with most youths, at the start of his life he was prone to agree more with the aesthetic than the consistent.

Richard Le Gallienne recalled an incident in which he and Wilde were out for a walk, and a beggar approached. “He had, he said, no work to do and no bread to eat.” Wilde cried out, “Work! . . . Why should you want work? And bread! Why should you eat bread?” He put his hand on the man’s shoulder, and confided, “Now, if you had come to me and said that you had work to do, but you couldn’t dream of working, and that you had bread to eat, but couldn’t think of eating bread—I would have given you half-acrown. . . . As it is, I give you two shillings.”

One of those who appreciated Wilde’s blending of socialism and individualism was that most prominent representative of anarcho-communism, Peter Kropotkin. Indeed, Kropotkin seems to have adopted the central ideas of “The Soul of Man under Socialism” (which he described as “that article that O. Wilde wrote on Anarchism—in which there are sentences worth being engraved, like verses from the Koran are engraved in Moslem lands.”)

In the conclusion to his book Mutual Aid, after examining the role of cooperation in both animal and human societies and positing it as “a factor of evolution,” often decisive in the survival of a species, Kropotkin offers this important caveat: “There is, and always has been, the other current—the self-assertion of the individual, not only in its efforts to attain personal or caste superiority, economical, political, and spiritual, but also in its much more important although less evident function of breaking through the bonds, always prone to become crystallized, which the tribe, the village community, the city, and the State impose upon the individual. In other words, there is the self-assertion of the individual taken as a progressive element.”

Wilde made great progress with age. I mean, just how he changed in regard to women:

For most of two years, from November 1887 to September 1889, Wilde’s attention was concentrated on these issues at least two mornings a week at his job editing the Woman’s World. Before he took charge, the Lady’s World was a failing fashion and gossip magazine. Changing the name and recruiting an impressive collection of contributors, Wilde set out to make it “the recognized organ for the expression of women’s opinions on all subjects of literature, art, and modern life” and to “deal not merely with what women wear, but with what they think, and what they feel.”

However, against the demands of the purity crusaders and a certain sort of feminist, who argued that marriage should bind man as well as woman— one law for both—Wilde offered this alternative: “I think that there should be no law for anybody.”

Williams writes marvellously both of Wilde’s personal politics, how he managed life, love, and politics when getting swept up with Bosie—one of the major loves of his life—and Bosie’s father who led to Wilde’s ruin.

Williams’s ruminations on Wilde’s writing, perhaps, in particular, The Importance of Being Earnest and De Profundis, are illuminating and breathtaking.

This is a powerful and inspiring book. I recommend it to all for reading.

[Yasmin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic book! A great and thorough book on not just Oscar Wilde's politics, but his philosophy as well. I was surprised there wasn't any mention of his great friend Ada Leverson nor that for some people in Europe who were politically sympathetic thought he hadn't died in 1900 but was living in a monastery in Spain--his original desire on leaving prison--and this belief influenced the young generation of anarchists and socialist thinkers that impacted politics in the 20s and to some extent the early 30s. I had also hoped Williams might have mentioned Jose Marti reporting on Wilde's visit to the U.S. in 1881. Overall this is a great book and sheds much needed examination of a little looked aspect of Wilde as a writer and as a man.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book. Less of a biography of Wilde than a book that uses his life and work to think through the values and conflicts anyone who wants real liberation has to struggle with. One of those books that reminds me why I'm an anarchist and how connected we are to the disobedient idealists who came before us. Probably will be added to my, so you want to learn about anarchy goto list of reading materials - at least for the artsy philosophical types.

[Claire Cunningham · Rating 3 out of 5]

very textual anthology but we love the gay and the irish

[Mollie Connelly-MacNeill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why did it have to end?!!!! I want a thousand more books like this.

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A book that penetrates the surface of the Oscar Wilde mythos to uncover the radical politics that propelled his art.

Oscar Wilde is remembered as a wit and a dandy, as a gay martyr, and as a brilliant writer, but his philosophical depth and political radicalism are often forgotten. Resist Everything Except Temptation locates Wilde in the tradition of left-wing anarchism, and argues that only when we take his politics seriously can we begin to understand the man, his life, and his work. Drawing from literary, historical, and biographical evidence, including archival research, the book outlines the philosophical influences and political implications of Wilde's ideas on art, sex, morality, violence, and above all, individualism. Williams raises questions about the relationships between culture and politics, between utopian aspirations and practical programs, and between individualism, group identity, and class struggle. The resulting volume represents, not merely a historical curiosity, but a contribution to current debates within political theory and a salvo in the broader culture wars.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Re-reading my elder sibling in queerness Oscar Wilde's wildly witty aperçus as leftist coded messages? Sign me up! I'll trot down this happy trail as fast as you like. What happens is a bit different than I was imagining it might be. Wilde was a protean character by his own design. Political movements like anarchism are a lot more rigid in their roles than Wilde could ever have forced himself to be. He wrote: "A man belongs to his age even when he struggles against it." The fact is I'd never bothered to consider his struggles against his racism, antisemitism, and even sexism, in any serious light. It makes perfect sense that an Irish man of his generation and privileged class would partake of them all even as he grew into ever more Socialist modes of thought.

Why I stop just short of four stars is I'd've liked more attention to be paid to journalism (eg, “The Soul of Man under Socialism”) than the commentary on The Importance of Being Earnest and De Profundis, which are well-studied and familiar...no matter that the commentary was trenchant, it adds nothing new to Wilde's thought-development...it can't.

AK Press asks $15.20 for the Kindle edition; used trade paperbacks are a lot less, and at any price very well worth your gift-card money.

[Jbondandrews · Rating 5 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed this book written by Kristian Williams. I found this book to be a very interesting and informative part of Oscar's life.

[Kerri · Rating 5 out of 5]

,,,,,,,,yeah,,,