God and the State

In my reading of “God and the State” by Mikhail Bakunin, I noticed some interesting ways that Bakunin used rhetoric to appeal to the reader.

Of course, one of the things that interested me the most was the content of “God and the State”.  However, part of what drew me in was the rhetoric.

For example, Bakunin spent a large amount of time at the beginning explaining, essentially, why God is bad.  He even specifically mentioned Christianity as being the best at the whole concept of religion.  That concept, as he explained, is the idea that religion is all about the “impoverishment, enslavement, and annihilation of humanity for the benefit of divinity.”

Bakunin then went on, using pathos extensively to describe the abomination known as religion.  He stated “If God is, then man is a slave” and “All religions are cruel, all founded on blood”.  He really makes the reader visualize religion as he does: a corrupt abomination that enslaves mankind.

To a certain degree, I almost agreed with Bakunin about religion.  He even specifically cited Catholicism in his writing, and, knowing the history of Catholicism, it makes sense that he would have such a negative view of religion.  I think Bakunin did a great job focusing the reader on how he really felt about religion, and I think he did a great job getting the reader to believe as he did.

Bakunin also did a fantastic job using logos in “God and the State”.  He spent a large amount of the text describing his disdain for authority.  The idea of authority is also one of the reasons Bakunin hated religion.  Bakunin was an anarchist, so his focus was on going against authority.

Bakunin illustrated very well his reasoning why he was against authority.  First of all, as Bakunin explained, he didn’t like religious authority, because of how he felt it enslaved men and didn’t allow them to be free or to progress.  He was also against too much scientific authority, or one small group of scientists with very specific knowledge that would then only focus on keeping itself in power.

This reasoning led up this his final point, which is that he wasn’t entirely against authority (as he says), but that he preferred to only have groups of specialized scientists in different areas of expertise who he could refer to when necessary to make a judgment.  Even then, he would make sure to consult with multiple people within a particular field, and then he would make a decision as to what he believed personally.  This was the only kind of authority (if you can call it that) that Bakunin believed in.

While I disagree with Bakunin on a lot of what he wrote in “God and the State”, he has some valid points, and he did a great job getting those points across in a powerful, convincing way.