Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the world history of peoples: diversity of languages and human perfectibility

This paper focuses on Proudhon's life-long fascination with the relationship between thought and language. One of the indications of the permanence of his interest are Proudhon's reactions to Bergmann's books or his critique of Renan's philology as etched out in his manuscripts. Confronted with the argument of the similarities between Caucasian languages - Greek, Latin, Slavic languages, Germanic languages and with the theses supposing a common origin for them, Proudhon asserts that this similarity is due simply to ``the constitution of the human mind'', ``the correspondence between climate and resulting temperament''. Thus, Proudhon's polygenetic hypothesis objects to those who see a ``unity in a series of languages'' as proof of a ``unity of genealogy.''