Anarchist philosophy has often played and continues to play a crucial role in interventions in working-class and labor movements. Anarchist philosophy influenced real-world struggles and touched the lives of real, flesh-and-blood workers, especially those belonging to the industrial, immigrant working classes of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. Too often the writings, which were disseminated to, and hungrily consumed by, these workers are dismissed as “propaganda.” However, insofar as they articulate and define political, economic, and social (...) concepts; subject political, economic, and social institutions to trenchant critique against clear and well-defined normative standards; offer logical justifications of their own positions; and advance positive alternative proposals, why should these writings not be regarded as philosophical texts and analyzed accordingly? Obviously they should, and the fact that they have been so long ignored by political philosophers, historians, and other scholars reflects academic prejudice rather than the intellectual and philosophical merit of the writings. This article is a preliminary step toward giving anarchist philosophy the hearing it so richly deserves. (shrink)

This chapter is concerned with three specific questions. First, has there ever been a distinctive and independent ‘anarchist’ political philosophy, or is anarchism better viewed as a minor sect of another political philosophy — for example, socialism or liberalism — which cannot claim any critical and conceptual resources of its own? Second, if there has been such a distinctive and independent philosophy, what are its defining characteristics? Third, whether there is a distinctive and independent anarchist (...) political philosophy or not, should there be? (shrink)

This paper presents a discussion of some central ideas in anarchist thought, alongside an account of experiments in anarchist education. In the course of the discussion, I try to challenge certain preconceptions about anarchism, especially concerning the anarchist view of human nature. I address the questions of whether or not anarchism is utopian, what this means, and what implications these ideas may have for dominant paradigms in philosophy of education.

This paper presents a discussion of some central ideas in anarchist thought, alongside an account of experiments in anarchist education. In the course of the discussion, I try to challenge certain preconceptions about anarchism, especially concerning the anarchist view of human nature. I address the questions of whether or not anarchism is utopian, what this means, and what implications these ideas may have for dominant paradigms in philosophy of education.

Against these are set pieces that argue anarchisms impossibility and estimate its relevance to social change.The debate format of Anarchism introduces the ...

The political writings of the French poststructuralists have eluded articulation in the broader framework of general political philosophy primarily because of the pervasive tendency to define politics along a single parameter: the balance between state power and individual rights in liberalism and the focus on economic justice as a goal in Marxism. What poststructuralists like Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean-François Lyotard offer instead is a political philosophy that can be called tactical: it emphasizes that power emerges from (...) many different sources and operates along many different registers. This approach has roots in traditional anarchist thought, which sees the social and political field as a network of intertwined practices with overlapping political effects. The poststructuralist approach, however, eschews two questionable assumptions of anarchism, that human beings have an essence and that power is always repressive, never productive. After positioning poststructuralist political thought against the background of Marxism and the traditional anarchism of Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Proudhon, Todd May shows what a tactical political philosophy like anarchism looks like shorn of its humanist commitments—namely, a poststructuralist anarchism. The book concludes with a defense, _contra_ Habermas and Critical Theory, of poststructuralist political thought as having a metaethical structure allowing for positive ethical commitments. (shrink)

Four new publications provide an overview of the relationship between Nietzsche’s philosophical thought and his political commitments. Together they highlight the true complexity of Nietzsche’s politics, since some of his ideas can be adapted to anarchist and right-wing positions as much as, for instance, to Frankfurt School critical theory. At the same time, these contributions underscore the limitations of a strictly positivist, or philological approach, since any assessment of Nietzsche’s politics cannot be detached from the political faultlines of the (...) present. (shrink)

Anarchism and Sexuality: Dangerous Desires brings the rich traditions of anarchist thought and practice to contemporary questions about the politics of sexuality. Overflowing and undermining governmental divisions between the personal and political, heterosexual and homosexual, activism and scholarship, poetry and prose, this book: brings a fresh anarchist perspectives to queer and feminist debates around sexuality; makes feminist and queer intervention in the newest wave of anarchist scholarship; and offers an anarchist contribution ...

This paper aims to show that the development of Feyerabend’s philosophical ideas in the 1950s and 1960s largely took place in the context of debates on quantum mechanics. In particular, he developed his influential arguments for pluralism in science in discussions with the quantum physicist David Bohm, who had developed an alternative approach to quantum physics which (in Feyerabend’s perception) was met with a dogmatic dismissal by some of the leading quantum physicists. I argue that Feyerabend’s arguments for theoretical pluralism (...) and for challenging established theories were connected to his objections to the dogmatism and conservatism he observed in quantum physics. However, as Feyerabend gained insight into the physical details and historical complexities which led to the development of quantum mechanics, he gradually became more modest in his criticisms. His writings on quantum mechanics especially engaged with Niels Bohr; initially, he was critical of Bohr’s work in quantum mechanics, but in the late 1960s, he completely withdrew his criticism and even praised Bohr as a model scientist. He became convinced that however puzzling quantum mechanics seemed, it was methodologically unobjectionable – and this was crucial for his move towards ‘anarchism’ in philosophy of science. (shrink)

How we define the anarchist canon—let alone how we decide which thinkers, theories, and texts should count as canonical—depends very much on what we take the purpose of the anarchist canon to be. In this essay, I distinguish between thinkers, theories, or texts that are “anarchist,” by virtue of belonging to actually-existing historical anarchist movements, and those which are “anarchist” in virtue of expressing “anarchistic” (or “anarchic”) ideas. I argue that the anarchist canon is (...) best conceived as a repository of historically-expressed anarchistic ideas and, for this reason, should include both kinds of theories, thinkers, and texts. (shrink)

This chapter looks at the pervasiveness of ethical discourses and analyses within anarchism, and how the priority given to moral evaluation distinguished it from rival revolutionary movements, such as orthodox Marxism. It traces the different meta-ethical positions and normative formulations found within anarchist traditions. It argues that a practice-based anti-hierarchical virtue ethics is most consistent with anarchist core commitments to materialism, anti-universalism and social solidarity.

Despite the recent proliferation of scholarship on anarchism, very little attention has been paid to the historical and theoretical relationship between anarchism and philosophy. Seeking to fill this void, Brill's Companion to Anarchism and Philosophy draws upon the combined expertise of several top scholars to provide a broad thematic overview of the various ways anarchism and philosophy have intersected. Each of its 18 chapters adopts a self-consciously inventive approach to its subject matter, examining anarchism's relation to other (...) philosophical theories and systems within the Western intellectual tradition as well as specific philosophical topics, subdisciplines and methodological tendencies. (shrink)

Anarchist political philosophers normally include in their theories (or implicitly rely upon) a vision of a social life very different than the life experienced by most persons today. Theirs is a vision of autonomous, noncoercive, productive interaction among equals, liberated from and without need for distinctively political institutions, such as formal legal systems or governments or the state. This "positive" part of anarchist theories, this vision of the good social life, will be discussed only indirectly in this essay. (...) Rather, I want to focus here on the "negative" side of anarchism, on its general critique of the state or its more limited critique of the specific kinds of political arrangements within which most residents of modern political societies live. Even more specifically, I will center my discussion on one particular version of this anarchist critique - the version that is part of the theory now commonly referred to as "philosophical anarchism". Philosophical anarchism has been much discussed by political philosophers in recent years. But it has not, I think, been very carefully defined or adequately understood. My object here will be to clear the ground for a fair evaluation of philosophical anarchism, by offering a more systematic account of the nature of the theory and of possible variants of the theory, and by responding to the most frequent objections to the theory. I hope by this effort to present philosophical anarchism as a more attractive, or at least a less obviously flawed, political philosophy. (shrink)

This article interrogates a key feature of anarchist education; focusing on a problem with implications not only for anarchist conceptions of education, but for anarchist philosophy and pra...

This article presents Reiner Schürmann's thought of anarchy through its relation to the thought of Martin Heidegger. The main aim of this article is to examine the relation between Schürmann's two major works, Heidegger on Being and Acting and Broken Hegemonies through their respective relation towards other authors in the continental philosophical tradition such as Jean-Luc Marion, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida. The article focuses furthermore on Schürmann's stress on the theme of the end of metaphysics and interrogates the ambiguities (...) surrounding this theme not only in Schürmann's works but also in the larger bulk of contemporary continental philosophy. (shrink)

The political writings of the French poststructuralists have eluded articulation in the broader framework of general political philosophy primarily because of the pervasive tendency to define politics along a single parameter: the balance between state power and individual rights in liberalism and the focus on economic justice as a goal in Marxism. What poststructuralists like Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean-François Lyotard offer instead is a political philosophy that can be called tactical: it emphasizes that power emerges from (...) many different sources and operates along many different registers. This approach has roots in traditional anarchist thought, which sees the social and political field as a network of intertwined practices with overlapping political effects. The poststructuralist approach, however, eschews two questionable assumptions of anarchism, that human beings have an essence and that power is always repressive, never productive. After positioning poststructuralist political thought against the background of Marxism and the traditional anarchism of Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Proudhon, Todd May shows what a tactical political philosophy like anarchism looks like shorn of its humanist commitments—namely, a poststructuralist anarchism. The book concludes with a defense, _contra_ Habermas and Critical Theory, of poststructuralist political thought as having a metaethical structure allowing for positive ethical commitments. (shrink)

Political obligation refers to the moral obligation of citizens to obey the law of their state and to the existence, nature, and justification of a special relationship between a government and its constituents. This volume in the Contemporary Anarchist Studies series challenges this relationship, seeking to define and defend the position of critical philosophical anarchism against alternative approaches to the issue of justification of political institutions. The book sets out to demonstrate the value of taking an anarchist approach (...) to the problem of political authority, looking at theories of natural duty, state justification, natural duty of justice, fairness, political institutions, and more. It argues that the anarchist perspective is in fact indispensable to theorists of political obligation and can improve our views of political authority and social relations. This accessible book builds on the works of philosophical anarchists such as John Simmons and Leslie Green, and discusses key theorists, including Rousseau, Rawls, and Horton. This key resource will make an important contribution to anarchist political theory and to anarchist studies more generally. (shrink)

This book examines the central questions concerning the duty to obey the law: the meaning of this duty; whether and where it should be acknowledged; and whether and when it should be disregarded. Many contemporary philosophers deny the very existence of this duty, but take a cautious stance toward political disobedience. This 'toothless anarchism', Professor Gans argues, should be discarded in favour of a converse position confirming the existence of a duty to obey the law which can be outweighed by (...) values and principles of political morality. Informed by the Israeli experience of political disobedience motivated by radically differing moral outlooks, the author sets out the principles which should guide our attitude to law and political authority even amidst clashing ideologies and irreconcilable moralities. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of law, philosophy and politics, and anyone concerned with the individual's responsibilties toward his or her political community. (shrink)

Anarchism is by far the least broadly understood ideology and the least studied academically. Though highly influential, both historically and in terms of recent social movements, anarchism is regularly dismissed. Anarchism: A Conceptual Approach is a welcome addition to this growing field, which is widely debated but poorly understood. Occupying a distinctive position in the study of anarchist ideology, this volume, authored by a handpicked group of established and rising scholars, investigates how anarchists often seek to sharpen their message (...) and struggle to determine what ideas and actions are central to their identity. Moving beyond defining anarchism as simply an ideology or political theory, this book examines the meanings of its key concepts, which have been divided into three categories: Core, Adjacent, and Peripheral concepts. Each chapter focuses on one important concept, shows how anarchists have understood the concept, and highlights its relationships to other concepts. Although anarchism is often thought of as a political topic, the interdisciplinary nature of Anarchism: A Conceptual Approach makes it of interest to students and scholars across the social sciences, liberal arts, and the humanities. (shrink)

Philosophy once started as the critical reflection on relatively ordinary human concerns. Increasing specialization has moved the discipline farther and farther away from these concerns, however, undermining its relevance outside the academy, but has also resulting in an ever increasing fragmentation. This fragmentation has further divided the field into a large number of esoteric communities that hardly understand each other. "Further divided", because philosophy was already divided into schools and traditions that seem to speak mutually unintelligible languages. In (...) addition to these problems for philosophy as a discipline or "cultural genre" (Rorty), this situation also creates a problem for individual philosophers who are driven primarily by the "big" and ordinary concerns that once founded the field, but that do not fit well in contemporary academic philosophy. In this essay, I suggest - but ultimately do not fully endorse - metaphilosophical anarchism as a possible solution to these problems. Metaphilosophical anarchism requires transparency and rejects opacity, but so do all other approaches to philosophy - at least officially - and if that is right, then anarchism has nothing new or different to offer. (shrink)

Introduction 1. Perspectives on Wittgenstein: An Intermittently Opinionated Survey: Hans-Johann Glock. 2. Wittgenstein's Method: Ridding People of Philosophical Prejudices: Katherine Morris. 3. Gordon Baker's Late Interpretation of Wittgenstein: P. M. S. Hacker. 4. The Interpretation of the Philosophical Investigations: Style, Therapy, Nachlass: Alois Pichler. 5. Ways of Reading Wittgenstein: Observations on Certain Uses of the Word 'Metaphysics': Joachim Schulte. 6. Metaphysical/Everyday Use: A Note on a Late Paper by Gordon Baker: Hilary Putnam. 7. Wittgenstein and Transcendental Idealism: A. W. Moore. (...) 8. Simples and the Idea of Analysis in the Tractatus: Marie McGinn. 9. Words, Waxing and Waning: Ethics in/and/of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: Stephen Mulhall. 10. The Uses of Wittgenstein's Beetle: Philosophical Investigations §293 and Its Interpreters: David G. Stern. 11. Bourgeois, Bolshevist or Anarchist?: The Reception of Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics: Ray Monk. 12. Wittgenstein and Ethical Naturalism: Alice Crary. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Some Personal Prefatory Remarks Introduction: Wittgenstein's Chief Contribution? The Reception of Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics in His Own Lifetime The Post 1956 Reaction.

Anarchism and Political Modernity looks at the place of 'classical anarchism' in the postmodern political discourse, claiming that anarchism presents a vision of political postmodernity. The book seeks to foster a better understanding of why and how anarchism is growing in the present. To do so, it first looks at its origins and history, offering a different view from the two traditions that characterize modern political theory: socialism and liberalism. Such an examination leads to a better understanding of how anarchism (...) connects with newer political trends and why it is a powerful force in contemporary social and political movements. This new volume in the Contemporary Anarchist Studies series offers a novel philosophical engagement with anarchism and contests a number of positions established in postanarchist theory. Its new approach makes a valuable contribution to an established debate about anarchism and political theory. It offers a new perspective on the emerging area of anarchist studies that will be of interest to students and theorists in political theory and anarchist studies. (shrink)

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Volume 21, Issue 4, Page 415-436, November 2022. Recent debates over ideal theory have reinvigorated interest in the question of anarchy. Would a perfectly just society need—or even permit—a state? Ideal anarchists such as Jason Brennan, G.A. Cohen, Christopher Freiman, and Jacob Levy argue that strict compliance with justice obviates the need for a state. Ideal statists such as David Estlund, Gregory Kavka, and John Rawls think that coercive political institutions serve indispensable functions even in (...) ideal conditions. This paper defends ideal anarchism. Our argument begins by describing a camping trip inspired by Cohen that illustrates why an anarchist form of cooperation is more intrinsically desirable than the statist alternative. After detailing Rawls's ideal theory and Estlund's “nonconcessive” moral theory, we argue—contrary to Rawls, Estlund, and Kavka—that large-scale societies without moral imperfection do not need a state. (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 152–154 Levi R. Bryant. The Democracy of Objects . Ann Arbor, MI: Open Humanities Press. 2011. 316 pp. | ISBN 9781607852049. | $23.99 For two decades post-anarchism has adopted an epistemological point of departure for its critique of the representative ontologies of classical anarchism. This critique focused on the classical anarchist conceptualization of power as a unitary phenomenon that operated unidirectionally to repress an otherwise creative and benign human essence. Andrew Koch may have inaugurated this trend (...) in 1993 when he wrote his influential paper entitled “Post-structuralism and the Epistemological Basis of Anarchism.” Koch’s paper certainly laid some of the important groundwork for post-anarchism’s continual subsumption of ontology beneath the a priori of an epistemological orientation, and his work continues to be cited as an early and important venture into post-anarchist philosophy. The problem is that Koch could not conceive of an anti-essentialist and autonomous ontological system, one not subject to regulation or representation by the human mind. Consequently, he was forced to assert a subjectivist claims-making ego as the foundation of a post-structuralist anarchist politics. Saul Newman was indebted to this heritage insofar as he also posited the ego (extrapolated from the writings of Max Stirner) and the subject (extrapolated from Jacques Lacan’s oeuvre ) as the paradoxical ‘outside’ to power and representation. Todd May fell into a similar trap in his book The Political Philosophy of Post-structuralist Anarchism when he wrote that “[m]etaphysics [...] partakes of the normativity inhabiting the epistemology that provides its foundations.” 1 Whereas Newman’s approach did not necessarily foreclose the possibility of metaphysics—at least to the extent that he began with the subject of the Lacanian tradition (wherein the subject is believed to be radically split between thinking and being)—May completely foreclosed the possibility of any escape from the reign of the epistemological. There laid the impasse of yesterday’s post-anarchism. This impasse at the heart of the project of post-anarchism has forced Koch, Newman, May, and many others, to come to similar conclusions about the place of ontology in post-anarchist scholarship. The post-anarchists have all formulated a response strikingly similar to Koch’s argument that any representative ontology ought to be dismantled and dethroned in favour of “a conceptualization of knowledge that is contingent on a plurality of internally consistent episteme .” 2 By dismissing all ontologies as suspiciously representative and as incessantly harbouring a dangerous form of essentialism, post-anarchists have overlooked the privilege that they have placed on the human subject, language, and discourse, at the expense of the democracy that the human subject shares with other animals, objects, and beings in the world. This epistemological characterization of post-anarchism has held sway for far too long. It is not by chance that post-anarchism, as a concept, was first formulated by Hakim Bey as an “ontological anarchism,” 3 and subsequently repressed by the canon of post-anarchist authors. Perhaps Bey’s ontological anarchism also lacked the ‘rigour’ required of today’s scholarly audience and for these two reasons (at least) he has received very little credit for his inaugurating efforts into post-anarchism. In any case, I want to challenge this reluctance and revive the roots of post-anarchism. Levi Bryant gives us a reason to believe that we can achieve the promise of Bey’s ontological anarchism without sacrificing the scholarly standard of rigour. Levi Bryant’s newest open-access book, The Democracy of Objects , is a tour de force . His book challenges post-anarchists to take their radical critique of representation a step further by questioning the “hegemony that epistemology currently enjoys in philosophy.” Bryant maintains that post-structuralism, and radical anti-humanisms, only appear to reject the subject as the locus of political agency. Their rejection is actually more of a disavowal, a replacement of the human subject with the equally human order of language or discourse. What post-structuralism attempts to elucidate is the manner in which the subject is colonized by the Other of language, discourse and social relations. What here appears as a movement away from the determining subject of humanism and existentialism is only replaced with the determining apparatuses of structures as they are conceived by astute analysts of political culture. Post-structuralism thus re-enters the anthropocentric discourse to the extent that the cultural analyst believes himself capable of conceiving the determinative structures of society. In contradistinction to the claims of post-structuralism and post-anarchism, the role of the ontologist is not to suture the gap between epistemology and the real but to de-suture it, as Bryant puts it: “[o]ntology does not tell us what objects exist, but that objects exist, that they are generative mechanisms.” Above all else, the role of ontology, for post-anarchists, ought to be a real de-centering of the subject in relation to other objects in the non-human world such that the subject becomes conceived as one object among others within a living democracy of equality. This inevitably leads to the conclusion that objects exist whether or not the subject or analyst is there to represent them: they represent themselves and are autonomous from our dictation, just as each object finds its autonomy in relation to other objects. Ontology must now be distinguished from representation. We must shift the terms of the debate and interrogate the hegemony that epistemology has been afforded within post-anarchist philosophy. At least two possibilities are now permitted. On the one hand, one could intervene into the reigning mode of philosophy, namely epistemology, by latching onto concepts from meta-ethical philosophy. Meta-ethics allows one to easily separate the ontological from the epistemological and to answer very particular questions about each in order to formulate an overarching meta-ethical position. 4 Post-anarchism is particularly adept at this task because of its resounding ability to frame itself as an ethical political philosophy in relation to the strategic political philosophy of classical Marxism. On the other hand, Bryant argues that “[p]erhaps the best way to defeat [the privilege currently held by epistemology] is to shift the terms of debate.” Shifting the terms of debate is also something that post-anarchists have been very good at doing. Thus, instead of asking the question ‘how do representative ontological systems harbour concealed epistemological orientations toward the political?’ one might ask ‘ do epistemological orientations toward the political always harbour representative and subject-centred ontological systems?” The genius of Bryant’s book rests in its ability to convincingly argue for the radical autonomy of being and of objects. This claim speaks to some of the most compelling theories of the political in anarchist and marxist political philosophy (for instance, hegemony, representation, democracy, and so on) and it re-stages the political drama of our times across a much wider terrain. The fallacy of strategic political philosophy in the Marxist tradition, as Todd May quite correctly points out, is that it remains committed to a concept of power that is unitary in its analysis, unidirectional in its influence, and utterly repressive in its effect. Similarly, Bryant’s ontology allows one to argue that there is a fallacy that occurs “whenever one type of entity is treated as the ground or explains all other entities.” Whereas May’s post-structuralist anarchism moved away from the fallacy of the unitary analysis of power, whereby subjects are constituted by the influence of a single site of power, it nonetheless remained committed to a tactical political philosophy which is monarchical in the final analysis . It remains monarchical to the extent that the human world, the world of epistemology, is treated as the yardstick of democracy. Bryant’s argument is quite instructive: “[w]hat we thus get is not a democracy of objects or actants where all objects are on equal ontological footing [...] but instead a monarchy of the human in relation to all other beings.” The real fallacy is thus not against strategic political philosophy but philosophy itself and the way it has played out over so many centuries. “The epistemic fallacy,” writes Bryant, “consists in the thesis that proper ontological questions can be fully transposed into epistemological questions.” The point that Bryant is making relates to the way ontology is today always reduced to an epistemology and thereby loses its significance as a philosophical question. This book should be applauded for its novelty and its thesis ought to be taken seriously by post-anarchists today. Because of this book, and the attendant post-continental movement that is being called ‘speculative realism,’ we can now distinguish three stages in the life of post-anarchism. First, we can deduce what Süreyya Evren has described as its ‘introductory period.’ The introductory period of post-anarchism is defined by its inability to side-step the ontological problem in the literature of classical anarchism. During this period, post-anarchism needed to distinguish itself from classical anarchism while nonetheless remaining committed to its ethical project. The second period overcomes the problem of the separation of post-anarchism from classical anarchism by re-reading the classical tradition as essentially post-anarchistic. Some of the critiques of post-anarchism—especially that from Cohn & Wilbur 5 —are included into this period insofar as post-anarchism, for them, was always already anarchism. Whereas the first and second phases have included only explicitly anarchist literature under their rubric of worthwhile investigation, in the third period this no longer holds true. To be certain, the second period permitted the incorporation of post-structuralist literature into post-anarchist discussions (but always with a certain amount of reservation). This third period, the one that is to come—the one that is already here if only we would heed its call—will not take such care with attempts at identification or canonization. Indeed, post-anarchism is already here, like a seed beneath the snow, waiting to be discovered. Levi Bryant teaches us that the third period is already here: and yet where is it? NOTES 1) Todd May. The Political Philosophy of Post-Structuralist Anarchism . University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. 1997. 2. 2) Andrew Koch. “Post-structuralism and the Epistemological Basis of Anarchism” [1993] in Post-Anarchism: A Reader . Eds. Duane Rousselle & Sureyyya Evren. London: Pluto Press. 2011. pp. 23-40. 3) Bey, Hakim. “ Post-Anarchism Anarchy .” 1987. 4) I have attempted to do this in my paper on Bataille’s post-anarchism; see Duane Rousselle. “Georges Bataille’s Post-anarchism.” Journal of Political Ideologies . 17(3): in press. 5) Jesse Cohn & Shawn Wilbur. “ What’s Wrong with Post-anarchism? ” 2010. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that archism, a form of political power that is ubiquitous in the world and is based on hierarchy and violence, effectively denies us a future. Archism in invested in continuing the current power dynamics. Accordingly, it projects a false sense of the future which is actually only a continuation of the present on and on forever. I look at two thinkers, Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt, who try to take the future back from archism (my (...) word, not theirs). In doing so, they do not seek to determine the future but on the contrary, to allow it to actually occur in all of its infinite complexity and unpredictability, that is to say, to submit it to anarchist forms of temporality. (shrink)

Anarchists get a bad rap. More often than not, TV shows, comic‐books, videogames and sometimes even serious journalism portray anarchists as lazy work‐shirkers or as cartoonish evil villains, hell‐bent on causing chaos for chaos's sake. Unfortunately, the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender is not immune to this habit. Book Three of Avatar: The Legend of Korra even features an antagonist, Zaheer, who is nominally an anarchist. Anarchists would never jealously guard knowledge in a personal library, like the owl (...) spirit Wan Shi Tong. Anarchism involves a radical commitment to democracy‐sharing power and an opposition to unjust hierarchies. Anarchism also involves a way of looking at human beings and human interaction. This perspective is encapsulated in the anarchist principle “mutual aid,” which is often ascribed to the Russian biologist and philosopher Pyotr Kropotin. (shrink)

Philosophical anarchists claim that all states lack political authority and are illegitimate, but that some states are nevertheless morally justified and should not be abolished. I argue that philosophical anarchism is either incoherent or collapses into either statism or political anarchism.

This article provides an introduction to the themed section ‘Anarchism and the national question—historical, theoretical and contemporary perspectives.’ We discuss first the long and often overlooked engagement of anarchists with the colonial and national liberation question, particularly—but not exclusively—in the heyday of the movement (from the second half of the 19th to the first decades of the 20th century). We discuss in particular the overlaps and tensions between anarchists and republicans (those who favoured republics as opposed to monarchies) and anti-colonial (...) nationalists (anti-colonialists who defended the right of national self-determination). Then we proceed to discuss the potential for a dialogue between anarchist and nationalism studies based on three interventions. First, to problematise the narrative that conflates nations with state-building processes. Second, to better grasp the emergence of alternatives to the nation–state as a historical construct. Third, to complicate narratives that associate in an unproblematic fashion internationalism and classless society. Finally, the introduction highlights the four questions which lie at the core of the themed section and discuss briefly how the papers relate to these. (shrink)

This chapter draws upon Michael Freeden’s morphological theory of ideology to examine diverse conceptions of the State within the anarchist tradition. Its principal aim in so doing is twofold: first, to determine how and to what extent these conceptions serve to distinguish anarchism from other libertarian ideologies, and second, to explore the role they play in the formulation of diverse anarchist tendencies. As I shall argue, the particular meaning and degree of relative significance that a given conception assigns (...) to the State depends on the internal arrangement of its ‘micro-components’ and/or on its relation to other concepts within the ideological morphology. Both of these factors must be taken into account in order to understand anarchism’s internal diversity as well as its distinctiveness among ideologies. (shrink)

The concept of anarchy is often presented as a recipe for pure disorder. The Anarchist Turn brings together innovative and fresh perspectives on anarchism to argue that in fact it represents a form of collective, truly democratic social organisation. The book shows how in the last decade the negative caricature of anarchy has begun to crack. Globalisation and the social movements it spawned have proved what anarchists have long been advocating: an anarchical order is not just desirable, but also (...) feasible. The contributors, including leading anarchist and critical theorists, argue that with the failure of both free markets and state socialism the time has come for an 'anarchist turn' in political philosophy. In doing so they relate the anarchist hypothesis to a range of other disciplines such as politics, anthropology, economics, history and sociology. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that methodological pluralism is not identical with methodological anarchism. While the former connotes the existence of different methods that could be legitimately employed in different disciplines or contexts, the latter tends to suggest the non-existence of any legitimate method at all. Consequently, I contend that Afroconstructivism, a recent development in African philosophy supports methodological pluralism but repudiates methodological anarchism. The corollary of this is a critical re-evaluation of Paul Feyerabend’s critique of method. My basic (...) argument is that the epistemological framework of Afro-constructivism accepts Feyerabend’s repudiation of the hegemonic imposition of the method of modern science as valid. However, I argue that an Afro-constructivist interpretation of Feyerabend’s critique gives credence to methodological pluralism as against methodological anarchism. I buttress this position using the methods of logical analysis and argumentation. I begin with an analysis of the question of method, Feyerabend’s critique of method and Afro-constructivism,and then proceed to examine the merit of Feyerabend’s critique from the perspective of Afro-constructivism. At the end, I submit that the logical product of Feyerabend’s critique of method is methodological pluralism. Keywords: Afro-constructivism, Anarchism, Paul Feyerabend, methodology, epistemological dadaism, Pluralism, Reason, Science. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that what has been called “philosophical anarchism” in the academic literature bears little to no relationship with the historical anarchist tradition and, for this reason, ought not to be considered a genuine form of anarchism. As I will demonstrate, the classical anarchism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is to be distinguished from other political theories in regarding all hierarchical institutions and relationships—including, but not limited to, the state—as incorrigibly dominative or oppressive and, (...) for this reason, immoral. Lastly, I argue that defenders of such institutions and relationships must take the challenge posed by classical anarchism seriously by engaging substantively with actual anarchist positions. (shrink)

This article not only mentions spiritual anarchism nominally, as do so many previous articles, but tries to define it as precisely as possible. The definition assumes that the self itself can be a source of unjustifiable authority and a limitation to freedom, and that spiritual anarchism is nothing more than being open to that which transegoically transcends our narrow perspective. The article critically revisits previous overviews of spiritual anarchism, and itself proposes to take into account traditions that have been neglected. (...) Finally, the article reverses the approach; that is, it considers how some of our spiritual practices can be made more anarchistic, including meditation, the psychedelic experience and the mystical experience. (shrink)

This article gives an anarchist account of politics as war to theorise an anarchist _Realpolitik_. Mikhail Vereshchagin’s killing in _War and Peace_ provides the springboard to review the claim that sovereign power secures peace and to explore the merit of scapegoating. We elaborate the anarchist account of politics as war by juxtaposing Foucault’s and Proudhon’s interpretations of Hobbes’ sovereign and adopt the term ‘reverse ethics’ to describe the proposal that citizens retain the philosophical right to forcefully disrupt (...) the state’s supposed peace. The anarchist embrace of war conflicts with the common view that anarchism’s alignment of the means and ends of political action commits anarchists to reject violence. To meet this objection, we discuss Frazer and Hutchings’ theorisation of anarchist ambivalence. We argue that reverse ethics complicates tensions between the presumption of non-violence and the critique of state violence. To consider the use of force in liberal democracy, we connect reverse ethics to Hyams’ anarchist defence of upward scapegoating and targeted assassination. Considering applications in contemporary politics, we argue that reverse ethics constructively redirects attention from the need to justify political violence to the demand to hold sovereign power to its contractual obligation. This is anarchist _Realpolitik_. (shrink)

In this paper, I compare two prominent positions within contemporary “Analytic” and “Continental” political philosophy: philosophical anarchism and the paradox of politics. I compare each through an analysis of their respective criticisms of state legitimacy and the internal difficulties each position has in accounting for the legitimacy of state violence. I argue that these internal difficulties force each position to ask questions and criticize assumptions commonly found in the other position. I hope to show through this comparison that work (...) across the analytic/continental divide can tell us a great deal about a range of intractable political phenomena. (shrink)

I examine the impact of the presence of anarchists among key legal officials upon the legal positivist theories of H.L.A. Hart and Joseph Raz. For purposes of this paper, an anarchist is one who believes that the law cannot successfully obligate or create reasons for action beyond prudential reasons, such as avoiding sanction. I show that both versions of positivism require key legal officials to endorse the law in some way, and that if a legal system can continue to (...) exist and function when its key officials reject the reason-giving character of law, then we have a reason to re-examine and amend legal positivism. (shrink)

Simon Critchley's Infinitely Demanding makes a timely contribution to contemporary debates in ethics and political philosophy. For all its originality, however, one can raise critical questions concerning Critchley's account of the forms of resistance possible within liberal democratic polities. In this article I question the adequacy of Critchley's ethically based neo-anarchism as a response to neo-liberalism, critically analysing the role of ideology in his account of the motivational deficit afflicting capitalist liberal democracies.