Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Anarchism

  • You Want Anti-Government? I’ll Give You Anti-Government

    Contrary to the willful  misrepresentations of contemporary liberals, conservatives are not anti-government.  To oppose big government is not to oppose government.  This passage from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (1851),  conveys a genuine anti-government point of view: To be governed is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed,…

  • Notes on Anarchism III: Wolff on the Conflict Between Authority and Autonomy

    This post is the third in a series. The first discussed authority, the second autonomy. The topic at present is the alleged conflict between them. The state lays claim to moral authority, to the right to rule and the right to be obeyed. If it has the right to command and be obeyed, then the citizen has…

  • Notes on Anarchism II: Wolff on Autonomy

    This post has a prerequisite.  We now explore the concept of autonomy as discussed by Robert Paul Wolff on pp. 12-18 of In Defense of Anarchism. 1. "The fundamental assumption of moral philosophy is that men are responsible for their actions." (12) Wolff intends moral as opposed to mere causal responsibility. But if we are morally…

  • Notes on Anarchism I: Wolff on Authority

    Robert Paul Wolff's In Defense of Anarchism (Harper 1970, 1976) is a good book by a clear thinker and master expositor. Here is a first batch of interpretive and critical notes. I use double quotation marks when I am quoting an actual person such as Wolff. Single quotation marks are employed for scaring, sneering, and…

  • Anarchism is to Political Philosophy as Skepticism is to Epistemology

    In Nicole Hassoun's NDPR review of Roderick T. Long and Tibor R. Machan (eds.), Anarchism/Minarchism: Is a Government Part of a Free Country?, Ashgate, 2008, we read: Anarchism should be of interest [to social liberals] because it plays the role in political philosophy that skepticism plays in epistemology — raising the question of what, if…

  • Hocking on the Anarchist and the Criminal

    William Ernest Hocking explains the anarchist’s attitude toward the criminal as follows: As for the criminal, his existence is not forgotten; but it is thought that he is either such by definition only, as one who has disobeyed what we have commanded; or he is such by response to the unnatural environment of the state…