Submitted by tuesday in Philosophy
I just wrote this thing as a reply in 101 and I like it a lot, but also I just free wrote it out over the span of a half an hour so I'm sure it's not great. I also only took one semester of ethics and otherwise have had only one other philosophy class, as in theories. I did take logic though so I think I have a sound argument? idk, the point is I wrote this and it's probably shit but I wonder if someone said this before in a way that wasn't shit. Maybe I'll email my ethics prof. She'd get a kick out of my fumbling.
I did a DDG but only found something called Brill's Companion to Anarchism and Philosophy which I can't find in a place that isn't paywalled (but haven't spent much time looking tbh because it's 612 pages) so I figured I'd ask for help.
Essentially my argument is that Anarchism can be understood as a synthesis of the three main normative ethical theories, teleology, deontology and virtue.
Anarchism is sort of an amalgamation of the three main normative ethical theories. In Anarchism the ends are created by the means, rather than in teleological theory where the means are justified by the ends, or in a deontological sense where only the means matter. Additionally, it is a virtue ethic, as anarchists understand that our individual liberty is determined by the liberty of the whole so behavior that is antithetical to liberty will necessarily be defended against.
So for an anarchist, the ends are important, the means are important and the virtue of liberty is important.
Understanding anarchy as a social movement that seeks to abolish oppressive systems, and understanding that in anarchism the ends are created by the means, we conclude that to abolish oppressive systems we have to abolish oppressive systems. To be free we have to behave as though we are free. To stay free we behave in ways that respect the freedom of others.
tl;dr: None of us are free until all of us are free, and an injury to one is an injury to all.
Also obvi this doesn't apply to anarchists who do not agree with the foundation that there is such a thing as morality or ethics, so egoists and post-left folks (as far as I understand it, which is not much) just wouldn't agree with any of this.
Tequilx_Wolf wrote (edited )
People who get taught analytic philosophy get taught only normative ethics, which imo is not compatible with anarchism.
Post-left critique rejects morality but not ethics, and the distinction is roughly between normative and non-normative ethics, including Stirner's critique of transcendent value frameworks forced upon people, and Nietzche's critique of resentment (see this post by u/Sails) and slave morality, towards a transvaluation of all values for a life-affirming ethic.
This extra bit may or may not be useful, but:
If you're familiar with analytic philosophy you might be familiar with how much of its dominant forms assumes/requires an epistemological/metaphysical ground - something like Descartean foundationalism or Kant's transcendental idealism. Deleuze for example shows how those aren't actually adequate grounds at all and builds a meta-critique that allows for groundlessness. If you're curious about it, you might get something out of reading section 1.5 on D&G in this text, which introduces that critique and expresses normative frameworks to be a 'State thought', and how that critique affects how we relate to subjecthood and rationality. Or you can skip to section 1.6 and 1.7 which says a bit about what non-normativity means in a Deleuzian framework.
There's also a cool chapter called Immanent Ethics and Forms of Representation by Elisabet Vasileva in Deleuze and Anarchism that relates with this question in an interesting way, but I'm not sure how much Deleuze you have to read before it's easy to grasp.
I'm happy to try speak more specifically if you give me something to work with, for now I've just introduced the alternative to normative ethics.