Relation to others· Power and justice
Anarchism
Axis: Relation to authority — Is a political authority that commands and coerces necessary, or should we free ourselves from it?
Any authority imposed from above is an illegitimate domination that mutilates freedom. Society can organize itself through free association, mutual aid, and federalism, without a state or chains of command.
Movements 2
Taoismexplicit
The good Taoist ruler is the one who governs least: he practices in politics, lightens laws and constraints, and lets the people follow their . Multiplying prohibitions and regulations only increases disorder, hence a libertarian leaning close to anarchism.
Laozi, Dao De Jing, ch. 57, 60 · Zhuangzi, ch. 11 (Letting Be and Exercising Forbearance)
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Cynicisminferable
The Cynic despises institutions, magistracies, and civic conventions, holding them to be arbitrary constructions with no natural worth. This distrust of any established order, with no political project to replace it, tends toward a form of anarchism of the self-sufficient individual: Diogenes searched in broad daylight, lamp in hand, for a true human being among the figures of power.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives, VI, 41
Philosophers 8
Millexplicit
All conduct divides into what concerns the agent alone and what affects others: from this distinction Mill draws that coercion is never legitimate in the first sphere, where no one is a better judge of his own good than the person concerned. The harm principle follows: preventing harm to others is the only warrant for social power, never a person's supposed good. Mill thereby targets state paternalism and the tyranny of the majority alike, that diffuse despotism of opinion which, in a democracy, threatens the individual more surely than the tyrant of old.
On Liberty (1859), ch. 1 (statement of the harm principle) · On Liberty, ch. 1 (the tyranny of the majority)
Laoziexplicit
The good prince governs by : the best ruler is the one whose people barely know he exists, and when the work is done, each says "it happened of itself." The less the state legislates, taxes and agitates, the better the people fare. This is not quite anarchism, since a sage-king remains and an order subsists, but a minimal government that effaces itself, the opposite of the contemporary Legalists.
Dao De Jing, ch. 17 and 60 · Dao De Jing, ch. 57 and 75
Lockeexplicit
If power is but a trust received to preserve natural rights, then it is bounded by its very end: it cannot reach beyond the common good, nor rule by arbitrary decrees, nor tax without consent. Locke derives from this the institutional arrangement (supremacy of the legislative, separation of powers) and, above all, the consequence refused: a ruler who betrays the trust puts himself in a state of war with the people, who thereby recover a right of resistance. Far from opening the door to disorder, this right is the last guarantee against tyranny, the judge being none other than the wronged people.
Two Treatises of Government, II, ch. 18-19 (of tyranny and the dissolution of government)
Spinozaexplicit
In the , Spinoza argues that the end of the state is freedom and defends freedom of thought and expression as a condition of civil peace and the growth of knowledge. Without being an anarchist, he sharply limits authority, religious authority above all, in the name of that freedom.
Theological-Political Treatise, ch. 20 (the freedom to philosophize)
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Diogenes of Sinopeinferable
If institutions, magistracies and civic honours are only , then no established authority holds a natural title to command: Diogenes despises the powerful, mocks the assemblies, and recognises order in nature alone. The distrust comes with no political project to replace what it rejects: by analogy one may read in it an anarchism of the self-sufficient individual rather than a doctrine of the city, and the position stays inferred from anecdotes more than asserted as a thesis. His lamp in broad daylight, searching for a man, is aimed first at the figures of power and reputation.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives, VI, 41
Sartreinferable
Sartre, an engaged and dissenting intellectual, refuses the constituted authorities that fix man in a role or deny his freedom: he declines the Nobel Prize in 1964 so as not to be institutionalized, supports anti-colonial struggles and the revolt of 1968. Without theorizing a systematic anarchism, his constant distrust of the state, of institutions and of all alienating authority leans clearly toward that pole.
Refusal of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1964); political commitments (anti-colonialism, May 1968)
Beauvoirinferable
Beauvoir distrusts authorities that fix individuals in imposed roles (patriarchy, traditions, dogmas) and treats unquestioned obedience as a form of bad faith. Without advocating the abolition of all institutions, she makes a power's legitimacy depend on whether it widens each person's concrete freedom, hence a marked wariness toward authority.
The Second Sex (1949), critique of patriarchal authority · The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947), the "serious man" and submission to established values
Marxinferable
The state is conceived as an instrument of class domination, a committee for managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie; after the transitional dictatorship of the proletariat, the state is meant to wither away in the classless society. The horizon is thus the extinction of coercive power, leaning toward the anarchist pole, without joining the anarchism that would abolish the state with no transitional phase.
Manifesto of the Communist Party, ch. 1 (the state as committee of the bourgeoisie) · Critique of the Gotha Programme (withering away of the state)
Characters 1
Antigoneexplicit
Brought before the king, she neither evades nor denies: "I did it, I deny nothing." This head-on avowal is the core of her defiance: she does not disobey in secret but contests 's very right to command this. What is at stake is not anarchy: against power she sets another authority, that of the gods and of the due owed the dead, older than the city. Where the edict claims to bind conscience, she holds that no decree grounds an obedience that would violate this higher order.
Prologue, dialogue with Ismene: she announces she will defy the edict · Second episode: "I did it, I deny nothing"