Anarchism and Nineteenth Century European Philosophy

Abstract

The fact that anarchist ideas in the nineteenth century developed within a cultur-ally diverse and geographically diffuse group of autodidacts and political revolutionaries rather than professional philosophers may go some way toward explaining their eclectic and unorthodox character. Motivated by a common disgust with bourgeois thought and its failure to bring clarity to the most im-portant social and political issues of the day, anarchist intellectuals such as Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin pursued alternative ways of thinking that yielded similar conclusions about freedom, equality, and justice. Although these conclusions gradually coalesced into a unique political philosophy predicated on the rejection of capitalism, organized religion, and the state, anarchists arrived at them by way of various routes with different starting points. This chapter explores a few of these intellectual trajectories in the broader context of nineteenth-century thought