Since this is my first diary entry, I thought it would be philosophically useful to distinguish between anarcho-philosophy, as I understand it, and other more familiar kinds of anarchism.

Many very different political views, or attitudes, go by the scary label “anarchism.” By “anarchism” I certainly DO NOT mean either moral nihilism or political terrorism, which are self-evidently morally impermissible, and wicked. Also I DON’T mean merely a bohemian life-style  or radical chic (what Murray Bookchin nicely dubs “lifestyle anarchism”), although on the other hand, I also don’t have anything at all against people living or dressing or talking or writing in ways that express their own creatively individual outlook on things. Go for it, I say.

In any case, much more seriously, the thesis of philosophical anarchism says that there is no rational justification for political authority, and the thesis of political anarchism says that we should create a world in which there are no nation-states or other state-like institutions.

By general agreement, political authority means:

the existence of a special group of people (a.k.a. government), with the power to use violence and/or the threat of violence, and the right to command other people and to coerce them to obey those commands as a duty, no matter what the content of these commands might be, and in particular, even if these commands and/or the coercion are morally impermissible.

Now let’s assume that there exists a set of basic moral principles by means of which we can judge the permissibility or impermissibility of any human choice, action, practical policy, or other non-basic moral or practical principle.

Therefore, as I am understanding it, the problem of political authority is this:

Is there a rational justification for the existence of any special group of people (a.k.a. government) with the power to use violence and/or the threat of violence, and the right to command other people and to coerce them to obey those commands as a duty, no matter what the content of these commands might be, and in particular, even if these commands and/or the coercion are impermissible according to our basic moral principles?

Granting all that, here is a self-evidently sound three-step argument, which I will call the core argument for philosophical anarchism:

(1) Precisely insofar as it is morally impermissible for individuals to command other people and coerce them to obey those commands as a duty, then by the same token it must also be morally impermissible for special groups of people, a.k.a. governments, to command other people and coerce them to obey those commands as a duty.

(2) Therefore, precisely insofar as it is morally impermissible for individuals to command other people and coerce them to obey those commands as a duty, even if special groups of people, a.k.a. governments, have the power to command other people and coerce them to obey those commands, by using violence or the threat of violence, such special groups of people do not have the right to command other people and coerce them to obey those commands as a duty.

(3) Therefore, there is no rational justification for political authority, and philosophical anarchism is true.

What about anarcho-philosophy? Anarcho-philosophy is the same as borderless philosophy, which consists in the conjunction of these three proposals:

First, we should get rid of graduate schools, MA and PhD degrees, and philosophy departments altogether, and replace them with a network of interlinked borderless philosophy communities, each one created and sustained by voluntary association, team-spirit, and a shared sense of real, serious philosophy as a full-time, lifetime calling and mission, that combine dialogue, research, writing, publishing, the creation and sharing of original works of philosophy in any presentational format whatsoever, teaching, and grassroots social activism, whose members are widely distributed spatiotemporally, in many different countries, continents, and time-zones, and who are therefore also fully cosmopolitan thinkers, doing real philosophy without borders.

Here, the term “cosmopolitan” should be understood in the sense of the original, core meaning of the concept of cosmopolitanism, as correctly and insightfully formulated by Kwame Anthony Appiah:

Cosmopolitanism dates at least to the Cynics of the fourth century BC [and especially to Diogenes of Synope], who first coined the expression cosmopolitan, “citzen of the cosmos.” The formulation was meant to be paradoxical, and reflected the general Cynic skepticism toward custom and tradition. A citizen—a politēs—belonged to a particular polis, a city to which he or she owed loyalty. The cosmos referred to the world, not in the sense of the earth, in the sense of the universe. Talk of cosmopolitanism originally signalled, then, a rejection of the conventional view that every civilized person belonged to a community among communities. (K.A. Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006), p. xiv)

In short, the original, core meaning of cosmopolitanism expresses a serious critique of existing political communities and states; a thoroughgoing rejection of fervid, divisive, exclusionary, loyalist commitments to convention, custom, identity, or tradition; and a robustly universalist outlook in morality and politics, encompassing not only the Earth but also other inhabited worlds if any, and also traveling between worlds, and, finally, the entire natural universe.

Second, we should get rid of professional academic philosophy journals, presses, and the rest of the professional academic publishing racket altogether, and replace them with a cosmopolitan, border-less, worldwide network of interlinked borderless philosophy online sites and platforms for dialogue, research, writing, publishing, the creation and sharing of original works of philosophy in any presentational format whatsoever, teaching, and grassroots social activism, that are severally and collectively organized and run by the worldwide network of borderless philosophy communities.

Third, as a consequence of the first two proposals, philosophy should become fully cosmopolitan in the sense of the original, core meaning of the concept of cosmopolitanism.

Now it is possible to be an anarcho-philosopher without also being a defender of either philosophical anarchism or political anarchism. And it is also possible to be a philosophical anarchist without being a political anarchist. But it is hard to see how one could rationally justify political anarchism except by means of defending philosophical anarchism. In any case, and most importantly for our purposes here, it is possible to defend philosophical anarchism and political anarchism without being an anarcho-philosopher.

Just for the record, I’m an anarcho-philosopher, a philosophical anarchist, and a political anarchist. (Gasp!)

Now although X and Y are both anarcho-philosophers, I strongly suspect that neither of them is either a philosophical anarchist or a political anarchist. Alas.

Still, given the self-evidence of the argument sketched just above, you never know….