Anarchism and the Virtues

Abstract

This chapter has a number of aims: the first is to briefly sketch out standard philosophical approaches to anarchism (‘philosophical anarchism’) drawn from the arguments of Robert Paul Wolff (1976) and more recent critical synopses by Dudley Knowles (2007) and Jonathan Wolff (2006). This outline of philosophical anarchism concentrates on identifying the main ethical principles and the classification of the moral agent. The second feature of this chapter is that it explains and illustrates a distinctive alternative anarchist ethic (‘practical anarchism’), which is consistent with the main features of contemporary activism and scholarship on anarchism, but which also draws on the historical canon, such as Emma Goldman, Peter Kropotkin and Errico Malatesta.