Some observers believe existentialism forms
a philosophical ground for anarchism.
Anarchist historian Peter Marshall claims,
"there is a close link between the existentialists'
stress on the individual, free choice, and
moral responsibility and the main tenets of
anarchism".
== Background ==
=== Max Stirner ===
Anarchism had a proto-existentialist view
mainly in the writings of German individualist
anarchist Max Stirner.
In his book The Ego and Its Own (1845), Stirner
advocates concrete individual existence, or
egoism, against most commonly accepted social
institutions—including the state, property
as a right, natural rights in general, and
the very notion of society—which he considers
mere spooks or essences in the mind.
Existentialism, according to Herbert Read,
"is eliminating all systems of idealism, all
theories of life or being that subordinate
man to an idea, to an abstraction of some
sort.
It is also eliminating all systems of materialism
that subordinate man to the operation of physical
and economic laws.
It is saying that man is the reality—not
even man in the abstract, but the human person,
you and I; and that everything else—freedom,
love, reason, God—is a contingency depending
on the will of the individual.
In this respect, existentialism has much in
common with Max Stirner's egoism."
=== Friedrich Nietzsche ===
Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the first philosophers
considered fundamental to the existentialist
movement, though the movement did not exist
until after his death, which is when his works
became better known.
While he was alive, however, Nietzsche was
frequently associated with anarchist movements
and proved influential for many anarchist
thinkers, in spite of the fact that, in his
writings, he seems to hold a negative view
of anarchists.
This was the result of a popular association
during this period between his ideas and those
of Max Stirner.
(See: Relationship between Friedrich Nietzsche
and Max Stirner.)
As such, Nietzsche's Übermensch was representative
of the freedom for people to define the nature
of their own existence, as well as the desire
for a new human who was to be neither master
nor slave.
Nietzsche's idealized individual invents his
or her own values and creates the very terms
under which they excel, taking no regard for
God, the state, or the social behavior of
'herds'.
It was these things that drew Nietzsche to
anarchists and existentialists alike, showing
the clear commonality between both.
=== Other forerunners ===
Some point to Mikhail Bakunin as possibly
following a "philosophy of existence" against
"the philosophy of essence" as advocated by
Hegel, a figure whom many anarchists, in contrast
to Marxists, have found authoritarian or even
totalitarian.
"Every individual," Bakunin writes, "inherits
at birth, in different degrees, not ideas
and innate sentiments, as the idealists claim,
but only the capacity to feel, to will, to
think, and to speak," a set of "rudimentary
faculties without any content" which are filled
through concrete experience.
Foundational existentialist thinkers such
as Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche
also voiced their opposition to Hegel for
denying the role of the free individual, glorifying
State and Church, and claiming "absolute knowledge"
about human beings.
While influenced by Hegel early in his life,
Bakunin later was stridently opposed to Hegel
around the time he became an anarchist, and
would refuse to say he was ever influenced
by him.The transcedentalists, particularly
Henry David Thoreau, were influential to anarchism
and existentialism.
== Early and middle 20th century ==
=== 
Kafka and Buber ===
In the first and middle decades of the 20th
century, a number of philosophers and literary
writers had explored existentialist themes.
Before the Second World War, when existentialism
was not yet in name, Franz Kafka and Martin
Buber were among these thinkers who were also
anarchists.
Both are today sometimes seen as Jewish existentialists
as well as Jewish anarchists.
It is agreed that Kafka's work cannot be reduced
to either a philosophical or political theory,
but this has not necessarily been an obstacle
to making links from existentialism and anarchism
to his principal writings.
As far as politics, Kafka attended meetings
of the Klub Mladých, a Czech anarchist, anti-militarist,
and anti-clerical organization, and in one
diary entry, Kafka referenced influential
anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin: "Don't
forget Kropotkin!"In his works, Kafka famously
wrote about surreal and alienated characters
who struggle with hopelessness and absurdity,
themes which were important to existentialism,
yet simultaneously presented critiques of
the authoritarian family (in The Metamorphosis)
and bureaucracy (in such works as The Trial)
as well, about which he had strong views as
institutions.
He spoke, for instance, of family life as
a battleground: "I have always looked upon
my parents as persecutors," he wrote in a
letter, and that "All parents want to do is
drag one down to them, back to the old days
from which one longs to free oneself and escape."
In this regard, he was speaking from experience,
but he was also influenced by his friend Otto
Gross, an Austrian anarchist and psychoanalyst.
Otto Gross himself blended Nietzsche and Stirner
with Sigmund Freud in developing his own libertarian
form of psychology, feeling that they revealed
the human potential frustrated by the authoritarian
family: "Only now can we realize that the
source of authority lies in the family, that
the combination of sexuality and authority,
shown in the family by the rights still assigned
to the father, puts all individuality in fetters."Agreeing
with Gross and holding fundamental anarchist
views, Kafka would also define capitalism
as a bureaucracy, "a system of relations of
dependence" where "everything is arranged
hierarchically and everything is in chains",
and that in the end "the chains of tortured
humanity are made of the official papers of
ministries".
Martin Buber is best known for his philosophy
of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism
centered on the distinction between the I-Thou
relationship and the I-It relationship.
In his essay Ich und Du published in 1923,
he writes how we cannot relate to other people
through the "I" towards an "It", towards an
object that is separate in itself.
Instead, he believes human beings should find
meaningfulness in human relationships, through
"I" towards "Thou", towards people as ends-in-themselves
which brings us ultimately towards God.
This perspective could be seen as anarchist
in that it implicitly critiques notions of
"progress" fundamental to authoritarian ideologies
which abstract from the personal here-and-now
meeting of human beings.
Later Martin Buber published a work, Paths
in Utopia (1952), in which he explicitly detailed
his anarchist views with his theory of the
"dialogical community" founded upon interpersonal
"dialogical relationships".
=== Post-war period ===
Following the Second World War, existentialism
became a well-known and significant philosophical
and cultural movement, and at this time undoubtedly
influenced many anarchists.
This was done mainly through the public prominence
of two French writers, Jean-Paul Sartre and
Albert Camus, who wrote best-selling novels,
plays, and widely read journalism as well
as theoretical texts.
An influential exponent of atheist existentialism,
Sartre throughout his works stressed the expansion
of individual freedom in a world without God
or a fixed human nature.
Just as anarchists have always stressed that
deterministic blue-prints for ourselves or
the future will never lead to freedom, Sartre
believed human beings could choose for themselves
their own freedom, a "being-for-itself" that
is not enchained by the social, political,
and economic roles imposed on them.
This freedom may not always be completely
joyous, as "man is condemned to be free" for
Sartre.
Anarchists argue likewise that an anarchist
society would be desirable, but never inevitable
and given to us, and thus we are left with
what is the harder demand and responsibility
for ourselves alone to create such a society.
It was for a brief period between 1939 and
1940 that Sartre was an anarcho-pacifist.
Although best known for his Marxist politics
and for aligning with the French Communist
Party and the Maoists during 1968, Sartre
said after the May rebellion, "If one rereads
all my books, one will realize that I have
not changed profoundly, and that I have always
remained an anarchist."
Towards the end of his life, Sartre explicitly
embraced anarchism.
Although rejecting the term "existentialism",
Camus was a friend of Sartre's, and has been
considered part of the existentialist movement.
As another exponent of atheist existentialism,
he concerned his works with facing what he
called the absurd, and how we should act to
rebel against absurdity by living, by opening
up the road to freedom without a transcendent
reality.
Camus would also be associated with the French
anarchist movement.
The anarchist André Prudhommeaux first introduced
him at a meeting in 1948 of the Cercle des
Étudiants Anarchistes (Anarchist Student
Circle) as a sympathizer familiar with anarchist
thought.
He wrote for anarchist publications such as
Le Libertaire, La révolution Proletarienne
and Solidaridad Obrera (Worker Solidarity,
the organ of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT National
Confederation of Labor), and stood with the
anarchists when they expressed support for
the uprising of 1953 in East Germany.
He also again allied with the anarchists in
1956, first in support of the workers' uprising
in Poznań, Poland, and then later in the
year with the Hungarian Revolution.
One of the most substantial expressions of
both his existentialist and anarchist positions
appears in his work The Rebel.
For Camus, as for Nietzsche, rebellion should
not delve into nihilism, and as for Stirner,
should be distinct from revolution.
It is not a lonely act, and does not destroy
human solidarity but affirms the common nature
of human beings.
In the experience of the absurd, suffering
is individual, but when it moves to rebellion,
it is aware of being collective.
The first step of the alienated individual,
Camus argues, is to recognize that he or she
shares such alienation with all human beings.
Rebellion therefore takes the individual out
of isolation: "I rebel, therefore we are."
At the end of his book, Camus celebrates the
anti-authoritarian spirit in history and comes
out in favor of anarcho-syndicalism as the
only alternative: "Trade-unionism, like the
commune, is the negation, to the benefit of
reality, of abstract and bureaucratic centralism."Compared
by critics to Kafka and Camus, Stig Dagerman
was the main representative of a group of
Swedish writers called "Fyrtiotalisterna"
("the writers of the 1940s") who channeled
existentialist feelings of fear, alienation,
and meaninglessness common in the wake of
the horrors of World War II and the looming
Cold War.
He was also an active anarchist throughout
his life, and joined the Syndicalist Youth
Federation, the youth organization of a syndicalist
union, in 1941.
At nineteen, he became the editor of "Storm",
the youth paper, and at age twenty-two, he
was appointed the cultural editor of Arbetaren
("The Worker"), then a daily newspaper of
the syndicalist movement.
He called "Arbetaren" his "spiritual birthplace".
=== Influence of existentialism ===
Italian anarchist Pietro Ferrua became an
admirer of Sartre during this period and considered
existentialism the logical philosophy for
anarchists and "had written some papers on
that topic".
Marie Louise Berneri wrote that "in France,
Jean-Paul Sartre, André Breton, and Camus...
have all fought the battle of the individual
against the State".It was the English anarchist
Herbert Read who was perhaps most notable
for acknowledging the link between anarchism
and existentialism.
In his essay Existentialism, Marxism, and
Anarchism (1949), Read takes an interest in
the writings of Søren Kierkegaard, Martin
Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre, and juxtaposes
existentialism with his own anarchism, considering
both to be superior to Marxism.
Read was one of the earliest writers outside
of continental Europe to take notice of the
movement, and was perhaps the closest England
came to an existentialist theorist of the
European tradition.
He was also strongly influenced by Max Stirner,
noting the closeness between Stirner's egoism
and existentialism, and wrote an enthusiastic
Preface to the 1953 English translation of
Albert Camus's The Rebel.
== Contemporary era ==
Although throughout the 1940s and 1950s existentialism
was the dominant European intellectual movement,
in the 1960s it was starting to lose its influence
in the face of growing negative response.
During the 1960s, there would be little or
no existentialist movement to speak of, and
what popularity it had would become far more
overshadowed by structuralism, post-structuralism,
and postmodernism, intellectual approaches
which are today still widely used in academia.
However, existentialism, particularly existential
phenomenology, would still remain a significant
influence on post-structuralism and postmodernism;
one commentator has argued that post-structuralists
might just as accurately be called "post-phenomenologists".
Like existentialism, these approaches reject
essentialist or reductionist notions, and
are critical of dominant Western philosophy
and culture, rejecting previous systems of
knowledge based on the human knower.
Since the 1980s, therefore, a growing number
of anarchist philosophies, represented by
the term "post-anarchism", have used post-structuralist
and postmodernist approaches.
Saul Newman has utilized prominently Max Stirner
and Friedrich Nietzsche along with such thinkers
as Jacques Lacan in his post-anarchist works.
Newman criticizes classical anarchists for
assuming an objective "human nature" and a
natural order, which existentialism also objects
to.
He argues that from this approach, humans
progress and are well-off by nature, with
only the Establishment as a limitation that
forces behavior otherwise.
For Newman, this is a Manichaean worldview,
which depicts only the reversal of Thomas
Hobbes' Leviathan, in which the "good" state
is subjugated by the "evil" people.
Lewis Call and Michel Onfray have also attempted
to develop post-anarchist theory through the
work of Friedrich Nietzsche.
However, it is of note that the anarcha-feminist
L. Susan Brown has written a work, The Politics
of Individualism (1993), that explicitly argues
for the continuing relevance of existentialism
and its necessary compliment to anarchism.
She believes anarchism is a philosophy based
on "existential individualism" that emphasizes
the freedom of the individual, and defines
"existential individualism" as the belief
in freedom for freedom's sake, as opposed
to "instrumental individualism", which more
often exists in liberal works and is defined
as freedom to satisfy individual interests
without a meaningful belief in freedom.
But she argues, like post-anarchists, that
classical anarchist theory has asserted human
beings as naturally cooperative, and that
this fixed human nature presents many problems
for anarchism as it contradicts its commitment
to free will and the individual.
For anarchism to be fundamentally individualist,
she argues, it must look to existentialism
for a more "fluid conceptualization of human
nature".
She looks to the works of Jean-Paul Sartre
and Simone de Beauvoir in particular and sees
them as being compatible with anarchism.
It is also notable that she argues anarchism
does not generally take into account feminist
ideas of child-raising.
For instance, the idea of raising children
existentially free from their parents and
educated non-hierarchically by a community,
is not often considered by anarchists, and
yet radical thinkers from the highly Nietzsche-influenced
Otto Gross to existentialist psychiatrists
such as R.D. Laing and post-structuralists
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari have argued
forcefully that the nuclear family is one
of the most oppressive, if not the most, institutions
in Western society.
Contemporary anarchist Simon Critchley sees
the existential phenomenologist Emmanuel Levinas's
self-defined "an-archic" ethics, the infinite
ethical demand that is beyond measure and
"an-archic" in the sense of having no hierarchical
principle or rule to structure it, as important
for actual contemporary anarchist social practice.
His book Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment,
Politics of Resistance propounds a Levinasian
conception of anarchism and an attempt to
practice it.
The contemporary French anarchist and self-described
hedonist philosopher, Michel Onfray, published
a book on Albert Camus called The Libertarian
Order: The Philosophical Life of Albert Camus
(2012).
== See also ==
Autarchism
Egoist anarchism
Individualist anarchism
Nihilist movement
== 
References ==
== Further reading ==
Moore, John.
I Am Not a Man, I Am Dynamite!: Friedrich
Nietzsche and the Anarchist Tradition (2005).
Autonomedia.
Marshall, Peter.
"Existentialism".
Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism
(2010).
Oakland CA: PM Press.
Onfray, Michel.
L'ordre Libertaire: La vie philosophique de
Albert Camus.
Flammarion.
2012
Levi, Mijal.
Kafka and Anarchism (1972).
Revisionist Press.
Goodman, Paul.
Kafka's Prayer (1947).
New York: Vanguard Press.
Buber, Martin.
I And Thou (1971).
Touchstone.
Buber, Martin Paths in Utopia (1996).
Syracuse University Press.
Sartre at Seventy.
Sartre By Himself.
Camus, Albert.
The Rebel (1956).
New York: Vintage.
Read, Herbert.
Existentialism, Marxism, and Anarchism, Chains
of Freedom (1949).
London: Freedom Press.
Newman, Saul.
From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism
and the Dislocation of Power (2001).
Lanham MD: Lexington Books.
Brown, L. Susan.
The Politics of Individualism: Liberalism,
Liberal Feminism and Anarchism (1993).
Montreal: Black Rose Books.
Critchley, Simon.
Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment,
Politics of Resistance (2007).
New York: Verso.
Remley, William L. Jean-Paul Sartre’s Anarchist
Philosophy (2018) London: Bloomsbury
== External links ==
The Ego and Its Own HTML version
Give Me Liberty or Give Me Bad Faith: Anarchism
and Existentialism in Conversation.
Paper by Andrew Dobbyn
Levinas and Anarchism.
Articles and Research Tools by Mitchell Cowen
Verter
