Philosophical Genealogy of Anarchism: From the Principle of Power to the Ethics of Self-Organization

Abstract

The article undertakes a philosophical and cultural reconstruction of the genesis of anarchist thought, viewed not as a marginal political movement but as an independent ontological phenomenon immanent to the European tradition of critiquing power. The central analytical category is the dual semantics of arche (origin/command), whose problematization allows shifting the discussion from political science to the field of metaphysical tension between transcendental coercion and the immanent capacity of the community for self-organization. Drawing on material from ancient democracy (meson, the intrusion of the demos) to W. Godwin’s English rationalism, the article demonstrates that the anarchistic impulse is not a product of modernity but a permanent line of philosophizing aimed at deconstructing hierarchical structures. Special attention is paid to the watershed marked by N. Machiavelli: by legitimizing the autonomy of politics through a rupture with ethics, he paradoxically highlighted the need for their reunification, which was subsequently realized by classical anarchism of the 19th century. The article argues that P.-J. Proudhon, M.A. Bakunin, and P.A. Kropotkin, despite their differences, overcome the dualism of individualism and collectivism through the concepts of federalism and mutual aid, affirming anarchy not as chaos but as a positive order without domination. The analysis concludes that anarchism achieves philosophical consistency not in a utopian project of final arrangement but in the function of an irremovable critical question sustaining the tension between the actual and the obligatory.