A-Infos (en) Italy, FAS, Sicilia Libertaria #461 - Books - FICHTE AND ANARCHISM (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The title, Ethics and Anarchy (subtitle: The Persistence of Fichte's 
Idealism in Libertarian Thought, Mimesis ed., Milan-Udine 2025), does 
not truly convey the breadth of the critical exploration undertaken in 
this book by the two authors, Carla De Pascale and Antonio Senta. The 
former is among the most renowned international interpreters of Fichte, 
the latter one, and perhaps the most brilliant, of the young historians 
of anarchism. Their study contributes to introducing classical anarchist 
thought into contemporary philosophical debate, through a close 
engagement with Fichte's work, and to broadening the understanding of 
anarchism beyond our movement, from a philosophical perspective.

De Pascale "formally" authored the introduction and the chapters on the 
libertarian Fichte and his influence on Landauer, while Senta wrote the 
chapters on the influence of Fichte's thought on Bakunin, Kropotkin, and 
Malatesta.

While De Pascale is comfortable dealing with a subject she knows inside 
out, Senta's equally thorough research deserves particular praise for 
the expertise and courage shown in tackling the theories of the leading 
exponents of anarchism and classical German philosophy, a sure 
prelude-we hope-to future fruitful forays into other fields of 
knowledge. Historians of the libertarian milieu, and beyond, are rare, 
capable of unbiasedly reading and commenting on the original sources of 
libertarian thought and, even more so, of providing a substantial 
rationale, a philosophical motive, for the actions of anarchists.

Fichte is a difficult, complex, and partially unknown author. His 
thought, in particular, as De Pascale teaches in another of her writings 
(Living in Society, Acting in History, 2001), is "subject to the 
possibility of multiple and divergent interpretations." This, however, 
does not seem to apply to The Destination of the Scholar, the work that 
fascinated the young Bakunin so much that he first translated it into 
Russian in 1836. Fichte appears in it as a decidedly revolutionary 
author: for his concept of freedom ("only he who wants to free 
everything around him is free"), for the ethical tension that 
accompanies him and translates into continuous improvement in his 
approach to himself and his fellow men, for the "clear" distinction 
between society and the state, for the importance given to human 
self-education. All elements that, in addition to contributing to his 
formation, "will persist" - according to De Pascale - even in the 
"mature" Bakunin of the 1860s and 1870s. In reality, rather than a 
"continuity" of thought, however intermittent-as Senta argues in the 
chapter on Bakunin-the Bolognese scholar considers it to be "traces," 
"echoes of Fichtean themes," such as the abolition of inheritance 
rights, a proposal "advanced also and specifically by Fichte," which 
would become crucial to Bakunin's internationalist approach.

Senta and De Pascale do not inform us of the reasons for Bakunin's early 
disaffection with Fichte's thought, which would lead him first to 
Hegelian dialectics (as is done in an excellent, widely cited book by 
Claudio Badano, Il giovane Bakunin e la filosofia classica tedesca, ed. 
Orthotes, Naples-Salerno 2023) and, in his later years, to theoretical 
materialism. Nor does it address the evolution of Fichte's own thought, 
which, in his later, largely unpublished writings, slipped into 
increasingly statist and pro-theological positions (see Giuseppe Duso, 
Libertà e Stato in Fichte, now in Oltre la democrazia: un itinerario 
attraverso i classici, ed. Carocci, Rome 2004). These positions are 
incompatible with libertarian thought, although many specialists discern 
a certain continuity between the two phases of the German philosopher's 
life.

"Continuity" is also the true focus of Senta's interpretation of 
Fichte's influence on Bakunin, which he traces in numerous passages of 
the latter's works, including his later works, and comments on with 
admirable argumentation. And undoubtedly, a continuity is evident, more 
lexically than substantively, given that the concepts that Bakunin-a 
systemic thinker-inherited from theorists who preceded him, such as 
Fichte but especially Proudhon, were repeatedly reworked and adapted by 
him to his own conceptual system. Gian Pietro Berti's quotation from 
Machiavelli, placed at the end of the chapter, therefore appears 
completely incongruous. It emphasizes the dialectic of necessity and 
freedom, finiteness and infinity, and completely ignores the changes 
that had occurred in the conceptual system of the mature Bakunin, who, 
rather than proceeding to the reaffirmation of the negative self 
(Fichte), aimed at the outright deconstruction of dialectics.

The chapters on Kropotkin and Landauer are valuable and well-crafted 
interludes, where the focus on explicit Fichtean thought, which 
characterizes the initial chapters, fades in favor of a broad and 
convincing treatment of libertarian ethics, presumably derived from that 
thought. This takes on a "scientific" guise in Kropotkin and a more 
prosaically "socialist" one in Landauer. This is a useful device for 
introducing the book's "grand finale," the chapter on Malatesta.

Historians have long been searching for the roots of Malatesta's 
"voluntarism." Senta detects a significant "ason" with Fichte's "will" 
(without, however, excluding other, perhaps more pertinent, influences), 
since it is the product of the dichotomy or interaction between idea and 
reality, but also between "theoretical materialism" and "practical 
idealism," as emphasized by Badano, or between theory and practice, as 
in Bakunin. This "mixture," or tension, or union between two poles, 
which, according to Senta, "haunted anarchist thought and movement from 
the very beginning," also constitutes the "key" of Malatesta's ethics, 
capable of combining material emancipation with "the awareness of 
freedom and the will to realize it."

"Morality," that is, the "science of human conduct in relations with 
other men," becomes anarchic and "superior to all others," according to 
Malatesta, when it is "based on respect for freedom and the desire for 
the good of all." Anarchy, therefore, cannot be imposed by force or 
coercion. Senta sees in this assumption a principle linked to Fichte's 
concept of self-education: anarchists have no avant-gardes but an 
"active minority," which "must act so that the people are unaware of 
their actions, that is, without realizing that the concept and practice 
of freedom is being instilled in them through the dissemination of ideas 
by revolutionaries." This is similar to, but not entirely consistent 
with, Fichte's educational project, according to which "every individual 
must act on the basis of a free choice and a conviction deemed 
sufficient by himself," and not "treated as a mere means."

"Push" and "instill" can take on different and sometimes opposite 
meanings with respect to the abolition of all coercive and deceptive 
instruments...

Natale Musarra

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en