HORROR VACUI: BETWEEN ANOMIE AND ANARCHY

Abstract

In the context of the philosophy of modernity in general, and of political philosophy in particular, the idea of the practice of freedom gives rise above all to a sense of panic. Freedom's infinite expansion and absolute intensity have provoked a reaction which expresses itself in the bipolarity discipline/punishment (to evoke Michel Foucault). The irreconcilable divide between liberalism and anarchism turns on this ground: the first feels the necessity of building freedom in order to better designate it through limits, while anarchy underlines the importance of subtracting freedom from foundational limits through the valorization of its unlimited potential/power (if not, indeed, of its own intensive rhythm). In a way, then, modernity has never thought freedom in itself, but only its metaphysics: freedom is always an attribute which is adjunct or attached to a base which renders it certain, stable, and predictable. Politics, religion, morality, and philosophy of nature: all of these constitute external obstacles that guide freedom toward a transcendental path. Its disciplinary constriction comes from outside and aims to interiorize itself to the point of becoming second nature, as if it were inconceivable to think a freedom without limits, a freedom which gives itself its own planes of immanence, without founding them on well-established certitudes, on truths pre-constituted by the same strategic operations which place value on it. This has proven inconceivable for all except for anarchism and for Nietzsche, who rid themselves of every transcendence: politics, religion, morality, and philosophy of nature.