Moral Nihilism and Anarchism?

Question

A moral nihilism is a view that nothing is intrinsically moral or immoral. So, why would a moral nihilist support Anarchism, and can a moral nihilist be an anarchist?

Edit #1:
Actually this sentence written by Robert Nozick made me ask this question: "I treat seriously the anarchist claim that in the course of maintaining its monopoly on the use of force and protecting everyone within a territory, the state must violate individuals' rights and hence is intrinsically immoral.". Well, a moral nihilist would not give a damn about it being immoral, would him? Why would a nihilist want to be free? Why would a nihilist be happy? I seem to confuse hedonism with nihilism when it comes to that. Do existential nihilists want to be happy, if yes, why? I don't get it.

Comments

i consider myself an anarchist, but not a moralist. i think of "morals" as nothing more than a right/wrong judgement by a person of someone's behavior and/or thoughts.

Answer 1

A moral nihilist can be an anarchist if his anarchism is not based on moral principles.

My anarchism is not based on some idealized set of voluntary interactions or the wet dream of a horizontal chain of confederations. Most of the time, it is a daily, practical, individual endeavor. It is the destructive intellect and physical might I project against any and all forms of oppression.

The sort of oppression I attack is most often the kind which affects only me or my tribe (my family and friends). I don't waste my time agitating for larger reforms in order to save humanity because it's 'the right thing to do.' Most of them are too stupid to see the bars in front of their faces anyway and like Casca, I detest the stink of mental proles (even though I hang out with a lot of them). Besides, this techno-globo-corporate-liberal society is a rolling stone that can't be stopped and we'll be dead before it morphs into anything else. So I enjoy the sun with my compatriots and topple whatever's in my way--whatever I am able to push off its pedestal.

This kind of anarchism should properly be called anarchy: not a program or a prescription, not even a philosophy, but a process. It is the blinding white heat that brings the sword of practical logic to a silvery boil and the tensed fist that buries it in the flesh of any and every god.

And it's about more than freedom and happiness. It's about being my own. I want my thoughts and my feelings and my actions to be mine to create and control. This is naked egoism. It's the practical creation at every moment of my individual will to power. Happiness and freedom are byproducts.

I suggest you read Max Stirner. In "The Ego and Its Own" he writes: "Freedom lives only in the realm of dreams! Owness, on the contrary is my whole being and existence, it is I myself. I am free from what I am rid of, owner of what I have in my power or what I control." He goes on to say that a man may lose his freedom, but "My own I am at all times and under all circumstances..."

Moralists want a god to sacrifice their lives to. Capitalist Anarchists deify natural rights and economic freedom behind horn-rimmed glasses. Social Anarchists with their beads and tye-dye worship society. The collective is their messiah and communism their heaven. And if you act against their god they seek to destroy you. You are their devil. And why? Because you refuse to be sacrificed. Because you want things to sacrifice themselves to you.

Morality is a mask for the weak to hide their inherent egoism from their own eyes. I suggest we clever ones pull it off and laugh like Momus.

Comments

Hey, now, I've got a miserablist cosmology and an unfavorable torso to leg ratio, but I need only ponder what I see around me to sanctify that: Cioran and Seneca are there just for commiseration.

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"fuck him and fuck his site."

Seconded, I started reading PN's essay when they posted it and immediately started writing down notes regarding it's general crappiness, so as to write a comprehensive comment here, but SD, AF and BAA beat me to the punch ;)

For anyone who's interested, here are the disorganised thoughts I had whilst reading PN's essay (I didn't get close to finishing it, the self-righteous tone was too off-putting):

Fixation on what is rational and 'logical' is off-putting and spookish, in my experience appeals to reason are pretty much always appeals to spooks. My anarchism is based not on objective moral principle but desire, and is therefore completely irrational and illogical - if my desires were to be confined by logic then surely, being a white, (culturally) middle class male, logic would lead me to desire the status quo, because it is to my benefit in a lot of material ways. But I don't support the status quo, I'm not a statist, I'm an anarchist; not because heirarchal relationships are immoral but because I don't like them, I don't enjoy them.

Coming across the phrase 'I-Theist' I winced. If this means what I think it means, I don't have much time for it, or anything else that reifies yourself for that matter.

With regards to 'political theory', I as an anarchist do not cleave to Stirner or Nietzsche, I cleave their ideas to me, PN's writing on the other hand comes across as deeply ideological, rather than egoistic or authentic.

"I'm a moral nihilist who values consistency and thus will not put forth baseless moral arguments against goverment."

Well I'm an egoist (among other adjectives) anarchist who values consistency and so I don't put forth baseless moral arguments against government. In fact I think you'd be hard pressed to find an anarchist on here who would. 

To wrap things up, Sidney Parker, after disavowing anarchism, critiqued anarchism from a Stirnerean perspective, arguing that anarchism was incompatible with egoism because of anarchism's alleged inherent moralism, but to my mind he wasn't very successful either, because he couldn't imagine an anarchism rooted in desire rather than principle.

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Nietzsche hated 'anarchists' like yourself for many of the same reasons I do.

Then what the hell are you doing here?

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"Logic is one of those tools you must employ to reason, or argue in a coherent manner."

oh really? i love it when people come on here and try and bludgeon others with the word 'LOGIC' as if lightning and thunder will tear the sky asunder.

hey kiddo,  this may be news to you, but an argument can be logically sound and totally absurd. 'logic' is a word denoting a whole bunch of rule-based games not a thing-in-itself. you shoulda read nietzsche a little more closely...

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Just to echo Strawdog, seriously, what the fuck are you doing here? Your writing, including your responses to my disorganised thoughts on your piece reek of desperation for validation, which you seem to be trying to get through this self-righteous exercise of aggressively asserting your otherness here. Whenever you call someone a 'herd animal' or accuse them of being wedded to 'slave morality' you re-emphasise just how much Neizsche owns you. You haven't convinced anyone here of anything other than the fact that your lens is incredibly myopic. You're clearly not here to contribute to anarchist discussion, or honestly engage with it, so just fuck off.