ABSTRACT
The popular identification of anarchy with chaos makes sophisticated interpretations of the topic—interpretations that see anarchy as kind of social order rather than as an alternative to it—especially interesting. Discussions of anarchy as an analytical model in economics, political science, and international relations theory and as a normative model in legal and political philosophy have been matched by growing interest in anarchist ideas in the political sphere. Anarchism is arguably a radical strand within the liberal tradition. But modern political philosophy arguably begins with thinkers, many of them liberals—notably Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant—who take it as a crucial task to explain and justify the authority of the state in the wake of the demise of theories of divine right. Anarchist proposals regarding social organization and anarchist criticisms of existing social institutions directly and indirectly raise a diverse array of normative and positive questions.
