Abstract

Though it is still largely regarded as a wholly political tendency, anarchism has long enjoyed a close relationship with the sciences. As figures such as Kropotkin have argued, it is the only ideology not bound to arbitrary stipulations about the proper functioning and organisation of societies. In particular, anarchists have stressed how the ethical principles of state capitalist societies are not in any way a reflection of human nature or the findings of psychology, but are rather imposed from above. Departing from modern liberalism and conservatism, anarchism is perhaps the only political ideology which proposes that morality is a mind-internal procedure. More specifically, how the brain is responsible for aspects of human nature such as morality and how the brain sciences might even be able to inform discussions of political ideology are major topics of current neuroscientific research. This contribution will consequently discuss developments in the sciences and their implications for domains ranging outside naturalistic investigation and will consider to what extent our current understanding of the brain can inform accounts of political action. It will be argued that it can be shown very evidently that aspects of political critique can, and should, be grounded in a naturalistic basis.