August 2025 VRG: Spontaneous (Dis)Order: Enlightenment Thinking on Anarchist Thought

with Aaron White

Wednesdays August 6, 13, 20, and 2025, 12:00-1:00 pm EDT

The Enlightenment is often hailed as the age of reason, where the foundations of modern political, social, and economic thought were laid. Key thinkers like John Locke, David Hume, and Adam Smith helped shape the discourse on natural law, human nature, property, and the role of government in civil society. Their ideas continue to influence much of Western political thought. 

However, the threads of their philosophies also gave rise to more radical critiques of power, hierarchy, and the state—ideas that later anarchist thinkers such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Benjamin Tucker, Emma Goldman, Peter Kropotkin, and Max Stirner would engage with and reinterpret.

Spontaneous (Dis)Order: Enlightenment Thinkers on Anarchist Thought, is designed to explore the intellectual lineage from Enlightenment thought to the development of modern anarchism. Through a combination of foundational readings from Locke, Hume, and Smith, and later writings by anarchist philosophers, we will investigate how seemingly disparate ideas about order, property, and government evolved into critiques of authority, state power, and coercion. Anarchism’s emphasis on decentralization, mutual aid, and voluntary cooperation will be examined in the context of the Enlightenment’s rational and humanistic ideals.

This VRG  is an opportunity to examine anarchist theory not as a standalone radical philosophy, but as a natural evolution—and critique—of the Enlightenment’s ideas of liberty, justice, and the human capacity for self-organization. Join us as we trace the intellectual connections that weave through centuries of thought on power, freedom, and human potential.

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