hilosophical Anarchology of Patriotism and (14/30)

 hilosophical Anarchology of Patriotism and the Philosophical Anarchopathology of Patriotoxication (14/30)

Mahmoud Sadeghi Janbahan

Translated by Maryam Sadeghi/ Laya Najmaraqi 

Philosophical Anarchological Elucidation of Homeland, Borders, and Identity in the Existential Perspective of Anarchic and Free Life

Homeland: Home or Prison?

In philosophical and humanistic traditions, the concept of home is intertwined with refuge, security, self-discovery, and inner peace—a place where the individual can be themselves, think without fear, choose freely, and live ethically alongside others. However, this very home, when emptied of freedom and turned into a site of imposition, coercion, obedience, and denial, ceases to be a home or refuge; it becomes a prison of dependency and attachment. A dazzling prison named homeland, whose essence is nothing but captivity.

From the perspective of philosophical anarchology, homeland can be a “home” only if three fundamental conditions are met:

1. The possibility of free thought
2. A space for ethical practice and choice-responsibility
3. The right to participate in redefining identity, meaning, and the boundaries of belonging.

Whenever these conditions are violated, homeland becomes a place of repression, forced obedience, and the camouflage of domination under the guise of identity. In this state, instead of being a foundation of dignity, homeland becomes a mechanism for elimination, silence, and conformity. Symbols such as flag, soil, lineage, and national memory, which can carry shared meaning, in this context transform into sanctifying tools of imprisonment.

In such a homeland, loyalty is not voluntary but coerced. One does not live in peace with the other, but rather in a symbolic war over similarity and difference. This homeland, more than a “home,” is a fortress of exclusivity, fear, and discrimination—a fortress that buries freedom behind the walls of seemingly sacred concepts such as nation, soil, ethnicity, and race.

Philosophical anarchology, by opening this prison called homeland, paves the way to redefine home—a home that can be homeland only when the individual can rediscover themselves, accept others, and live in voluntary coexistence. If homeland is home, it must be a place of freedom, difference, and possibility of choice. Otherwise, no matter how beautiful, magnificent, or historic, it is nothing but an identity prison named homeland.

The Authority-Resisting Human: From Birthplace to Global Life

Within the philosophical anarchological thought, the anarchistic human is not a lost, rootless, or displaced being, but a seeker of a borderless home—a home defined not by geography, borders, ethnicity, or race, but by ethics, freedom, and choice. Unlike the traditional patriotic human who seeks selfhood in soil and blood, this human finds their selfhood in free relations with the other, in a global and dignity-centered life.

In this vision, being rooted does not mean dependence on a particular land, but readiness to flourish wherever the possibility of free thought, ethical practice, acceptance of difference, and free choice exist. The free human neither flees roots nor idolizes them but understands roots as a process of ethical growth and transition, not fixation and stagnation. Wherever dignity is, wherever freedom and dialogue are possible, they can call that place home.

Cosmopolitanism, from an anarchological perspective, does not mean rejecting locality or being indifferent to cultural and existential context, but rather transcending geographic imposition toward ethical choice. Globalization, in this sense, is not melting into a rootless whole but the capacity for coexistence with the other in a pluralistic world where humans live by ethical principles such as justice, freedom, and dignity despite differences.

The authority-resisting human, instead of considering themselves subject to the biological fate of birth, defines themselves as an ethical agent in constructing identity, homeland, and meaning. They neither stay in their birthplace because they must nor flee it because they must, but consciously choose where, how, and with whom to build homeland. In this choice, dignity-centeredness, empathy, and freedom guide the journey from birthplace toward global life.

Citation:

Sadeghi Janbahan, M. (2025). Philosophical Anarchology of Patriotism and the Philosophical Anarchopathology of Patriotoxication (14/30): From Homeland as a Prison to Cosmopolitanism as the Telos of Anarchist Life.

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