Ethics: The Essence of Morality

The Essence of Morality offers a bold, coherent vision of ethics grounded in cooperation rather than coercion, an argument as provocative today as when Kropotkin first set pen to paper.

Left unfinished at his death, Peter Kropotkin’s two-volume work on ethics is a rejection of both divine command and the moral dictates of a ruling class. Kropotkin roots ethical life in something far older and more universal: the mutual aid practices that allow social species to survive.

Published here for the...