¹ I rely here mainly on his pieces edited in English under the following titles: Collected Fictions, trans. Andrew Hurley (New York: Penguin Books, 1998); Selected Non-Fictions, ed. Eliot Weinberger, trans. Esther Allen, Suzanne Jill Levine, and E. Weinberger (New York: Penguin Books, 1998); and Selected Poems, ed. Alexander Coleman, bilingual edition (New York: Penguin Books, 1999). These works will be identified henceforth as CF, SNF, and SP, respectively. I have also translated and included references to different editions and interviews in Spanish when necessary to better illustrate the argument. For Borges's biographical information in English, see Woodall, James, The Man in the Mirror of the Book: A Life of Jorge Luis Borges (London: Hodder Headline, 1996)Google Scholar and Di Giovanni, Norman T., The Lesson of the Master: On Borges and His Work (New York and London: Continuum, 2003)Google Scholar; in Spanish, see Jurado, Alicia, Genio y figura de Jorge Luis Borges, 3rd ed. (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1997)Google Scholar and Borges, and Di Giovanni, , Autobiografía 1899–1970 (Buenos Aires: El Ateneo, 1999)Google Scholar, first published as “Autobiographical Notes,” The New Yorker, September 19, 1970 and later included in Borges, , The Aleph and Other Stories (New York: Dutton, 1970)Google Scholar.

² Some references for these topics are the following: Nazism (CF: 81, 157, 229, 391); strikes (CF: 216); conquests (CF: 208); political assassinations (CF: 143, 326); civil strife (CF: 336, SNF: 186); Latin American political history (CF: 390, 472); law enforcement (CF: 212); legislative institutions (CF: 407, 422); colonization (SNF: 250); nationalism (SNF: 420); political behavior (SNF: 197–212).

³ In Borges's words: “I am a modest Spencerian anarchist” (J. Soler Serrano, “Entrevista a Borges” [1980], uploaded May 2007, accessed from http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=7ER919AtOgA); “I believe that in time we will have reached the point where we will deserve to be free of government” (CF: 345); “In all political regimes … the State is annulling the individual” (Carlos Mongé, “Conversaciones con Jorge Luis Borges,” Estudios Públicos 75 [1999], 357).

⁴ Popper, Karl, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, 5th ed. (New York: Routledge, 2000), 16Google Scholar.

⁵ Borges, J. L. and Ferrari, Osvaldo, Reencuentros: Diálogos inéditos (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1999)Google Scholar, 111–12. I thought of Tocqueville when writing this sentence. Borges's fears closely resemble the French author's, since for both authors an indifferent individualism is a cognitive rather than a sentimental error, and its isolationism works against the strength of the political community, facilitating the emergence of despotism. See de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America, ed. Mayer, J. P., trans. Lawrence, George (New York: Harper Perennial, 1969), 506–9Google Scholar.

⁶ In this sense Borges's notion of self-sufficiency is not Aristotelian, on account of its isolationism. For Aristotle self-sufficiency is not “that which is sufficient for a man by himself, for one who lives a solitary life, but also for parents, children, wife, and in general for his friends and fellow citizens, since man is born for citizenship” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, bk. 1, chap. 7). Borges's stance is closer to Emerson's concept of “self-reliance,” in which the individual isolates himself to keep the “independence of solitude” that allows for self-trust in accepting his place on earth and in working accordingly. See Emerson, Ralph W., Essays and Poems (New York: The Library of America, 1996), 260, 263Google Scholar. I thank Doug Den Uyl for calling my attention to this comparison.

⁷ I speak of a minimal notion of ethics in the texts under analysis since, strictly speaking, ethical norms encompass more than dealing with others; they also concern how we should live. In turn, political norms define the setting within which people carry on their ethical actions. For an elaboration of this idea see Rasmussen, Douglas and Uyl, Douglas Den, Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Ethics for a Non-Perfectionist Politics (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), 91Google Scholar. For Borges's broader treatment of ethics see his poems “The Just” (SP: 455) and “De la salvación por las obras” (On Salvation by Deeds) in Borges, J. L., Obras completas III, 1975–1985 (Barcelona: Emecé, 1989), 450Google Scholar. An account of ethical issues in Borges can be found in Mateos, Zulma, La filosofía en la obra de Jorge Luis Borges (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 1998), 113–22Google Scholar.

⁸ Christ, Ronald, The Narrow Act: Borges' Act of Illusion (New York: Lumen Books, 1995), 76Google Scholar.

⁹ Molloy, Sylvia, Signs of Borges, trans. Montero, Oscar (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1994), 40–47Google Scholar.

¹⁰ See CF: 208; SNF: 137; SNF: 401–4; and Borges, “Discurso de Aceptación del Premio Cervantes,” 1979, accessed from http://sololiteratura.com/bor/bordiscursocervantes.htm. There is also a classification of politically situated archetypes: the recurrence of war as the “cyclical battle of Waterloo” (SNF: 213); a Western culture associated with the fight against oppression (SNF: 201; Borges, 1979); and an archetype of civil strife detectable in South American history (CP: 159–61).

¹¹ For the idea of an unknown destiny in Borges see, among others, his poems “Poem of the Gifts” (SP: 95), “The Labyrinth” (SP: 275), “Chess” (SP: 103), “For a Version of I Ching (SP: 383), “You Are Not the Others” (SP: 385). For his idea of a violent destiny see “The South,” “The Interloper” (1970) (CF: 348–50), and “Conjectural Poem” (CP: 159–61). On a nation's destiny see, for example, his observations on Scandinavian countries (SNF: 377–81).

¹² Alicia Jurado, Genio y figura, 120–21; D'Angelo, Biagio, Borges en el centro del infinito (Lima: U. San Marcos/U. Católica, 2005), 105Google Scholar.

¹³ CF: 68–81 and CF: 112–18, respectively.

¹⁴ SNF: 229–32.

¹⁵ CF: 67.

¹⁶ Jean Franco, “The Utopia of a Tired Man: Jorge Luis Borges,” Social Text 2, no. 1 (1981): 78.

¹⁷ SNF: 513, 240.

¹⁸ Borges, J. L., Textos recobrados, 1931–1955 (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2001), 343Google Scholar.

¹⁹ SNF: 192.

²⁰ CF: 343. Likewise, the artist's intentions and plans do not matter much, and they may even be ironically reversed, as was the case with Swift, who, according to Borges, wrote Gulliver's Travels “to raise an indictment against mankind and instead left behind a children's book” (SNF: 327). Borges mentions at least one exception to the fact that artists' intentions are not usually fulfilled, and that exception is the Aeneid: “Virgil set out to write a masterpiece; curiously, he succeeded” (SNF: 519).

²¹ Borges and Ferrari, Reencuentros, 155.

²² See his piece “The Argentine Writer and Tradition” (SNF: 420–27).

²³ Borges, Textos recobrados, 1931–1955, 343.

²⁴ SNF: 444.

²⁵ CF: 346. The reference is to the poems “To Israel,” “Israel,” “Israel, 1969,” where Borges is inspired by Israel's “courage,” as illustrated by the combative tone of the poems transmitted by the use of the words persecution, victory, rigor, battle, and soldiers. The poems are included in Borges, J. L., Obras completas II, 1952–1972, 4th ed. (Barcelona: Emecé, 1996), 374, 375, 384Google Scholar. See below, note 58, for the appeal of courage to Borges.

²⁶ Borges, , Textos recobrados, 1956–1986 (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2003), 305–6Google Scholar.

²⁷ Balderston, D., Out of Context: Historical Reference and the Representation of Reality in Borges (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993), 95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁸ CF: 229–34; CF: 208–11; CF: 333–36; CF: 212–14; CF: 334–35. For an analysis of his stories along the same lines see “Deutsches Requiem” in A. Salinas, “Political Liberty and Individuality in Jorge Luis Borges's Fictions” (paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, 2002), and for “Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden,” “The Etnographer” and “A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz 1829–1874,” see A. Salinas, “Inequalities in Fiction: Frontier Encounters and Transformations in Jorge Luis Borges” (paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, 2004).

²⁹ The story was published in The Book of Sand (1975) and is included in CF:460–65. See also the afterword to the book (CF: 484–85). Part of the analysis of the story presented here is taken and revised from Salinas, “Political Liberty and Individuality.”

³⁰ It is of course debatable whether the absence of feelings and desires can constitute an ideal; perhaps it is one in the Stoic sense that it contributes to the tranquillity of mind. The pursuit of tranquillity would make sense in the case of Borges, who delighted in conversation and in exploring metaphysics but shunned the appeal of love and romance in most of his stories.

³¹ I mentioned before that Borges shares Emerson's advocacy of a self-sufficient individual. They also agree on the idea that every form of government is corrupt. However, in “Utopia” their sympathies part ways: Emerson's call for a “nation of friends” (Emerson, Essays and Poems, 559–71) finds no place in Borges's solipsistic world of the future.

³² SNF: 202.

³³ Monegal, Emir Rodríguez, “Borges and Politics,” Diacritics 8, no. 4 (1978): 66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁴ SNF: 344–46.

³⁵ Borges, Obras completas III, 500.

³⁶ Mario Vargas Llosa, “Borges, político,” Letras Libres, November 1999, at www.letraslibres.com.

³⁷ Rodríguez Monegal, “Borges and Politics,” 67; Balderston, Out of Context, 15.

³⁸ CF: 345. In any case Borges's “act of scepticism” in time applied to the Conservative Party itself, from which he later disaffiliated, so that by 1980 he explicitly declares that he “belongs to no party.” See Daniel Bourne, “A Conversation with Jorge Luis Borges,” Artful Dodge, April 25, 1980, accessed from http://www.wooster.edu/artfuldodge/interviews/borges.htm.

³⁹ See his articles compiled under the title “Notes on Germany and the War,” where we read that Hitler's “only possible lesson is barbarism” (SNF: 203). Fascist ideas had spread rapidly among many Argentines, whom Borges described as deriving pleasure in evil and atrocity (SNF: 205). His criticism of Nazism gained him recognition by an antifascist editorial community that awarded him the Prix Formentor in 1961, which brought him his international fame and resulted in the translation of his works in several languages (Woodall, The Man in The Mirror, 193).

⁴⁰ Franco, “The Utopia,” 58; Bell-Villada, Gene, Borges and His Fiction: A Guide to His Mind and Art (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), 273–74Google Scholar; Julio Rodríguez-Luis, “La intención política en la obra de Borges: hacia una visión de conjunto,” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 361/62 (July–August 1980): 179; González, José L., Borges and the Politics of the Form (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1998), 198Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Borges and Di Giovanni, Autobiografía, 30. Other authors also trace Borges's anarchist inclination to the influence of Macedonio Fernández, a writer and close friend of his father whom Borges met regularly (see Diego Tatián, “Borges y la política,” n.d., 13–14, accessed from http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/etext/llilas/vrp/tatian.pdf; and Bell-Villada, Borges and his Fiction, 18–19). Whether Fernández introduced these ideas to Borges's father, or vice versa, is irrelevant to the fact that they both transmitted their anarchistic sympathies to the writer.

⁴² Borges, Obras completas III, 505. The quoted parts are from a two-page biographical note written by Borges but presented as an entry in a (fictitious) encyclopedia.

⁴³ Rodríguez-Luis, “La intención política,” 193; Sarlo, Beatriz, Borges: A Writer on the Edge (London: Viterbo, 1993), 14Google Scholar, accessed in 2002 from Borges Studies on Line, www.hum.au.dk/romansk/borges.

⁴⁴ Even González (Borges and the Politics, 180–86), who dedicates six pages to the analysis of Borges's antifascist stance, leaves only one page to the analysis of his anarchism, which he reluctantly sees as the last stage of Borges's individualism.

⁴⁵ Sylvan, Richard, “Anarchism,” in A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, ed. Goodin, R. and Pettit, P. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 232Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ CF: 345. From Gaus, G. and Kukathas, C., eds., Handbook of Political Theory (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2004), 129Google Scholar, I gather that a synonym for liberal anarchism could be market anarchism or anarchocapitalism. However, given Borges's indifference to economic issues, in his case I prefer to use the adjective “liberal” in its broader connotation.

⁴⁷ Bourne, “A Conversation.”

⁴⁸ Written during Perón's administration, “Conjectural Poem” (CP: 159–61) had, according to the author, a double meaning: to narrate Laprida's death at the hands of the barbarians, and to associate barbarism with the peronist regime (Mongé, “Conversaciones,” 11). For Borges, barbarian refers to anyone devoted to the use of violence and war. In Argentina, he associated barbarism with the caudillos (populist leaders who resorted to violence as a means of governing) such as Rosas and Perón (Borges, Obras completas III, 505–7).

⁴⁹ SP: 169.

⁵⁰ Di Giovanni, The Lesson, 68.

⁵¹ Borges, , Obras completas (1923–1949) (Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 1989), 87Google Scholar. For further details of nineteenth-century Argentine military history and its effect on Borges's family see Irwin, John, The Mystery to a Solution: Poe, Borges and the Analytic Detective Story (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 166Google Scholar, and Balderston, Out of Context, 87–88.

⁵² The “Manifesto de escritores y artistas” (A Manifest of Writers and Artists), Antinazi, March 22, 1945 (reprinted in Borges, Textos recobrados, 1931–1955, 355) illustrates this criticism. Directed against the military government with Nazi inclinations, the manifest—signed among others by Borges—condemns Argentina's international isolation imposed by a “succession of governments divorced from popular will” and calls for elections and democracy. President Perón was later elected by the popular will, but he continued the policy of isolation by pledging neutrality during the rest of the War. Borges's aversion to Perón's regime became more pronounced, as did his critique of populism, which he associated with democratic politics until the early 1980s (see González, Borges and the Politics, 196 n31).

⁵³ Woodall, The Man in The Mirror, 159.

⁵⁴ Spencer, H., The Man versus the State, with Six Essays on Government, Society and Freedom, ed. Mack, Eric (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1981), 123Google Scholar. Gordon, Scott, in The History and Philosophy of Social Science (London: Routledge, 1991), 412–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, offers an extensive analysis of Spencer's ideas on social evolution, minimal government, social ethics, and individualist methodology, and of his widespread influence among nineteenth-century academics and intellectuals.

⁵⁵ CF: 422–36.

⁵⁶ Borges, Autobiografía, 151.

⁵⁷ In 1790, in the company of thirty-six foreigners and in the name of this embassy of the human race, Cloots declared that the world adhered to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. He took his pseudonym from Anacharsis, a philosopher of Scythia who lived in Athens in the early sixth century BC. Source: Wikipedia, based on the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition. Young Borges read the latter edition every night (Christ, The Narrow Act, 280), and he picked it as one of the five books that he would take to an island, together with two volumes of Gibbon's Decline and Fall, Russell's Introduction to Math (or a book by Henri Poincaré), and the Bible (see the 1963 interview with Mario Vargas Llosa, “Entrevista a Jorge Luis Borges,” accessed from http://www.clubcultura.com/clubliteratura).

⁵⁸ In Borges's eyes, “the religion of courage” had provided unity to the Argentines. In a 1955 piece Borges imagines the mission of tango to be “to give Argentines the belief in a brave past, in having met the demands of honor and bravery” (“A History of Tango,” SNF: 397–99). Courage stands out in this essay as a condition proper of some Argentines, like gauchos and knife-fighters, but is not limited to them, for it is an “old cult” traceable to the Icelandic Sagas. Moreover, it is a faith based on “an awareness that God may be found in any man” (SNF: 403–4). For a connection between courage and politics in Borges's stories, and for an elaboration on his late repentance of his “cult” of courage, see Salinas, “Inequalities in Fiction.”

⁵⁹ Borges suggests a reason that Argentines generally did not obey the laws when he observes that Argentines do not identify with the state because “governments in this country tend to be awful” (SNF: 309). For an account of the Argentine disrespect of the state as causing an endemic legal anomie and socioeconomic underdevelopment see Carlos Nino, Un país al margen de la ley (Buenos Aires: Ariel, 2005), who proposes civic education and institutional reform as remedies. But Nino skirts the problem that Borges detects: among the public officials, who are supposed to implement civic education programs and institutional reform, and why and how will they do so, if most of the officials “tend to be awful”?

⁶⁰ CF: 472–76.

⁶¹ A. Hurley, “Notes to the Fictions,” in CF: 563–64.

⁶² Ferretjans, D. Alvarez, Crónica del Periodismo en el Uruguay (Montevideo: Fundación Hanns Seidel, 1986), 285Google Scholar, cited in Belén Riguetti, “Periódicos: museos de minucias efímeras,” paper presented to the Seminar-Workshop on Communication Analysis, Universidad de la República de Uruguay, Feb. 2006, p. 9 (accessed from http://www.analisis.edu.uy/monografias/riguetti_periodicos.pdf).

⁶³ Although “Avelino Arredondo” is situated in South America, the theme of political assassination is not uniquely identified with that region. Borges also deals with an individual who commits a politically inspired murder in his one-page “In Memoriam, J.F.K.” (CF: 326) where he observes that Kennedy's killer acted alone, as did the killers of Cain, Lincoln, and Idiarte Borda.

⁶⁴ Madison, Federalist no. 51, in Madison, , Hamilton, , and Jay, , The Federalist, ed. Carey, G. and McClellan, J. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001), 269Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Madison, Federalist no. 10, in ibid., 43–45. Italics in the original.

⁶⁶ Rocca, Pablo, “El Uruguay de Borges,” Fragmentos 28/29 (2005): 215Google Scholar, accessed from http://www.periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/fragmentos/article/viewFile/8142/7560.

⁶⁷ Alma Bolón, “Avelino Arredondo. Diversas ficcionalizaciones de un acontecimiento histórico,” in Variaciones Borges, July 2005, accessed from http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5042003/Avelino-Arredondo-diversas-ficcionalizaciones-de.html.

⁶⁸ Ibid.

⁶⁹ Riguetti, “Periódicos,”15.

⁷⁰ Borges thus puts into practice Appiah's notion that “the metaphor of a national memory has to be cashed out in terms of the stories that citizens tell one another about the nation, the tales they tell their children. These are produced from oral and literary traditions whose shape is the product of choices and decisions of exercises of power and acts of judgment and resistance—in short, of politics” (Kwame Appiah, “Global Citizenship,” Fordham Law Review 77, no. 5 [2005]: 2386). It does not belong to governments alone to decide who will belong to the national memory; it also belongs to the literary tradition, which may even be a stronger force.

⁷¹ CF: 466–471.

⁷² See Borges and Di Giovanni, Autobiografía, 143. Could Winthrop's renunciation of self-interest have happened elsewhere? Borges's story “Guayaquil” (CF: 390–96) also deals with an academic encounter between two professors working in Argentina, and parallels a historical meeting between two military heroes of the Latin American wars of independence, Bolívar and San Martín. After the meeting San Martín withdrew from the battlefield for reasons never made public. Contrary to the view that in “Guayaquil” one of the professors stoically renounces his self-interest (Franco, “The Utopia of a Tired Man,” 77), the plot is more about defeat inflicted by the winner's strength of will, as is made clear by the fact that Schopenauer is mentioned three times in the story. Winthrop's decision thus remains unique, reflecting Borges's opinion that it could not have happened elsewhere. For an account of the historical background supporting the interpretation that Bolívar's “victory” was mostly conferred by facts and not by San Martín's stoic choice, see Williamson, E., The Penguin History of Latin America (London: Penguin Books, 1992), 227–28Google Scholar.

⁷³ CF: 332.

⁷⁴ Borges and Di Giovanni, Autobiografía, 144.

⁷⁵ SNF: 56–58.

⁷⁶ “Una sentencia del Quijote,” in Borges, Textos recobrados, 1931–1955, 62–65.

⁷⁷ SNF: 309–10. The essay was first published in the magazine Sur (1946) and is included in Borges's book Otras inquisiciones (1952).

⁷⁸ de Cervantes, Miguel, Don Quixote, ed. Jones, Joseph and Douglas, K. (New York and London: Norton, 1981), 1:22, 157Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ SNF: 397–99. For a similar view see the analysis of Huckleberry Finn by Zuckert, Catherine, Natural Right and the American Imagination: Political Philosophy in Novel Form (Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1990), 146–51Google Scholar, who argues that in Twain's American South the reluctance to obey the law and its situation of unprotected rights would maximize the role of force. Borges found a “physical closeness” between the American South and South America in their “blood relation” with history (SNF: 186). See also Irwin, The Mystery, 169–71, for a comparison of Borges and another Southern writer, Faulkner.

⁸⁰ Borges and Ferrari, Reencuentros, 109–12.

⁸¹ The contentious tone of the metaphor of arms follows Borges's own in his invitation to “combat the monotonies of dictatorships” (Rodríguez Monegal, “Borges and Politics,” 66).

⁸² In this sense I agree with González (Borges and the Politics, 188–89) in that Borges's defense of an autonomous art—one with no political role—carries a political meaning without becoming the type of social or committed art that he had previously criticized.

⁸³ Rescher, Nicholas, Paradoxes: Their Roots, Range and Resolution (Chicago and Lasalle: Open Court, 2001), 4Google Scholar.

⁸⁴ Bourne, “A Conversation.” Borges's cosmopolitanism is thus aligned with the view that “does not endorse a single world government” but “tries to give people as much control over their own lives as is consistent with ensuring that they do not derail the lives of others” (Appiah, “Global Citizenship,” 2390).

⁸⁵ Or at least he did not declare so: “A mere handful of arguments have haunted me all these years; I am decidedly monotonous” (SNF: 346); “I hope that the reader finds in my pages something that merits being remembered” (SNF: 333).