The Ties That Blind: The Moral Value (and Disvalue) of Anonymity

This paper has two main aims: one is to understand the mechanisms that allow anonymity to facilitate both good and bad ends; the other is to use this understanding to determine the value of anonymity relative to its disvalue across a variety of moral and socio-political domains. Building on previous work in which I characterize anonymity by what I call the ‘central anonymity paradigm,’ I argue here that anonymity is primarily instrumentally valuable as a strategic device to procure some other valued good or set of goods, and is justified derivatively to the extent that it successfully achieves this end. Here, I leave open the question whether anonymity is intrinsically good and, in the final sections, I give reasons why it should sometimes be resisted. My argument proceeds in four stages: first, I describe four domains in which the tensions between the value and disvalue of anonymity can be felt; second, I briefly present the central anonymity paradigm; third, I draw on Kathleen Wallace’s taxonomy of three kinds of anonymity (agent anonymity, recipient anonymity, and procedural anonymity) to show how anonymity is typically achieved in the paradigmatic cases, and why it is so effective at achieving and securing certain ends; and finally, I draw on the concept of “intimate anonymity” from the fields of architecture and urban design as a model for anonymity relations that preserves the individualizing benefits of anonymity—security, privacy, freedom, etc.—while encouraging individuals to form meaningful relations with others that support intimacy, trust and community. I begin with four anonymity tensions.