This paper analyses some political and epistemological implications of the encounter between philosophy and anarchism. It sets out from Catherine Malabou’s observation that Reiner Schürmann’s philosophy of anarchy both lacks a clear political articulation and reproduces a questionable ethnocentric perspective. To assess those points of critique, the paper first compares Schürmann’s notion of ‘ontological anarchy’ to the homonymous concept at the centre of a recent debate in anthropology between Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and David Graeber. It is argued that Schürmann’s philosophy provides a viewpoint that can help situate both sides of the discussion within what he calls ‘our historical site’, in which the end of the world plays out as an ongoing and open-ended sequence of disintegration. The paper then turns to debates in standpoint theory, indicating that Schürmann’s topology of broken hegemonies can also offer a fresh approach to the dispute between particularist standpoints and universalist claims. Against the backdrop of these analyses, the paper argues that Schürmann’s philosophy of anarchy can contribute to the reconceptualization of an anarchist universalism.