Joseph Raz’s much discussed service conception of practical authority has recently come under attack from Stephen Darwall, who proposes that we instead adopt a second- personal conception of practical authority.1 We believe that the best place to start understanding practical authority is with a pared back conception of it, as simply a species of normative authority more generally, where this species is picked out merely by the fact that the normative authority in question is authority in relation to action, rather (...) than belief. We do not wish to deny that there might be properties of practical authority (as distinct from the species of authority that is concerned with belief) that are peculiar to it, but, unlike both Raz and Darwall, we do not believe that such features play a role in defining or delimiting practical authority. (shrink)

Why is destroying heritage pro tanto wrong? Why does heritage destruction require justification, unlike the destruction of rubbish? The property rights view answers: heritage belongs to people, communities and cultures. The reverence view answers: we are obliged to respect things with non-instrumental value. The moral rights view answers: our predecessors, contemporaries and successors have rights to have their cherishings respected and cultural and epistemic goods protected. The moral harm view answers: destroying heritage causes morally significant harm. I argue that these (...) views all fail to account for the basic obligation to not destroy heritage. I propose that heritage essentially gives us experiences of connections to historically significant things, and these experiences are aesthetically valuable and irreplaceable. Destroying heritage is pro tanto wrong because it leads to the premature and irreversible extinction of these precious and vulnerable experiences. My account makes sense of genuineness as an aesthetic property, vindicates the idea of purely aesthetic obligations, and entails that heritage can be of the present and future, not only the past. (shrink)

The tension between the authority of states and the authority of international institutions is a persistent feature of international relations. Legitimacy assessments of international institutions play a crucial role in resolving such tensions. If an international institution exercises legitimate authority, it creates binding obligations for states. According to Raz’s well-known service conception, legitimate authority depends on the reasons for actions of those who are subject to it. Yet what are the practical reasons that should guide the actions of states? Can (...) states be bound by international institutions on all kinds of issues or are certain issues exempted because of sovereignty considerations? This paper argues that self-regarding reasons cannot ground political authority with the respective demand for compliance. Since reasons for states concern individuals both inside and outside of their jurisdiction and other state peoples, self-regarding reasons for states, which form a domain of personal pursuits or sovereign decisions, are highly restricted. (shrink)

Sometimes it is not one’s place to blame or forgive. This phenomenon is captured under the philosophical notion of standing. However, there is an asymmetry to be explained here. One can successfully blame, even if one lacks the standing to do so. Yet, one cannot successfully forgive if one lacks the standing to do so. In this article we explain this asymmetry. We argue that a complete explanation depends on not only a difference in the natures of the standing to (...) blame and forgive but also a difference in the natures of blame and forgiveness themselves. (shrink)

Normative literature on the Catalan crisis is largely occupied with the conflict’s central legalistic problem: can political units like Catalonia be allowed to split off from Spain unilaterally? This article reframes the issue and asks why secessionist Catalans should ever abide by Spanish legal constraints, given that Spanish law is precisely the institution they are politically trying to get rid of. It focuses on the anti-secessionist role played by the Spanish Constitutional Court between 2010 and 2017 and studies three arguments (...) why Catalans supposedly have to accept the Court’s authority. The article contends that two arguments—the “mutual benefit argument” and the “law and democracy” argument—will not be independently persuasive to Catalan secessionists. Instead, the Constitutional Court’s authority must ultimately be grounded in a different type of argument: the “law and order argument.” Secessionist Catalans’ supposed duty to obey the orders of the Constitutional Court is ultimately not rooted in a positive service provided by the Court, but in the disruptive effects of disobeying. That exposes an explanatory defect in Joseph Raz’s influential theory of authority, which seeks to ground authority exercises in a concept in prior reason or their capacity to make our life better. That conceptualization misses the key decisionistic element to political authority: its capacity to constitute our reasons, that is, to define the terms that give meaning to our evaluations. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between Raz's theories of practical reason and political morality. Raz believes the former underpins the latter, when in fact it undermines it. This is because three core features of his theory of practical reason – desires, goals, and competitive pluralism––combine in such a way as to undermine a core feature of his theory of political morality––what Raz calls our autonomy-based duty to provide everyone with what he takes to be an adequate range of valuable life (...) options. As it turns out, if we are reasonable, in terms of the former theory, then we are likely to be immoral, in terms of the latter one. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that virtue ethics should be understood as a form of ethics which integrates various domains of the practical in relation to which virtues are excellences. To argue this it is necessary to distinguish two senses of the “moral”: the broad sense which integrates the domains of the practical and a narrow classificatory sense. Virtue ethics, understood as above, believes that all genuine virtue should be understood as what I call virtues proper. To possess a virtue (...) proper (such as an excellent disposition of open-mindedness, an epistemic virtue) is to possess a disposition of overall excellence in relation to the sphere or field of the virtue (being open to the opinions of others). Overall excellence in turn involves excellence in integrating to a sufficient degree, standards of excellence in all relevant practical domains. Epistemic virtues, sporting virtues, moral virtues, and so on are all virtues proper. In particular it is impossible for an epistemic virtue to be a moral (narrow sense) vice. (shrink)

Political legitimacy is a virtue of political institutions and of the decisions—about laws, policies, and candidates for political office—made within them. This entry will survey the main answers that have been given to the following questions. First, how should legitimacy be defined? Is it primarily a descriptive or a normative concept? If legitimacy is understood normatively, what does it entail? Some associate legitimacy with the justification of coercive power and with the creation of political authority. Others associate it with the (...) justification, or at least the sanctioning, of existing political authority. Authority stands for a right to rule—a right to issue commands and, possibly, to enforce these commands using coercive power. An additional question is whether legitimate political authority is understood to entail political obligations or not. Most people probably think it does. But some think that the moral obligation to obey political authority can be separated from an account of legitimate authority, or at least that such obligations arise only if further conditions hold. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the ways in which “Public Reason” (or public reasons, in plural) can be said to resonate with some types of reasons as presented and defended in contemporary legal theory. I begin by identifying the concept of Public Reason within the context of a discussion sparked by the between “internal” and “external” reasons, which was made famous by Bernard Williams. I will then compare this interpretation of Public Reason with Joseph Raz’s celebrated concept of exclusionary reasons. (...) Next, I refer to two concepts of moral “neutrality” and how such concepts affect our understanding of Public Reason. I also reflect upon whether it is tenable to draw a distinction between the good reasons for actions that we conduct in our own lives and good reasons to be adopted in public life. Finally, I raise the question of a distinction between the reasons which we press in general societal discourse and those that we press in the advocacy-related law-making process. (shrink)

Certain non-voluntarists have recently defended political authority by advancing two-part views. First, they argue that the state, or the law, is best (or uniquely) capable of accomplishing something important. Second, they defend a substantive normative principle on which being so situated is sufficient for de jure authority. This paper uses widely accepted tenets to show that all such defenses of authority fail.

Authority figures permeate our daily lives, particularly, our political lives. What makes authority legitimate? The current debates about the legitimacy of authority are characterised by two opposing strategies. The first establish the legitimacy of authority on the basis of the content of the authority’s command. That is, if the content of the commands meet some independent normative standard then they are legitimate. However, there have been many recent criticisms of this strategy which focus on a particular shortcoming – namely, its (...) seeming inability to account for who can legitimately command whom. This is the basis of the second strategy, which attempts to characterize the normative relationship that underlies and makes possible authoritative commands. The central point of Part I is that these two strategies are, in fact, not opposed and both raise questions which a theory of legitimacy must answer. If this is the case, then we need to ask: how ought we to determine the legitimacy both of the content of commands as well as who can command whom? Part II will answer this question. Starting with the question of standing, I argue that we ought not to look for normative principles outside of the institutions in which authority is embedded. Rather, one ought to start by elaborating the ontology of institutions in which a sui generis form of normativity arises. A joint commitment account of social ontology provides the tools necessary to see how the direction obligations emerge concurrently with the formation of institutions. Similarly, the question of content can be answered by paying close attention to the social ontology of institutions. We need not look beyond the internal constitutive standards of the institution itself. The constitutive standards provide an internal criterion by which the legitimacy of commands can be established. (shrink)

The normal way to establish that a person has authority over another requires a rule-governed institutional setting. To have authority is to have power, in the juridical sense of the term, and power can only be conferred by norms constituting it. Power-conferring norms are essentially institutional, and the obligation to comply with a legitimate authority's decree is, first and foremost, institutional in nature. The main argument presented in this essay is that an explanation of practical authorities is a two-stage affair: (...) the special, practical import of an authority can only be explained against the background of an institutional setting which constitutes the authority's power and the corresponding obligation to comply. However, this obligation is not an all things considered obligation, it is conditioned on reasons to participate in the relevant institution or practice. (shrink)

Two problems about rights have received so far little attention. One is the problem of identifying a general value in the practice of rights. The second is to see when, if at all, rights violations wrong the right-holder, in a morally significant sense. In the present essay, I address the first question by investigating the second. I first show that if we commit to the two ideas, common in the contemporary philosophy of rights, that claim-rights always correlate with directed duties (...) and that rights aspire to protect interests of the right-holder, we make it hard to explain why rights violations, in general, wrong right-holders. In the final section, I present what I see as a promising solution to the puzzle. I describe a particular social environment (the society of equals) where interacting with others through rights is indeed valuable because respecting rights communicates that one takes seriously others’ equal moral status. In such a society and only in such a society, I conclude, moral agents are required to treat all rights violations as wrongs perpetrated against the right-holder. (shrink)

This essay criticizes Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority on the basis of its knowability condition. The condition states that for agents to be justified in following authoritative directives, they must be able to know (i.e., form reliable beliefs) that the authority issuing the directives is in fact legitimate. Three grounds for concern are identified. The first is that the satisfaction of the normal justification thesis (NJT), which states that the legitimacy of authorities hinges on whether their directives enable subjects (...) to better conform to reason, only provides agents with reasons to believe that it is justified to act as if an authority were legitimate (i.e., on the assumption that it is). Based on the belief/acceptance distinction, the NJT allows for a gap between what is actually the case and what agents are willing to go along with in order to improve the likelihood of conforming to right reason. The independence condition (IC), which states that for those matters where the NJT obtains it must be better for a subject to improve such conformity than to decide for herself, must be satisfied in conjunction with the NJT, but suffers from its own particular problems. Thus, the second problem identified is that of incommensurable values, which appears when agents are not able to decide between the value of improving right reason—NJT—and the value of deciding for themselves—IC. Finally, the third problem is that of vagueness about right reason, where agents attempting to determine whether an authority meets the two conditions are not able to settle whether reason is improved. Together, these three problem areas of knowability serve to challenge Raz’s position. (shrink)

It has become somewhat a commonplace in recent political philosophy to remark that all plausible political theories must share at least one fundamental premise, ‘that all humans are one another's equals’. One single concept of ‘basic equality’, therefore, is cast as the common touchstone of all contemporary political thought. This paper argues that this claim is false. Virtually all do indeed say that all humans are ‘equals’ in some basic sense. However, this is not the same sense. There are not (...) one but two concepts of basic equality, and they reflect not a grand unity within political philosophy but a deep and striking division. I call these concepts ‘Equal Worth’ and ‘Equal Authority’. The former means that each individual’s good is of equal moral worth. The latter means that no individual is under the natural authority of anyone else. Whilst these two predicates are not in themselves logically inconsistent, I demonstrate that they are inconsistent foundation stones for political theory. A theory that starts from Equal Worth will find it near impossible to justify Equal Authority. And a theory that starts from Equal Authority will find any fact about the true worth of things, including ourselves, irrelevant to justifying legitimate action. This helps us identify the origin of many of our deepest and seemingly intractable disagreements within political philosophy, and directs our attention to the need for a clear debate about the truth and/or relationship between the two concepts. In short, my call to arms can be summed up in the demand that political philosophers never again be allowed to claim ‘that all human beings are equals’ full stop. They must be clear in what dimension they claim that we are equals—Worth or Authority. (shrink)

Joseph Raz’s theory of authority has become influential among moral, political, and legal philosophers. This article will provide an overview and accessible explanation of the theory, guiding those coming to it for the first time as to its theoretical ambitions within the wider issues of authority, and through its intricacies. I first situate the theory among philosophical examinations of authority, and then explain the theory itself in detail.

Prominent Kantian scholars, such as Korsgaard and Waldron, claim that the very existence of juridical-political institutions is sufficient to render laws authoritative. Critics argue that this view is unpersuasive as it requires subjects to obey grossly unjust laws. Here, I identify two problems facing scholars who reject the absolutist view of political authority proffered by Korsgaard and Waldron. First, when there is reasonable disagreement regarding a law’s legitimacy the Principle of Right generates contradictory obligations as it commands both disobedience and (...) compliance. In clarifying this problem, I argue that individuals must disobey illegitimate laws where this requirement is co-extensive with the duty to leave the state of nature. However, disobedience amounts to domination when individuals are subjected to private judgments regarding the conditions of freedom. The Principle of Right cannot overcome this impasse as it does not offer reasons in favor of compliance that are distinct from those reasons legitimating the law. To address this issue, I supplement Kant’s account with Joseph Raz’s ‘service conception’ of authority to show that compliance can be rendered compatible with the Principle of Right. A second problem emerges when laws are blatantly illegitimate such that obedience cannot be justified. In these cases, the Principle of Right cannot guide legislative reform in an intuitively appealing way as it fails to address considerations of proportionality. Though this latter problem is not resolved here, identifying it helps to further clarify the relationship between Kant’s moral and political principles. (shrink)

Much of the literature on practical authority concerns the authority of the state over its subjects—authority to which we are, as G. E. M. Anscombe says, subject “willy nilly”. Yet many of our “willy” (or voluntary) relationships also seem to involve the exercise of practical authority, and this species of authority is in some ways even more puzzling than authority willy nilly. In this paper I argue that voluntary authority relies on a form of voluntary obligation that is akin (in (...) some respects) to the kind of obligation one undertakes in making a promise. Voluntary authority depends, that is, on the possibility of taking on certain obligations more or less at will. It is generated through an interpersonal transaction that involves a directed act of deference, on one side, paired with appropriate uptake of that deference, on the other. Deference, in the relevant sense, should be understood as a normative power that is exercised when agents transfer deliberative discretion to others, undertaking directed obligations to treat others’ directives as content-independent and peremptory reasons. Voluntary authority, thus understood, is both grounded in and constrained by the equal moral authority or autonomy of the participants, since only autonomous agents have the standing to defer in a normatively significant way. (shrink)

How could one person justifiably create reasons for another? This article reissues this familiar ‘standing’ objection to authority, to demonstrate the structural contribution of recognition to both the idea of authority and its justification. Drawing upon theories of recognition of reasons and persons, it argues that authority must be robustly recognised, not merely identified, by both its subjects and its claimants. Such recognition operates in either roles or relations of authority to make a subject’s relevant reasons for action an authority’s (...) business. By transmitting reasons between persons on both sides of roles or relations, recognition does the connective work that is necessary to distinguish the idea of authority from other concepts of control, while structuring its justification to require both standing between persons and standards in accordance with reasons. Without the connection between persons and transmission of reasons that comes through robust recognition, one’s power over another is both claimed and received not as authority, but as coercion or persuasion; the claim itself entails meddling with (rather than serving) subjects. (shrink)

Liberal institutions should respect citizens as autonomous agents. But what does this mandate require and how should it shape the demands of liberal legitimacy? I trace the contemporary disagreement between liberal perfectionist and anti-perfectionist accounts of legitimacy back to this requirement to respect the autonomy of citizens in order to weigh up how well each approach fulfils this mandate. I argue that further reflection over the nature of respect for the value of personal autonomy gives liberals reason to favour moderate (...) forms of perfectionism and be sceptical of criticisms of perfectionism grounded in concerns over respect. (shrink)

In believing or acting on authority, an agent appears to believe or act without making up her own mind about what is the case or what to do. How is this possible? How can an agent make up her mind about a theoretical or practical question, and so believe or act intentionally, without doing so for herself? This paper argues that the standard account available in the literature of how it is that an agent can make up her mind without (...) doing so for herself, an account framed in terms of Joseph Raz’s notion of preemptive reasons, fails to adequately distinguish our rational dependence on other agents from reliance on ordinary instruments. It then offers an alternative account of what it is to make up one’s mind without doing so for oneself, one that focuses on the way in which the kind of rational responsibility that accrues to instances of settling a theoretical or practical question can be interpersonally distributed between agents and authorities. (shrink)

Authority consists in having standing to make a claim on another person’s actions. Authority comes in degrees: persons have the authority to make moral demands on each other, but if they participate in close relationships, such as friendships or love relationships, their authority over each other is greater, compared to the authority of strangers to make demands, as participants in personal relationships can demand more from each other than can strangers. This paper discusses the phenomenon of a relationship-dependent greater authority (...) on a conceptual level. It thereby fills a gap in the literature on the proper theory of authority : while being a common part of our moral practice, relationship-dependent authority has mostly been neglected in this context. It is even doubtful whether the most influential contemporary accounts of authority can accommodate it. As will be argued, neither Joseph Raz’s service conception nor Stephen Darwall’s second - personal conception of authority are able to. The trig. (shrink)

Agents do not merely have duties – they often have directed duties to others. This paper first reveals problems with traditional attempts to equate these directed duties with claims and claim rights. It then defends a novel account of directionality that locates the unifying element of directed duties in a counterparty’s prioritization of the duties owed to her. If one agent has a directed duty to another, then the degree to which fulfilling the duty matters to the agent to whom (...) it is owed itself matters – in a distinctive, special and inherent sense. This subject-determined normative significance of directed duties can be used to articulate a priority account of directionality, an account that can demonstrate why many have taken control powers, interests or the authority to demand compliance to be so important in analyzing the directed duties we owe to others. (shrink)

Allen Buchanan argues that it doesn’t matter whether a state has authority in the sense of being able to create binding obligations for its citizens, so long as it is morally justified in wielding political power. In this paper, I look at this issue from a slightly different angle. I argue that it matters a great deal whether citizens relate to their state in an obligatory fashion. This is for two reasons. First, a fully morally justified state must be an (...) efficacious state; it must be able to realise its values and make its rules stick. My contention will be that enduring stability can only be secured when citizens, or at least a significant proportion of citizens, are tangibly bound to regulate their conduct in accordance with a principle of obedience to just states. Second, it is only when individuals interact in the right way with the justification for state power that the state itself as a pervasive and coercive entity does not pose a problem for them as reason-responsive agents. In fac.. (shrink)

This is a canvass to the critical reaction to Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority, as well as actual or possible replies by Raz. Familiarity is assumed with the theory itself, covered in a previous article. The article focuses primarily on direct criticisms of Raz’s theory, rather than replies developed in the context of a theorist’s wider project.

This paper points out neglected considerations about the standing to blame. It starts from the observation that the standing to blame debate largely focusses on factors concerning the blamer or the relation of blamer and wrongdoer, mainly hypocrisy and meddling, while neglecting the victim of wrongdoing. This paper wants to set this right by pointing out how considerations about the victim can impact a third party’s standing. The first such consideration is the blamer’s personal relation to the victim. It is (...) argued that persons close to the victim thereby gain standing even in the presence of factors that would normally undermine it. Arguing from the well-known sexual assault case of Chanel Miller and the public reactions to it, the paper then introduces two more considerations about standing hitherto neglected. First, given that blame has an expressive function and serves to contradict expressive aspects of wrongdoings, it is argued that third-party blame can morally support the victim in the face of wrongdoing and that such support matters to victims. It is argued that this importance of third-party blame can ground standing. Thirdly and relatedly, the paper argues that insufficient collective responses to wrongdoing, i.e. when other bystanders do not respond with sufficient blaming responses, can equally ground standing of third parties. It is argued that these considerations are relevant not only for an ethics of blame broadly conceived but also for standing to blame in particular. Thereby, the paper establishes that considerations about the victim are central for discussion of the standing to blame. (shrink)

One of the most common arguments in favour of the state's authority is that without the coordinating hand of political institutions, we could not achieve important moral benefits. I argue that if we understand authority correctly, then coordination cannot even in principle establish that coordinators have political authority.