The Dilemma of Authority

The moral problem of authority is the challenge of reconciling legitimate authority (the right to rule) with the demands of freedom and rationality. In this book, it is argued that authority can have legitimacy, but when it does it generates a moral dilemma, where the obligation to obey comes at some cost to freedom and reason. Through a masterful engagement with the rich literature on the topic, Fives’ book develops an original answer that refuses to smooth over the conflict at the heart of political authority.- Fabienne Peter, Professor of Philosophy, University of WarwickFives boldly rejects standard notions of political authority and, in this meticulous and clearly written analysis, argues that authority can be legitimate while giving rise to true moral dilemmas. This is a powerfully defended and perspicuously defended thesis, and one could not ask for a more thorough and careful examination of these issues.- John Phillip Christman, Professor of Philosophy, Political Science, and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Pennsylvania State UniversityAuthority has a moral problem: the challenge of reconciling legitimate authority, the right to rule, with the demands of freedom and rationality. The dilemma of authority analyses this so-called moral problem, arguing that authority can have legitimacy but that this legitimacy produces a moral dilemma, where the obligation to obey comes at some cost to freedom and reason. The book offers a rigorous critique of authority sceptics, both anarchist and non-anarchist, who dispute that authority can ever have legitimacy. It examines the justifications of authority, focusing on membership, and explores what type of reason an authoritative directive is, how it can come into conflict with other forms of reason, and how those conflicts are resolved. A central concern of the book, therefore, is rationality – the kinds of reasons we give in politics, and how those reasons operate. An authoritative directive is a reason that operates by excluding other reasons but it, too, can be defeated by conflicting reasons. The dilemma of authority book gets at the crux of this impasse. Highlighting the tragic nature of our experience – that we often must do some wrong no matter what we do – this book offers a novel defence of authority itself, presenting an innovatively value-pluralist account. This book analyses the so-called moral problem of authority, which is the challenge of reconciling legitimate authority (the right to rule) with the demands of freedom and rationality. It offers a critique of authority sceptics, both anarchist and non-anarchist, who insist that authority can never have legitimacy. It also points to problems with many conventional defences of authority, including those of deliberative democracy, which assume that insofar as authority is legitimate it simply satisfies the demands of freedom or rationality. In this book, through a close engagement with the work of Joseph Raz in particular, it is argued that authority can have legitimacy, but when it does it generates a moral dilemma, where the obligation to obey comes at some cost to freedom and reason.

Pagina's: 216, Hardcover, Manchester University Press