The dilemma of authority

Allyn Fives

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9781526193094
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526193087
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Preface
• 1 The problem of authority
• 2 Authority and authority scepticism
• 3 Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority
• 4 Authority and moral dilemmas
• 5 Moral freedom and political freedom
• 6 Voluntarism
• 7 Membership and the communitarian thesis
• 8 On the plural grounds of authority
• 9 Problems some deliberative democrats have with authority
• 10 Reasons and norms
• 11 Soft authority
• Bibliography
• Index