No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Freedom, Law and Authority: The State and Legitimacy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
Extract
Despite the emphasis on the state in the history of political philosophy, the twentieth century has been characterized by a remarkable lack of philosophical reflection on the concept. Until recently analytical philosophy had eschewed those evaluative arguments about political obligation and the limits of state authority that were typical of political theory in the past in favour of the explication of the meaning of the concept. However, even here the results have been disappointing. Logical Positivist attempts to locate some unique empirical phenomenon which the word state described proved unsuccessful, and indeed led to the odd conclusion that there was nothing about the state that distinguished it from some other social institutions. For example, its coercive power was said to be not unique: in some circumstances trade unions and Churches exercised similar power over their members. Ordinary language philosophers were far more interested in the complexities that surround words such as law, authority and power than in the state. In all this there was perhaps the fear that to concentrate attention on the state was implicitly to give credence to the discredited doctrine that it stood for some metaphysical entity; propositions about which could not be translated into propositions about the actions of individuals, and which represented higher values than those of ordinary human agents.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1988
References
Notes
1 Weldon, T. D., The Vocabulary of Politics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1953), 46–49.Google Scholar
2 For a discussion of this case, see Peele, Gillian, ‘The State and Civil Liberties’, in Developments in British Politics 2, H. Drucker, P. Dunleavy, A. Gamble and G. Peele (eds) (London: Macmillan, 1986), 163.Google Scholar
3 Hart, H. L. A., The Concept of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961).Google Scholar
4 Krader, H., The Formation of the State (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1968).Google Scholar
5 In Defence of Anarchism (New York: Harper Colophan, 1976).Google Scholar
6 New York: Basic Books, 1974.
7 See Gray, J., ‘Political Power, Social Theory and Essential Contestability’, in The Nature of Political Theory, D. Miller and L. Siedentop (eds) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 75–102.Google Scholar
8 Hegel, G. W. F., Philosophy of Right (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9 Rawls, J., A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 22–26.Google Scholar
10 Sen, A. K., Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981).Google Scholar
11 See Ng, Yew-Kwang, Welfare Economics (London: Macmillan, 1979), Ch. 8.Google Scholar
12 See Sugden, R., The Economics of Rights, Co-operation and Welfare (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).Google Scholar
13 See Mandelbaum, M., ‘Societal Facts’, in The Philosophy of Social Explanation, Alan Ryan (ed.) (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), 105–118.Google Scholar
14 Scruton, R., The Meaning of Conservatism, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1980), 201–202.Google Scholar
15 Macintyre, A., After Virtue (London: Duckworth, 1981), 195.Google Scholar
16 Sugden, R., The Economics of Rights, Co-operation and Welfare, 31–33 Google Scholar. This excellent book contains a technical explanation of how solutions to co-ordination problems can emerge in an evolutionary manner; and some splendid examples.
17 For a contemporary statement of liberal constitutionalism, see Buchanan, J., The Limits of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975).Google Scholar