Authority and Reasons: Exclusionary and Second‐Personal

Darwall criticizes Joseph Raz's Normal Justification Thesis (NJT) for practical authority. He contends that the thesis would allow someone to come to have authority over someone else, even in the absence of any relationship of accountability between them. However, for a person to have the autho...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ethics 2010-01, Vol.120 (2), p.257-278
Main Author: Darwall, Stephen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accountability
Acting
Analytical philosophy
Authority
Blame
Justified beliefs
Moral responsibility
Practical reason
Pragmatic justifications
Psychological attitudes
Rationality
Raz, Joseph
Reason
Reasons externalism
Retirement
Social exclusion
Victim compensation
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Summary:Darwall criticizes Joseph Raz's Normal Justification Thesis (NJT) for practical authority. He contends that the thesis would allow someone to come to have authority over someone else, even in the absence of any relationship of accountability between them. However, for a person to have the authority to make demands on another person, the second must be answerable to the first (or, put differently, the first must have the standing to hold the second accountable). This feature, he argues, is absent in Raz's account of practical authority. The NJT fails as an account of authority understood as the capacity to create preemptive reasons. For the authority relationship to obtain, it is not enough that one person has a reason to treat another person's directive as giving her preemptive reasons.
ISSN:0014-1704
1539-297X
DOI:10.1086/651427