RT Article
T1 Normative Consent and Authority
JF Journal of moral philosophy
VO 10
IS 3
SP 255
OP 275
A1 Koltonski, Daniel
LA English
PB Brill
YR 2013
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1817469916
AB In his recent book Democratic Authority, David Estlund defends a strikingly new and interesting account of political authority, one that makes use of a distinctive kind of hypothetical consent that he calls ‘normative consent’: a person can come to have a duty to obey another when it is the case that, were she given the chance to consent to the duty, she would have a duty to consent to it. If successful, Estlund’s account promises to provide what has arguably so far remained elusive: the basis for the authority of suitably democratic laws. In this paper, I argue that, despite its promise, the account Estlund develops is, in a crucial respect, incoherent: the principle of normative consent that he offers relies on a claim about a hypothetical situation, but the hypothetical situation at issue is one that, according to the principle itself, is morally impossible.
K1 Political Obligation
K1 Political Authority
K1 normative consent
K1 David Estlund
K1 Consent
DO 10.1163/174552412X628887