Three Anarchical Fallacies: An Essay on Political Authority

by William A. Edmundson

Overview

How is a legitimate state possible? Obedience, coercion, and intrusion are three ideas that seem inseparable from all government and seem to render state authority presumptively illegitimate. This book exposes three fallacies inspired by these ideas and in doing so challenges assumptions shared by liberals, libertarians, cultural conservatives, moderates, and Marxists. In three clear and tightly-argued essays William Edmundson dispels these fallacies and shows that living in a just state remains a worthy ideal. This is an important book for all philosophers, political scientists, and legal theorists as well as readers interested in the views of Rawls, Dworkin, and Nozick, many of whose central ideas are subjected to rigorous critique.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521037518
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/27/2007
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Law
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.94(w) x 8.98(h) x 0.43(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. The Fallacious Argument from the Failure of Political Obligation: 1. Legitimacy and the duty to obey; 2. The correlativity thesis; 3. Legitimate political authority; Part II. The 'Law is Coercive' Fallacy: 4. The concept of coercion; 5. Political theory without coercion; 6. Coercion Redivivus; Part III. The Inner Sphere of Privacy Fallacy: 7. The private sphere; 8. The moral and the social; 9. The social and the political; Conclusion: the state for what?; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"...the review cannot convey the impressive combination of clarity, care, precision, focus, detail and conciseness with which Edmundson develops his arguments. Three Anarchical Fallacies is a very good work of philosophical analysis in my opinion." Ethics

"A marvelous book." Choice

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