Special Powers (original) (raw)
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The New Centennial Review, 2012
Authority is or presupposes some specific type of power. The mark of this particularity, the one that everyone will spontaneously agree to identify as such, is the index of recognition that accompanies authority, and makes of its power a legitimate one. 1 It is commonly understood that with this is linked the genesis, the status, and the regime of authority with the liberty of the subjects who attribute authority to a certain bearer. Th is way, the power of the authority is distinguished from every other form or type that involves violent coercion, which gravely restricts or suppresses the liberty of those who are subject to it. Otherwise said, authority is not only constituted as such on the basis of sheer imposition: there must be reasons to lend this quality to a person; the liberty of those who lend it reveals itself eventually if these reasons-which may be of very diverse nature (needs, aptitudes, competences, responsibilities, delegations, traditions, and so on)-are no more available, by virtue of which the recognition may be withdrawn, with the consequent collapse of the corresponding legitimacy index.
A broad definition of agential power
Can we develop a definition of power that is satisfactorily determinate but also enables rather than foreclose important substantive debates about how power relations proceed and should proceed in social and political life? I present a broad definition of agential power that meets these desiderata. On this account, agents have power with respect to a certain outcome (including, inter alia, the shaping of certain social relations) to the extent that they can voluntarily determine whether that outcome occurs. This simple definition generates a surprisingly complex agenda for substantive research. It is quite fruitful for both descriptive and normative purposes-or so this paper argues. The broad account of agential power offered here is partly developed through a critical engagement with Rainer Forst's important recent account of "noumenal power."
International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2015
This paper attempts a conceptualisation of authority intended to be useful across all areas where the concept is relevant. It begins by setting off authority against power, on the one hand, and respect, on the other, and then spells out S1’s authority as consisting in S2’s voluntary action performed in the belief that S1 would approve of it. While this definition should hold for authority generally, a distinction is made between three different kinds of authority according to what grounds them: personal, acquired and bestowed authority. Authority thus defined is then used as an example to argue that there is a kind of property that is response-dependent (R-D), but, consisting in all and only a response, is ontologically different from both secondary qualities and value judgments. While secondary qualities are interactive in that they depend on both the object and the perceiver and on what they are like, genuinely R-D qualities depend ontologically and metaphysically only on the responder. And while value judgments require a concept, R-D qualities require an action as a response. It is hoped that this metaphysical underpinning might be helpful in the discussion of authority in other areas of philosophy and beyond. Copyright information: This paper was apparently meant to be free to access (see http://explore.tandfonline.com/cfp/ah/international-journal-of-philosophical-studies: "On the recommendation of the referees, three runners up papers have also be published, and are also free to access online."). Since it is - again - behind a paywall on the journal's website, I am now posting it here, trusting that this doesn't constitute copyright infringement.
The Varieties of Agential Powers
European Journal of Philosophy, 2019
The domain of agential powers is marked by a contrast that does not arise in the case of dispositions of inanimate objects: the contrast between propensities or tendencies on the one hand, and capacities or abilities on the other. According to Ryle (1949), this contrast plays an important role in the 'logical geography' of the dispositional concepts used in the explanation and assessment of action. However, most subsequent philosophers use the terms of art 'power' or 'disposition' indiscriminately in formulating central metaphysical claims about human agency, assuming that an adequate account of inanimate dispositions can safely be used for such purposes. As a result, the distinctive features of propensities and capacities drop out of view. This is bound to obscure distinctions of crucial importance to the understanding of human agency. In order to show this, I undertake to articulate some central differences between propensities and capacities. Propensities and capacities have a different relation to value, as well as a concomitant difference in their metaphysical structure. The argument points to an explanation of why the distinction between propensities and capacities does not arise in the case of non-agential powers. This explanation takes us back to questions about the nature of human agency.
Phenomenology of the authority - Extract of the second part of D. Cortese's doctoral thesis
The objective of this paper is to formulate a broad concept of “authority”, whose correspondence with the institution of the contingent “other” to whom Derrida claims to grant an unconditioned sacrifice shows the dangerous lack of effective political difference between Derrida’s attitude and the attitudes, such as dialectics, he intends to deconstruct. Authority is here understood as any structure of forces whose power is actively recognized as cogent or legitimate. This is due to the fact that accepting such a power is seen as coincident with the preferable way to fulfill perceived needs and desires or, in other words, to fulfill a perceived naturalness. This preferable attempt of fulfillment is mostly accompanied by a compromise among different individuals’ naturalness - also in the sense to reach the lesser evil by subordinating oneself to a violent individual-authority. Such a definition causes a paradox in the interpretation of Derrida’s ethical move. In fact, it can be employed to describe the unconditioned openness to the Other’s claims as a doing justice to any singularity’s naturalness and as the recognition of each of these singularities as a self-legitimized authority, regardless of the features of previous and other authorities. But the structure of the formation of any authority is better described through Derrida’s very interpretation of Foucault’s History of Madness and Hegel’s construction of the Absolute. In the first case, the ultimate authority who silences madness can do that, paradoxically, only at the cost of recognizing the always “present” unpredictable effects of madness itself. In other words, any authority is an awareness of naturalness which is intelligible despite – or, maybe, thank to – the possibility of losing its sense due to unpredictable contingency. Similarly, any Hegelian act of reciprocal recognition of self-consciousnesses suffers the aporia whereby one can recognize her own desires and the other’s desires only in function of certain existent social institutions, which do not necessarily let each individual’s potentialities stand out. As can be drawn from the semiological analysis of The Pit and the Pyramid, the arbitrariness of “linguistic” institutions always leaves a remainder which compromises absolutism. The formation of the Other, being itself an awareness of a certain naturalness in function of certain institutions, does not escape this overall structure and the shortcomings linked to unpredictable contingency and arbitrariness. Rather than relying on the ideality of an authority, I propose a logic of maximization of reciprocal bargaining power in order to optimize reciprocal recognition and fulfillment of desires. Reciprocal bargaining power can be interpreted as the basic structure of intersubjective agreements founded on what can be defined as an impulse toward reciprocal attraction - explained by the recognition of reciprocal utility. While Derrida’s proposal is more likely to limit an evaluation to what stands out in a certain moment as the solution to a problem perceived by a certain authority, to take into account the intersubjective structure I suggested may help to investigate whether there may be an even better overall allocation of instruments and potentialities.
On Free Agency and the Concept of Power
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 1988
Does having the power to do something require having a reason to exercise that power? Does it require the psychological possibility that one would want to exercise that power? Suppose that a man truly loves his wife and thus finds himself in the following situation: Not only does he have no reason to murder her; he has every reason not .to do so. Does it follow, as some libertarians would insist, that it is therefore not within his power to murder her? In this paper, I should like to present an incompatibilist con ception ot free agency trom which no such consequence follows; one that implies a clear distinction between having the power to do something and having reasons to exercise that power; one that would enable us plausibly to say, contrary to what Peter van Inwagen has recently argued, that most of us are genuinely free most of the time. I shall divide the discussion into three sections. In section I, I shall concede to the compatibilists that having the power to do something in no way entails the psychological possibility that one would want to exercise that power; in section II, I shall examine (and criticize) Peter van Inwagen's claim* that no consistent incompatibilist can make such a concession to compatibilism, and I shall try to show how the incompatibilist, no less than the compatibilist, can do justice to our paradigms of free action; and finally, in section III, I shall argue that, even if we were to grant an important part of the standard compatibilist analysis of power, we would still have good reasons for thinking that free will and determinism are incompatible. But first a preliminary matter. In this paper, I shall speak of what is psychologically possible and psychologically impossible for an agent to do on a given occasion, and I need to give some explanation of what I mean by such descriptions. Let us call, among other things, the beliefs, desires, wants, and attitudes of a person "states of that person," and let us call the predicates which ascribe such states "PC-predicates." Like Strawson's P
Property, Authority, and the (im)possibility of Unilateral Acquisistion
This paper develops an objection to unilateral acquisition of private property, and thus to the sorts of natural property rights that are often offered up as constraints on ‘redistribution’ taxation. I begin by clarifying the prima facie problem with unilateral acquisition, arguing that it is first and foremost a moral problem about the arrogation of authority, rather than a metaphysical problem about the ‘transformation’ of moral reality. But, I argue, no account of authority in the political case allows it to be arrogated without authorizing practices. Among other reasons: absent social practices, there is no way for putative subjects of complex authority relations to know that these relations are in place. Without this knowledge, subjects of putative authority relations are not obligated to obey, after all. This epistemic point, I argue, presses against ‘natural’ authority in property as well, whether we try to justify it in terms of general utility, individual interests, or fundamental rights.
The “Logic” of Power. How my Power Becomes his Power
We analyze how the power of an agent creates social power over the other agents; how an agent acquires new powers, and a given power becomes a different power; how a power is transferred from one agent to another one and accumulated; how co-powers require coordination. What is power ‘alienation’ and ‘subjection’, and a power 'capital'.