Abstract
Much of the literature on practical authority concerns the authority of the state over its subjects—authority to which we are, as G. E. M. Anscombe says, subject “willy nilly”. Yet many of our “willy” (or voluntary) relationships also seem to involve the exercise of practical authority, and this species of authority is in some ways even more puzzling than authority willy nilly. In this paper I argue that voluntary authority relies on a form of voluntary obligation that is akin (in some respects) to the kind of obligation one undertakes in making a promise. Voluntary authority depends, that is, on the possibility of taking on certain obligations more or less at will. It is generated through an interpersonal transaction that involves a directed act of deference, on one side, paired with appropriate uptake of that deference, on the other. Deference, in the relevant sense, should be understood as a normative power that is exercised when agents transfer deliberative discretion to others, undertaking directed obligations to treat others’ directives as content-independent and peremptory reasons. Voluntary authority, thus understood, is both grounded in and constrained by the equal moral authority or autonomy of the participants, since only autonomous agents have the standing to defer in a normatively significant way.
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Notes
I define “content independent” and “peremptory” in Sect. 1 below.
I say “more or less” at will because I do not think attempts to undertake these obligations are generally successful unless they are given proper uptake by the would-be authority. Something similar is usually thought to be true of promising.
This point is compatible with the thought that authority willy-nilly relies, for its legitimacy, on the hypothetical consent of the governed. Social contract theories of political authority generally do not ground legitimacy on actual consent (or deference).
Whether the captain also gains the right to impose sanctions is not clear, and needn’t be resolved for current purposes.
The full story of their grounding turns out to be a bit more complicated, as I will explain in due course.
Bratman does not think that entering into a JIA in and of itself generates any structure of obligations amongst the participants. He thinks we can explain any obligations we might acquire by appeal to side-effects of the transaction, such as the normal tendency of such transactions to create mutual expectations that it would be wrong to disappoint (Bratman 1999). I will consider the application of this maneuver to the case of a JIAA below.
The fact that these expectations presuppose rather than ground the rights and obligations characteristic of authority does not rule out the possibility that such expectations may nonetheless be generated, in cases of voluntary authority, or that they may ground additional, multi-lateral obligations that are based on our information interests. Typical cases of JIAA might include both types of obligation. The point is just that we will need to appeal to something other than expectations to explain the rights and obligations peculiar to voluntary authority, since the relevant expectations seem to depend on the belief that obligations to authority have been incurred. See also note 10.
If, as a matter of practical fact, the obligations of assertion cannot be discharged, on the high seas, in any way other than following through on the reported intention (because of the impossibility of effective warning or compensation or what have you) that is a merely contingent feature of the example, not a general feature of this kind of obligation.
It is compatible with this claim that a joint exercise of will might change the normative situation in both ways. That is, when participants undertake obligations to authority through a joint exercise of will, their doing so might also have as a consequence the creation of mutual expectations—namely, expectations that others will act in the (now) obligatory way—and these expectations might ground additional, mutual obligations to follow through. In that case, all members of a joint endeavor would have some standing to rebuke others who do not follow through, even though they do not enjoy the same standing to do so as the appointed authority.
Whether I retain partial control is a further question. In the case of promises, the dominant view is that control is wholly given over to the promisee. Margaret Gilbert’s account of promises is an outlier in this respect: she takes authority over the promisor to be shared by both the promisor and the promisee. The promisee cannot, on her account, simply release the promisor at will; the promisor must also express or have expressed readiness to be released (Gilbert 2011).
While an account of normative powers does turn out to depend on a notion of rational constraint, it is important to notice that it is not vulnerable to the worries I raise in Sect. 1 about appealing to rational requirements. I argued there that voluntary obligation cannot be explained simply in terms of what it is rational for an agent to do given that she intends to φ, and that we must appeal further to the agent’s power to undertake such obligations. The idea I defend in this section is that certain powers and practices—including the power to undertake obligations of voluntary authority—are themselves rationally grounded in our interests as agents. I thank an anonymous referee for emphasizing the importance of this point.
See Raz (1977, 1981, 1982, 1986). Shiffrin (2008) sees herself as pursuing this suggestion of Raz's, though her argument has a transcendental structure that may not have been intended or foreseen by Raz. Certain valuable relationships in which we regularly engage would not be possible, Shiffrin argues, did we not have the power to promise.
I offer an account of this failing in Westlund (2003). For other hypotheses, see works cited in note 14.
See Owens (2006) for a view that appeals to the rationality of engaging in a give and take of authority.
To make this point is not to deny that principles regarding the violation of expectations may apply. But, as I have argued, these fall short of obligations of authority. The point is also compatible with the thought that, in a pluralist society, agents ought to be permitted to structure their affairs as this couple does. The point is just that whether their relations involve the distinctive rights and obligations of voluntary authority depends on the normative quality of those relations, and not on something extrinsic like the legitimacy of their goals.
It is at least conceivable that there are conditions under which the choice to enter such a relationship could be fully voluntary and expressive of authentically held values and beliefs. The choice to enter into a relationship that will, once entered, be characterized by a specific hierarchical structure bears some similarity to a kind of case discussed in Sect. 5, in which an individual chooses to join an already-constituted structure of authority such as a club or other organization. See pp. 30–31 below.
The underlying relationship that is required between the two parties is close to what Stephen Darwall (2006) describes as a relationship of “equal basic authority”. The authority to which Darwall refers as basic is the standing to make and hold others accountable to legitimate claims. Darwall takes equality of such authority to be more fundamental than (and, indeed, implied by) any form of differential authority. My account of the transaction underlying voluntary authority seems to bear out his point.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank an anonymous referee, as well as audiences at Loyola University Chicago and the 28th International Social Philosophy Conference at Marquette University, for their very helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. I also benefitted from discussion with students in my seminar on Normative Powers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
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Westlund, A.C. Deference as a normative power. Philos Stud 166, 455–474 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-0047-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-0047-9