Legitimacy and Justice in Republican Perspective

Let justice be a feature of the social order imposed by a state and legitimacy a feature of how it is imposed: one that makes the imposition acceptable. This article argues that, so understood, legitimacy is quite a distinct concern from justice; that the core concern is with showing how state coercion is consistent with people’s being free citizens; that this does not require showing that the state exists by consensus or contract; that the best hope of satisfying the concern lies with arguing that state coercion need not be dominating; and that this is possible only within the republican theory that identifies freedom with the absence of domination, not interference

How to Tell if a Group Is an Agent

There are two ways of telling if a system is an agent: by evidence of interaction with the impersonal environment and by evidence of interpersonal interaction with others. Both forms of evidence may be relevant with natural persons but in practice it is only evidence of interpersonal interaction, direct or indirect, that can establish the agency of a group. The group agents we recognize, then, are universally capable, like natural persons, of contract and commitment with others. Such group agents are not mere fictions � fronts for individual agents � but agents in their own right. If individuals are to construct a group that has the rationality required in any agent, then they have to give it an agential identity and integrity of its own

Deliberative democracy and the discursive dilemma

Taken as a model for how groups should make collective judgments and decisions, the ideal of deliberative democracy is inherently ambiguous. Consider the idealised case where it is agreed on all sides that a certain conclusion should be endorsed if and only if certain premises are admitted. Does deliberative democracy recommend that members of the group debate the premises and then individually vote, in the light of that debate, on whether or not to support the conclusion? Or does it recommend that members individually vote on the premises, and then let their commitment to the conclusion be settled by whether or not the group endorses the required premises? Is deliberative democracy to enforce the discipline of reason at the individual level, as in the first possibility, or at the collective level, as in the second? Deliberative-democratic theory has not addressed this issue, perhaps because of an implicit assumption that it does not matter whether the discipline of reason is imposed at the individual or at the collective level. But that assumption is no and there is no excuse for neglecting the issue raised. The discursive dilemma of my title — a generalisation of the doctrinal paradox that has recently received attention in analytical jurisprudence — shows that the procedures distnguished can come apart. Thus deliberative democrats must make up their minds on where they stand in relation to the issue; they cannot sit on the fence. This paper is an attempt to address the issue and look at the grounds on which it may be resolved. In the first section, I give a brief account of the ideal of deliberative democracy, as I understand it. In the second, I introduce the discursive dilemma with the help of some stylised examples and then in the third section I show why the issue that it raises is of relevance, theoretically and practically, to the deliberative-democratic ideal. How should deliberative democrats resolve that issue? I argue in the fourth section that the role in which republican theory casts deliberative democracy argues for preferring the imposition of reason, where possible, at the collective level. And then in the final section I argue for the consistency of that position with the main sorts of argument put forward by others in defence of the ideal

Akrasia, collective and individual

Perhaps the most famous analogy in the history of philosophical argument is that which Plato draws in the Republic between the constitution of the city and the constitution of the soul. The analogy is justly famous, for it sheds light on many aspects of mentality and personhood. In particular, as I shall try to show here, the analogy — or at least something close to the analogy — sheds light on the nature of akrasia or lack of self-control. How to characterise akrasia? Without going into an analysis of our ordinary conceptions of the phenomena associated with this term, I shall assume that an agent is akratic when the following conditions are fulfilled. The agent holds by intentional states in the light of which a certain response presents itself as required; the states involved may be beliefs or desires, judgments or intentions, or whatever. The agent functions under conditions that are intuitively favourable, and within limits that are intuitively feasible, for acting as required; there is nothing abnormal about how things transpire within their constitution or circumstances — no malfunction, for example, or perturbation. But nevertheless the agent fails to act in the required manner. This is a broad conception of akrasia and may not coincide in extension with received notions like that of weakness of will. Moreover, the conception described is going to vary in extension with any variation of extension in the related conception of normal conditions (Pettit 1999): for the record, I think that conditions of functioning will be abnormal so far as a person is affected by blind spots, idees fixes or fallacious habits of reasoning, or by affective pathologies or ineradicable compulsions, or is subject to mesmerising external forces of intimidation or temptation. But though the conception of akrasia is tied up in this way with the theory of normal conditions, and is not necessarily designed to track any received notions, still the phenomenon it purports to track — assuming that there is indeed a phenomenon that answers to the conception — is bound to be of the greatest interest. I look here at what is necessary for a group to constitute an agent that can display akrasia in this sense, and at what steps such a group might take to establish self-control. I do so, not just because the topic has some interest in itself, but — the Platonic message — because the discussion suggests some lessons about how we should think of akrasia in the individual as well as in the collective case. Under the image that the lessons support, akrasia is a sort of constitutional disorder: a failure to achieve a unity projected in the avowal of agency. This image fits well with the constitutional model of the soul that Christine Korsgaard (1999) finds in Plato’s analogy and her explication of the analogy offers a precedent — and indeed a prompt — for the line taken here. The paper is in three sections. In the first I look at three sorts of groups that are incapable, so I argue, of akrasia; these I describe respectively as mere collections of individuals, mere aggregations, and ordered aggregations. In the second section I introduce a further sort of group, which I describe as an integration of individuals, and I argue that this is capable of akratic behaviour. And then in the final section I draw out some lessons of the discussion that bear on individual as well as collective akrasia

Groups with minds of their own

There is a type of organisation found in certain collectivities that makes them into subjects in their own right, giving them a way of being minded that is starkly discontinuous with the mentality of their members. This claim in social ontology is strong enough to ground talk of such collectivities as entities that are psychologically autonomous and that constitute institutional persons. Yet, unlike some traditional doctrines (Runciman 1997), it does not spring from a rejection of common sense. This paper shows that the claim is supported by the implications of a distinctive social paradox — the discursive dilemma — and is consistent with a denial that our minds are subsumed in a higher form of Geist or in any variety of collective consciousness. Although the paper generates a rich, metaphysical brew, the ingredients it deploys all come from austere and sober analysis. The paper is in six sections. In the first I introduce the doctrinal paradox, a predicament recently identified in jurisprudence, and in the second I explain how it generalises to constitute the discursive dilemma. In the third section I show that that dilemma is going to arise for any group or gouping — henceforth I shall just say, group — that espouses or avows purposes, and that such purposive collectivities are bound to resolve it by imposing the discipline of reason at the collective rather than the individual level. In the fourth and fifth sections I argue that groups of this kind — social integrates, as I call them — will constitute intentional and personal subjects. Then in the sixth and last section I look briefly at how we should think of the relationship between institutional persons of this kind and the natural persons who sustain them