Authority, Obedience, and the State (Cato Unbound Book 32013)

Many people grant the state the moral right to do all sorts of things — things that, were they done by private individuals, we would nonetheless find appalling. Can we justify this expansive moral authority, whether through social contract theory or otherwise? If we can't, what happens next?

Philosopher Michael Huemer's new book, The Problem of Political Authority, proposes a radical solution: The state and its agents should be judged using exactly the same standards that we apply in our judgments of private conduct. If it is wrong for me to extract money from my neighbor under threat of force, then — and by the same token — it is also wrong for the state. When we make these judgments, he argues, we rapidly discover that we have no duty whatsoever to obey the state.

The result, for him, is philosophical anarchism. Of course, many libertarians and others decline to go so far. It's an old debate, and one not likely to be settled here in any case. What Huemer's argument brings, however, is a new methodological approach. He builds his case from from common, widely shared ethical intuitions rather than abstract first principles. Such principles may or may not be shared among all interlocutors, even while their intuitions agree. This initial agreement, Huemer claims, is a solid foundation for political and ethical reasoning.

To discuss with him, we've recruited a panel of distinguished thinkers of varying persuasions: George Mason economics professor Bryan Caplan, libertarian scholar-activist Tom G. Palmer, and Binghamton University philosophy professor Nicole Hassoun.