Allyn Fives – författare

They consider the role of ethical commitment in the philosophical analysis of contemporary political issues, and engage with matters of public policy such as poverty, the arts, meaningful work, as well as the evidence base for policy.

They consider the role of ethical commitment in the philosophical analysis of contemporary political issues, and engage with matters of public policy such as poverty, the arts, meaningful work, as well as the evidence base for policy.

This analytically cogent account engages with both the philosophical roots of ideas and their application in institutional structures. Offering a critical overview of political philosophies of welfare it is ideal for advanced students on courses in political science, sociology, social policy, and philosophy.

This book puts forward a novel interpretation of Judith Shklar’s liberalism of fear. Shklar’s work is usually seen as an important influence for those who take a sceptical approach to political thought and are concerned first and foremost with the avoidance of great evils. In fact, as this book shows, the most important factor shaping her mature work is not her scepticism but rather a value monist approach to both moral conflict and freedom, which represents a radical departure from the value pluralism (and scepticism) of her early work. The book also advances a clear line of argument in defence of value pluralism in political theory, one that builds on but moves beyond Shklar’s own early work.

The problem of parsing out the nature of political authority is an important and abiding one. Standard views try to square such authority, and the moral obligations that arise from it, with the demands of freedom and rationality or they express skepticism about such authority altogether. Allyn Fives boldly rejects both these notions, and in this meticulous and clearly written analysis, argues that authority can be legitimate but conflict with reasons grounded in rationality and freedom, giving rise to true moral dilemmas. This is a powerfully defended and perspicuously defended thesis, and one could not ask for a more thorough and careful examination of these issues.- John Phillip Christman, Professor of Philosophy, Political Science, and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Pennsylvania State UniversityThis book analyses the so-called moral problem of authority, which is the challenge of reconciling legitimate authority (the right to rule) with the demands of freedom and rationality. It offers a critique of authority sceptics, both anarchist and non-anarchist, who insist that authority can never have legitimacy. It also points to problems with many conventional defences of authority, including those of deliberative democracy, which assume that insofar as authority is legitimate it simply satisfies the demands of freedom or rationality. In this book, through a close engagement with the work of Joseph Raz in particular, it is argued that authority can have legitimacy, but when it does it generates a moral dilemma, where the obligation to obey comes at some cost to freedom and reason.