One way to prompt people to act is to claim that one’s commands impose duties upon some persons to act and subsequently to command those persons. This is the approach of practical authority. The claim of practical authority is ingredient to a predominant conception of the state. This thesis argues that the state’s claim to practical authority is both unjustified and morally wrong; it defends philosophical anarchism. The philosophical anarchist argument advanced here begins with a defence of a presumption against practical authority. It then argues that no argument for the practical authority of the state overcomes that presumption. Thus the state’s claim to practical authority is unjustified. The philosophical anarchist’s position suggests that we rethink both the normative claim ingredient to the concept of the state and the relationship between states and persons. This thesis suggests that states claim legitimacy – that is, states claim that the potentially coercive legal directives that they enact are all-things-considered morally permissible. The thesis outlines the ideal of legitimacy in political philosophy, an ideal distinct from authority. An analysis of legitimacy requires an analysis of coercion. The thesis develops a specific account of the pro tanto wrongfulness of coercion that locates the wrongfulness of coercion not with the badness of the outcomes that the coercee faces but rather with the beliefs and intentions of the coercer. Two upshots emerge from that account. The first is that legal directives are not necessarily coercive. The second is that the conditions which render coercion pro tanto wrongful also render the state’s claim to practical authority wrongful. However, whereas coercion is justifiable by an appeal to reasons that defeat its pro tanto wrongfulness, the philosophical anarchist shows that the state’s claim to practical authority is not so justifiable. Therefore, the state’s claim to practical authority is decisively wrongful.

Symmetrical Concept of the State Abstract: The doctoral thesis uses the perspective of Public Choice (political economy) on a descriptive level and the perspective of philosophical anarchism on a normative level to critically assess the concept of modern state (and its crises and legitimacy), as it is used in Staatswissenschaften and political philosophy. Common theme of both paradigms is insistence on symmetry of assumptions when analyzing the state; particularities of the state, as compared to other social institutions, do not play the role of explanans, but that of explanandum. Traditional concepts of political philosophy (sovereignty, will of the people, legitimacy) are consistently put in the context of the general social phenomena, from which they are (or should be) derived. The symmetrical approach asserts itself primarily against the fictional nature of some political concepts; in this thesis, fictional concepts are approached as assumptions of a "political model" and their unrealistic nature is not seen problematic so far as they stay within the model. However, at the same time, the question about the external (normative and practical) relevance (validity) of such a model arises. First part of the thesis argues for applicability - and in fact, indispensability - of the economic toolkit...

Joseph Raz has developed a concept of authority based on the special relationship between reasons and action. While the view is very complex and subtle, it can be summed up by saying that authorities are authorities insofar as they can mediate between the reasons that happen to bind their subjects and the subjects’ actions. Authorities do this by providing special reasons via directives to their subjects. These special reasons are what Raz calls “protected reasons.” Protected reasons are both first-order reasons for action and second-order “exclusionary reasons” that exclude the subject from considering some reasons in the balance of reasons for or against any action. I first make clear what Raz’s view of authority is, and I then defend this view from some contemporary critics.