caa a22 4500 386319030 CHVBK 20180307111618.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e198803 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1017/S0957042X00004788 doi S0957042X00004788 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.1017/S0957042X00004788 Barry Norman Freedom, Law and Authority: The State and Legitimacy [Elektronische Daten] [Norman Barry] Despite the emphasis on the state in the history of political philosophy, the twentieth century has been characterized by a remarkable lack of philosophical reflection on the concept. Until recently analytical philosophy had eschewed those evaluative arguments about political obligation and the limits of state authority that were typical of political theory in the past in favour of the explication of the meaning of the concept. However, even here the results have been disappointing. Logical Positivist attempts to locate some unique empirical phenomenon which the word state described proved unsuccessful, and indeed led to the odd conclusion that there was nothing about the state that distinguished it from some other social institutions. For example, its coercive power was said to be not unique: in some circumstances trade unions and Churches exercised similar power over their members. Ordinary language philosophers were far more interested in the complexities that surround words such as law, authority and power than in the state. In all this there was perhaps the fear that to concentrate attention on the state was implicitly to give credence to the discredited doctrine that it stood for some metaphysical entity; propositions about which could not be translated into propositions about the actions of individuals, and which represented higher values than those of ordinary human agents. Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1988 Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture Series Cambridge University Press 24(1988-03), 191-206 0957-042X 24<191 1988 24 PHS https://doi.org/10.1017/S0957042X00004788 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0957042X00004788 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Barry Norman NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture Series Cambridge University Press 24(1988-03), 191-206 0957-042X 24<191 1988 24 PHS CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge