Abstract

ABSTRACT R. P. Wolff has argued that there is an irreconcilable conflict between the distinguishing mark of every state, viz. supreme authority over all its citizens, and the primary obligation of rational beings, viz. to act autonomously by taking moral responsibility for all of their actions. Utilitarian and consent theories which seek to justify the state's claim to possess a monopoly of the rightful use of force are shown to fail and the concept of a ‘legitimate state’to be morally incoherent. However, Wolff's version of individualist anarchism does not follow. Human beings are by no means equally rational or homogeneously autonomous. There are ‘states’which have a contingent and variable right to enforce obedience over an indefinitely large number of their ‘subjects’, although not over those who are autonomous because rational in high degree.