ABSTRACT
There is little surprise that the notion of authority is one of the most controversial concepts found in the armoury of legal and political philosophy. Its central role in any discussion of legitimate forms of social organization and of legitimate forms of political action makes the indefinite continuation of this controversy inevitable. The immediate relevance of the problem of authority to current controversial issues makes a dispassionate study of the subject all the more difficult. But beyond these extrinsic difficulties, the study of the concept of authority has to confront two major problems of intellectual origin: the methodological problem of how to avoid confusing the various quite distinct problems involving the notion of authority and the problem of the paradoxes of authority.
