ABSTRACT
Political, legal, and social philosophers still make moral judgments on occasion, although doing so is not as popular as it once was. Frequently the concept of coercion plays an important role in such judgments, for coercion in the Western moral and political tradition has two significant connections with moral principles. First, in law as well as morals, that one was coerced to act as one did is usually a defense or excuse. 1 That is, if a person has been coerced to perform an action he is thought to be blameless or less blameworthy. Second, the use of coercion is generally thought to be morally bad. Christian Bay goes so far as to call it “the supreme political evil” 2
