ABSTRACT
There has been a remarkable coalescence of opinion around the proposition that authority and authority relations involve some species of “surrender of judgment” on the part of those who accept, submit or subscribe to the authority of persons or a set of rules and offices. From anarchist opponents of authority such as William Godwin and Robert Paul Wolff through moderate supporters such as John Rawls and Joseph Raz and on to enthusiasts such as Hobbes, Hannah Arendt, and Michael Oakeshott, a considerable chorus of students have echoed the refrain that the directives that are standard and salient features of practices of authority are to be obeyed by B irrespective of B’s judgments of their merits. As Richard B. Friedman puts the matter, B does not and cannot
make his obedience conditional on his . . . personal examination of the thing he is being asked to do. Rather, he accepts as a sufficient condition for following a prescription the fact that it is prescribed by someone acknowledged by him as entitled to rule. The man who accepts authority . . . surrender[s] his . . . individual judgment . . . [in that] he does not insist that reasons be given that he can grasp and that satisfy him, as a condition of his obedience.1
