ABSTRACT
Joseph Smith’s Letter from Liberty Jail suggests authority is exercised through the use of persuasion and canceled by the assertion of “dominion” over another person. If this two-part interpretation is along the right lines, then the Letter from Liberty Jail employs a surprisingly revisionist concept of authority. Political philosophers since at least Hobbes have frequently understood authority in terms of a “right to rule”, where ruling includes the right to command. So it’s been a philosophical commonplace to contrast authority with persuasive argument. This chapter suggests that Smith’s Letter from Liberty Jail turns the standard modern concept of authority on its head. Whereas the received view is that authority consists in commands and not persuasion, Smith held that authority is about persuasion and not commands. This chapeter will suggest that the Letter from Liberty Jail points to a novel possibility, which Hobbes regarded as impossible: that an authority could act on behalf of an actor without any associated right to issue commands from their own will. There can be authority without dominion. In fact, if God still speaks, there must be.
