The idea of authority in the thought of Peter Winch
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17808/des.58.1379Keywords:
Peter Winch, Wittgenstein, Bernard Williams, authorityAbstract
This article has two purposes. Firstly, I intend to structure Peter Winch's thought about political authorities within the context of his most comprehensive philosophical project. Secondly, I intend to develop Winch's original arguments in a way to answer possible objections against his theory of authority. The article is divided in four main sections, besides an introduction and a conclusion. Section II, "Winch's philosophical project", presents the general outline of the author's philosophy, mostly from The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy and from the essay Understanding a Primitive Society. On section III, "The problem of practical authorities", I use Robert Paul Wolff's anarchist argument to explain the challenges a theory of authority must face. Winch's answer to the kind of challenge advanced by Wolff begins to be sketched on section IV, "Winch on Wittgenstein and the role of education", in which I explain Winch's use of Wittgenstein's philosophy, notable from his On Certainty. On section V, "Authority, legitimacy and critique" I complete the argument that begun in IV and - making use of the work of Bernard Williams - make a defence of Winch against some possible criticisms, notably that his philosophy would be unnecessarily conservative. The general conclusions of the article are that Peter Winch is an author that helps us to understand why obedience to authority is not necessarily irrational, and that his work provides us with the understanding of the limits and potentialities for the criticism of this very same authority.References
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