An Explanation for Why Final Political Authority is Necessary

Hanna Pitkin's recent two-part essay in this Review, “Obligation and Consent”, raises a vital problem worth discussing at greater length, the question of why a final authority—a “last word”—proves necessary in political matters or at least why we seem predisposed to think in terms of a final authority even though one may not actually exist. The following remarks constitute a response to this question.Professor Pitkin's approach is influenced by Oxford philosophy's accent on studying the role of language in moral judgments. She adds to this linguistic interest a complementary concern for “life” as well. Thus, she says, “What is ultimately needed here [on the questions of obligation and consent] is a better understanding of the role played in our language and our lives by assessments like ‘he was right’, ‘he made a bad decision,’ ‘he betrayed the cause,’ and the like.” But who is to say, she asks? Her answer is: “each person who cares to, will say …. No one has the last word because there is no last word. But in order to make that clear, one would have to say a great deal more about how language functions, and why we are so persistently inclined to suppose that there must be a last word.” Let us first take the question, who is to say? Then we shall move to the second, connected issue, why there must be a last word. Finally, we shall explore briefly the idea that we must know more about how language functions in order to solve certain conundrums concerning obligation and consent.