La concepción de la autoridad como servicio puesta a prueba

Résumé

The purpose of this work is to question two dimensions of Raz’s service conception of authority: its normative thesis and some of the conceptual grounds underlying that conception. Concerning the normative thesis, an outline of two types of compromising situations for the service conception proves that this conception is not complete. These two compromising situations are only instantiations of some classic arguments used in political philosophy to justify authority. The idea is that our current conception of authority is the result of a historical succession of necessities, experiences and reflections that provide reasons which are fully operative although they operate entimematically in some contexts. To be aware of these constructions and not simply to ignore them leads to questioning some of the conceptual grounds upon which the service conception is based, and to obtaining some useful lessons in order to implement a comprehensive authority conception.