The aim of this chapter is to show how the relationship between education and freedom is informed by the ethics of authority. Freedom is a central human value. Education contributes to our humanity. If human freedom is something valuable for all, and education is necessary for the promotion of this value, then we need an agent – an authority – that can direct our efforts in support of this educational goal. The chapter describes two different justifications of political authority over education that are (plausibly) compatible with an education for human freedom. Each offers a different view on the necessity of educational institutions – and institutional authority more generally – in realizing worthwhile educational goals.

Political authority can be tyrannical even when the laws it creates are grounded in reason, the authority enjoys the consent of the governed, and its lawmaking procedures are egalitarian and fair. To provide a more appealing account of political authority, we argue that a certain conception of the public provides the basis for explaining what political authority is and what might render it legitimate. An institution or official has legitimate authority when it speaks and acts “in our name,” rather than “for us.” This implies that its rules can be characterized as “our rules” and, consequently, that we are responsible for these rules. To count as ours, these rules should satisfy the condition of perspectivism. The rules must reflect the perspective of citizens. Perspective is an abstract concept that can take different interpretations, some of which we describe in this chapter. When this condition is met, the authority’s decisions are attributable to the citizens, rendering them responsible for these decisions.

Chapter 1 describes what might be called a Qajar imperial vision – the written, visual, and auditory ways that Qajar kingship and political authority were articulated, as well the structure and institutions of Qajar government. It draws on early Qajar chronicles, political ethical literature (andarznāma), art, and architecture, among other sources, to argue that Aqa Muhammad Khan and Fath-ʿAli Shah self-consciously presented themselves as heirs to a long tradition of Iranian kingship, but especially made claims to have resuscitated a model of imperial rule. The chapter helps frame the remainder of the book’s focus on early Qajar political practices.

John Milton argues that liberty of conscience requires the freedom to express one’s innermost commitments to others, specifically in speech and writing. Hypocritical conformity robs individuals of crucial opportunities to foster political capacities of citizenship, specifically the skill of independent judgment. Milton hints at an intuition that other early modern figures will later foreground – that hypocritical conformity to the state religion hardens dissenters and makes them incapable of being judicious political citizens. If individuals live in a political society that does not afford them liberty of conscience, they will slowly lose the capability to exercise their conscience over time. This freedom requires a robust view of freedom and agency in the public sphere, since it implies far more than an inward freedom of conviction. Conscience must be cultivated independently of political and ecclesiastical authorities and requires confrontation with other individuals in the public sphere, implying the open exchange of ideas and the freedom to express one’s ideas publicly in writing or speech. Milton insists that the circulation of ideas in print allows for an extended opportunity for individuals to exercise their conscience, as the written word persists over time longer than speech, which dissipates in the immediate moment, only to be recounted by witnesses. Liberty of conscience is so crucial to Milton’s understanding of freedom that he describes it as the highest liberty above all liberties, even justifying other political freedoms.

Chapter 1 introduces the five moral principles that compose the social anarchist position. Specifically, it defines social anarchism as the conjunction of five theses: (1) the consent theory of legitimacy, which holds that persons are obligated to obey the laws of the state only if they have consented to do so; (2) the Lockean proviso, which holds that persons can acquire property rights over some natural resource iff they leave “enough and as good” for others; (3) the self-ownership thesis, which asserts that each person has the same rights over her body that she would have over a fully owned thing; (4) the contention that persons do not have private property rights over any external natural resources; and (5) an endorsement of luck egalitarianism as the moral principle regulating the permissible use of unowned external objects. It also adjusts these principles in various ways to render them more plausible.

In this chapter the account of the Idea of the Good as the foundation of moral realism is applied to issues in religion and politics (Section #1). The question is raised and answered why Plato is confident that the gods are only good and not ever bad (Section #2). The theology of Laws10 is examined for some of the theological implications of the preeminence of the Good (Section #3). The concept of religious experience is introduced and its metaphysical underpinnings explained (Section #4). The problem of evil is addressed: how can the Good, the archē of everything, be the cause of evil? If it is not the cause, whence evil? (Section #5). The tensions between a metaphysics of the Good and the exigencies of politics, especially the authority of rulership, is examined (Section #6). The idea of the common good is introduced in order to determine if it is possible that the common good and the private good should conflict and if so, how does this impact Plato’s universal Good (Section #7). The connection between political expertise, consent, and legitimacy of types of government is examined (Section #8)

This chapter focuses on the relationship between consent and the moral educational aims of the liberal state. Consent is oft-cited as a condition for the legitimate use of coercive state power. Moral requirements are generally non-coercive on the face of it; nobody has the right to rule over our conscience. Curiously, liberal states often see the moral formation of citizens as subject to political requirements (e.g. compulsory civic education). How does the consent condition bear on these requirements? The general argument is that reasons for withholding consent to a liberal state moral education are often motivated by a specific worry about the relationship between morality and political authority, that is, that such authority will have undesirable downstream effects on these norms and attitudes. The chapter characterizes this worry in philosophical terms and proposes a solution in the form of a consent standard specific to the justification of a liberal state education.

We review our theoretical claims in light of the empirical chapters and their evidence that leader assessments matter, are highly subjective, and very much influenced by ideology and role models. They are also influenced by leader estimates of what needs to be done and their political freedom to act. This is in turn shows variation across leaders. The most common response to fragility is denial, although some leaders convince themselves – usually unrealistically – they can enact far-reaching reforms to address it.

In providing a new foundation for natural law and thence political authority, Pufendorf engaged in a major and explicit reconstruction of the discipline. Scholastic natural law derived the law of nature from a prior nature held to contain norms for moral and civil conduct; for example, from a divine nature whose will imprinted the human will, or a rational nature that was supposed to guide the will, or from humanity’s supposedly sociable nature as the source of the key norm of sociality. Pufendorf’s radical intervention into this field lay in his declaration that since it had been “imposed” or instituted as a “moral entity” by God for unaccountable reasons, human nature was not itself normative, rationally or socially. Rather, as a set of given conducts and predispositions—seen most clearly humanity’s paradoxical need for co-operation in order to survive and its ineradicable proclivity to envy, malice and mutual predation—human nature supplied only the observable basis from which it was possible to deduce the natural law: that man should cultivate sociality as a disposition needed for security and social thriving. This formed the basis for political sovereignty as the unchallengeable deployment of civil power required to obtain social peace and security.

Gentili sought to develop a set of rules to help regulate warfare. However, given his positions on absolutism and the value of the reason of state tradition, it is hard to see what resources he had available for encouraging sovereigns to actually play by those rules. In this chapter, I argue that Gentili squared the circle through a dichotomy at the heart of his legal framework: the distinction between violence carried out by a “public” entity and all other forms of violence. In Gentili’s framework, those carrying out the latter would immediately be discredited as “pirates” or “enemies of mankind.” The key, of course, was what Gentili meant by “public.”

Indigenous resurgence scholars have theorized the concept of grounded normativity as a relational, place-based, and nation-specific framework from which to pursue Indigenous freedom. Though primarily a turn away from settler colonial relations and towards Indigenous forms of subjecthood and agency, grounded normativity can also serve as a turn outward and a basis for diplomacy. This occurs, for example, when Indigenous resurgence movements invite others to stand with and act alongside them. This chapter reflects upon three such engagements with Indigenous resurgence movements, which refuse the sense of permanence and limited political possibilities that settler colonialism produces. This chapter argues that these engagements constitute a politics from below that complements grounded normativity, which generates relational and place-based collectivities that are informed by ethics of responsibility and reciprocity expressed within Indigenous legal orders. These collectivities form networks of democratic movements that, in recognizing Indigenous political authority, offer alternative forms of subjecthood and agency that disrupt the concretization of settler colonial relations.