Abstract:

The article critically examines some major arguments made by A. John Simmons in his celebrated essay "Justification and Legitimacy." The author argues that Simmons' "consent-based conception of legitimacy", for its relying too much on an extreme version of voluntarism, commits the fallacy of subjectivism that Simmons himself rejects, and consequently cannot be taken as an independent approach, parallel to justification, to normative evaluations of the state, as Simmons claims. The theoretical move that makes distinction and separation between justification and legitimacy is also problematic. In general, "the challenge of philosophical anarchism" does not concern what is at stake in contemporary debates on political legitimacy and its significance should not be overstated.

Key words: A. John Simmons, political legitimacy, justification, consent theory, modernity