Power and domination

ABSTRACT

The ‘power debate’ raises hard questions to which the recent ‘domination debate’ among philosophers embracing neorepublicanism contributes. Concerning agents and structures, the neorepublican focus on dominators’ wills needs broadening, replacing intentions with interests, since their power can be routine and unconsidered, and extend across generations. Neorepublicans see domination as a potential rendering others vulnerable; here the view needs to be narrowed to specify which potential dangers are relevant. There is no convincing way of determining what counts as dominating power that does not derive from one or another moral and political standpoint. These hard questions are and must remain open.

KEYWORDS:

• Domination
• agent
• structure
• potential
• exercise

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. It is perhaps worth commenting on the language of ‘faces’ and ‘dimensions,’ which Baldwin, like many others, here treats as equivalent in meaning. I introduced ‘dimensions’ into this debate as what was, I confess, something of a rhetorical trick, although I was not conscious of this at the time. For, first, who would want a one- or two-dimensional view of something if you could see it in three? But, more trickily, talk of ‘dimensions’ rather than ‘faces’ suggests that what you see three-dimensionally you see in greater depth and more realistically.

2. Most of the participants in this debate agree about the criterion of arbitrariness, though Pettit discarded it as ambiguous, preferring to call dominating power ‘uncontrolled’ by those subject to it. (Pettit 2012, p. 58)

3. This is misleading, even as a summary description of many major liberal thinkers but serves its purpose to mark the distinctiveness of the neorepublican position.

4. On which I have drawn considerably in writing this paper

5. A telling example of this exclusive focus on agency is Pettit’s characterization of a bank’s power to lend a customer funds. If the bank denies the loan, Pettit asks, is the customer ‘under the will of a dominating agency’? He answers in the negative, on the ground that ‘the bank is merely doing what banks have to do – or so we may assume – by local standards that bear on their role.’ It ‘does not act on the basis of a voluntary preference as to how you should act’ but rather ‘operates like a force of nature, not like an agent whose attitudes towards you can determine how you fare.’ (Pettit 2014, p. 50)

6. In her lecture, Ypi cites the interesting case of Instetten and Effi from Theodor Fontane’s novel Effi Briest, which contrasts interestingly with that of Torval and Nora in Ibsen’s The Doll’s House cited by Philip Pettit to illustrate patriarchal domination. Instetten is no less doting on Effi than Torval on Nora, but, on Ypi’s interpretation, is himself dominated by the social norm that requires him to punish Eff for infidelity.

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Steven Lukes

Steven Lukes is a professor of sociology at New York University. His writing and teaching range over political science, political and moral philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and the history and philosophy of the social sciences. His publications include Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work; Individualism; Power: A Radical View; Essays in Social Theory; Marxism and Morality; Moral Conflict and Politics; Liberals and Cannibals: The Implications of Diversity; The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat: A Comedy of Ideas and Moral Relativism. With Martin Hollis he co-edited Rationality and Relativism and with Michael Carrithers and Steven Collins The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History.