Book Review: Facing Authority by Thomas Fossen

Thomas Fossen offers a revisionary, yet refreshing account of political legitimacy. By skilfully bringing together elements from Brandom’s inferentialist semantics and Hannah Arendt’s conception of political action, Fossen argues, against the grain, that we should start theorising on this theme by looking at our activities of judging authorities as (il)legitimate. This view does raise many questions about the nature of legitimacy itself; however, I suggest this is a fruitful novel path to pursue to help advance a debate that has long been settled in well-worn grooves.