The Possibility of Consent
The Possibility of Consent
For Hume the power of consent raised the Problem of Normative Power as much as the power to make promises. To see the parallel here we must distinguish the power of consent from the normative significance of choice. Choice serves our interest in controlling the non-normative situation. And to see the solution to Hume’s problem, we must recognize that consent operates on bare wrongings like rape and trespass. What grounds the power of consent is our interest in having control over the normative situation and in particular our permissive interest, our interest in its being the case that such things as rape and trespass wrong us unless we declare otherwise. In its reliance on declaration, consent works quite differently from forgiveness.
Keywords: David Hume, normative significance of choice, normative power, permissive interest, bare wronging, rape, trespass, forgiveness
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
