Charles III and the Problem of Legitimacy

The Hard Problem of Conscience, in Practice

We promised in the last article to treat the concept of propositionality, but this will be pushed back to next week.

As mentioned before, much of the work of this Substack is to introduce concepts that carve reality at the joints. Sometimes this can seem rather idle—we would have a much larger audience if we discussed the ephemeral babble of politics. But the concepts, questions, and problems brought to light here are anything but idle. This week we will show how one bears directly on the politics of the day.

At 6:30 BST on September 8th, 2022, the life and reign of Queen Elizabeth II came to an end. Amid the outpouring of grief were cries, even from the right, that amount to ding, dong, the witch is dead! It’s hard to blame anyone for that—Elizabeth’s reign was marked by a sharp decline in the sovereignty of the native British over their lands. She not only failed to act as a moral counterweight to this decline, but in many ways aided and abetted it.

The obvious response is to say that her failure makes her unworthy of fealty and obedience. But how obvious is this, really?