NDPR Gabriele De Anna Authority and the Metaphysics of Political Communities

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Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2021.09.01 View this Review Online View Other NDPR Reviews

Gabriele De Anna, Authority and the Metaphysics of Political Communities, Routledge, 2020, 242pp., $160.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780367438296.

Reviewed by Johan Brännmark, Malmö University

Gabriele De Anna has worked in many areas of philosophy, especially in metaphysics (on substances) and in value theory (on natural normativity), and in this book he works his way from both of these areas, as well as some philosophy of action, into an original account of political communities that stresses the role of political authority. It is this broad approach to understanding political communities that really makes De Anna's book stand apart from most work done in social ontology or political theory, which typically sets general metaphysics to the side. The basic picture that De Anna starts out from involves...