A Comment on ‘Consent’

ONE of the more curious and melancholy features of academic life is the length to which intelligent people will go to rehabilitate patently untenable positions. In the area of political theory this is particularly evident with respect to ideas of state sovereignty and social contract. Elsewhere 1 have criticized attempts to defend theories of sovereignty and have briefly alluded to the unsatisfactory efforts of Joseph Tussman to base political obligation upon consent.’ Here 1 wish to comment on a recent article on ‘Consent’ by Albert Weale.2 After rightly criticizing the two concepts of consent put forward by Plamenatz, Weale proceeds to outline a ‘perlocutionary’ interpretation of consent based upon similar interpretations of ‘promise’. Promising is for him, so it appears, both ‘a parallel case’ to consent and also ‘a more general case of consent’. I am not clear how it can be both, but the important point is that Weale believes that a perlocutionary interpretation of consent is possible. Weale’s attempt to give a perlocutionary account of consent is unsatisfactory. He suggests that A consents to B doing /3, when: (1) A induces in B a reliance upon A not interfering with B doing f i , (2) A intends to induce this reliance in B (3) A intends B to recognize A’s intention to induce this reliance.