There is nearly universal agreement that coercion is an evil. Even when it is necessary to avoid a greater evil or to attain some good, it is still a necessary evil. There is also nearly universal agreement that, other things being equal, one ought not to exercise coercion. Here the agreement ends. There is little agreement about just when coercion is justified. More surprisingly, there is little agreement about what coercion is. This latter controversy is more fundamental, and this paper (...) is an attempt to shed some light on it. (shrink)

Virtually everyone agrees that there is a strong moral presumption against the use of coercion. There is, however, considerably less agreement about the nature of coercion. For example, each of the following claims has been the subject of considerable controversy: 1. coercion is an essentially normative concept whose ‘conditions of application contain an ineliminable reference to moral rightness or wrongness’; 2. it is possible to coerce someone by means of an especially enticing offer as well as by means of a (...) threat; 3. coercion sometimes consists in nothing more than the direct application of physical force; and 4. exploitation is a form of coercion. In this essay I shall propose and defend an explication of the concept of coercion which will entail the falsity of each of these claims. Such an analysis, although it will naturally start from and be guided by our intuitions about the subject, will not be bound rigidly by them. My primary objective will be to provide a reasonably precise and systematic way of describing a category of human behavior only the paradigm examples of which are clearly circumscribed by ordinary usage. (shrink)

A plausible explanation of the wrongfulness of threatening, advanced most explicitly by Mitchell Berman, is that the wrongfulness of threatening derives from the wrongfulness of the act threatened. This essay argues that this explanation is inadequate. We can learn something important about the wrongfulness of threatening (with implications for thinking about coercion) by comparing credible threats to some other claims of impending harm. A credible bluff threat to do harm is likely to be more and differently wrongful than making intentionally (...) false warnings about other sources of harm. This essay surveys some examples to secure this point, shows that Berman's moralized account of their wrongfulness is wanting, and offers the outline of an approach better suited to explain the wrongfulness of threatening.1. (shrink)

This paper discusses the puzzle of blackmail, i.e. the way in which the threat of an otherwise legally permissible action can in some cases constitute blackmail. It argues that the key to understanding blackmail is in terms of coercion and threats, and the effect such threats have on the validity of a victim’s consent. The nature of coercion and of coercive threats is considered in detail to support the thesis that threats are prima facie impermissible, though often justified all-things-considered. The (...) puzzle of blackmail arises due to the fact that the law rarely has regard to an agent’s motives in acting, whereas this is the focus of the puzzling cases. (shrink)