Joseph Raz

Joseph Raz was an Israeli philosopher of law and ethics who made foundational contributions to jurisprudence and political philosophy. His service conception of authority held that authority is legitimate when following its directives helps those subject to it conform better to the reasons that already apply to them—a powerful alternative to both consent theories and natural law accounts of political obligation.

Raz's ethics of liberalism, developed in The Morality of Freedom, was grounded not in abstract autonomy but in the social conditions required for the exercise of autonomy—a perfectionist liberalism that departs significantly from Rawls. His work on legal positivism, exclusionary reasons, and the nature of law remains central to analytic jurisprudence. He taught at Oxford and Columbia, and his influence on both legal and political philosophy is pervasive.