When do claims to political legitimacy give people reasons ——and what happens when power shapes those reasons? Drawing on Bernard williams, this talk distinquishes political reasons from both normative iustification and causal explanation. It reconstructs his Critical Theory Test through internal reasons and proposes genealogical robustness: can a claim's reason-giving force survive truthful disclosure of its formative conditions? Adaptive preferences and Fanon's account of subject formation show how disclosure can defeat, revise, or preserve political reasons. The account explains how reasons grounded in people's concerns remain open to criticism, without treating acceptance as sufficient for legitimacy.
