A Unified Method for Moral and Political Legitimacy: Reducibility and the Natural Equality of Sovereignty

This paper develops a unified descriptive framework for assessing both moral and political legitimacy. It begins from the claim that every human being is a categorically sovereign agent, from which a natural equality of sovereignty follows unless a consistent basis for asymmetry can be demonstrated. On this foundation, the method of reducibility is introduced: a systematic procedure for evaluating any moral or political claim by tracing its justification back to its implications for individual sovereign agents. This yields a coherent account of why certain moral duties hold, why others fail, and under what limited conditions political authority can be legitimate. The framework avoids prescriptive moralism, sidesteps the is–ought problem, and provides a rare unification of moral theory and political legitimacy. Its broader implications include a descriptively grounded model of natural rights and a highly constrained theory of state authority, while remaining neutral between statist and anarchistic conclusions in principle.