Political Obligation Hobbes Locke Rousseau Hobbes Absolute sovereignty
Political Obligation Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau
Hobbes • Absolute sovereignty • Security • Scientific revolution • Natural science • Material reality • Motion or movements of bodies • Social behavior and individual psychology
Hobbes on human nature and the sate of nature • Desires and physical appetites • Passions and reason • Fear of death and drive for self-advancement • But in state of nature neither can be attained • Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short • Supreme authority
Covenant • From right of nature to laws of nature • Reason and expediency • Seek peace and follow it • Surrender unlimited right for self-protection in exchange for peace • Covenant (social contract) • Men perform their convenants made (obligation) • Sovereign is needed to ensure compliance
• Commonwealth among people • Sovereign is not a party to the covenant • Political obligation is voluntary and conditional
Critics • Individualistic assumptions • Obligations rather than rights • Morally unacceptable abuses of power
Locke: social contract, consent and natural rights • Social contract • Anti-Absolutist Whig theory • Resistance, even armed rebellion • Trusteeship • Placing limits on political authority • Replace Filmer (not only Hobbes)
State of nature • Pre-political state of nature • Pre-social and pre-political rights • Natural obligations • Natural right to life. Liberty and property • Inviolable • Law of nature: reason • Moral conduct • But dangers of anarchy
2 -stage social contract • Unanimous decision to institute a political society • Agreement of trust between civil society and government • In effect, transfer right and power to make, interpret and enforce the law of nature • Obligation to obey civil government is conditional
Consent • Deliberate free choice – first stage • But unclear distinction between tacit and express consent
Rousseau: general will and ideal social contract • Civil society • Poltical obligation to the general will • No tension between individual freedom and state authority • Ideal rather than actual social contract • Legitimate political authority
Ideal social contract • Ineqaulities • Force and deception • Fundamental problem • Ideal social contract is the solution • Reconcile freedom with order • Form of association • Natural liberty given up in return for civil freedom
General will • General will is infallible • Common good • Aim of each individual citizen • Conform • Attainment of civil and moral freedom – benefits of the social contract • Lose natural freedom, gain civil freedom and property in all he possesses
Contemporary debates • Russell, Moore, Ayer – logical positivism • Rejected older theories as metaphysical nonsense • Poltical obligation was deemed too general and abstract • Concern with particular regimes • 1960 s decline in logical positivism • John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (1970) • Social contract theory and distributive justice
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