ABSTRACT
We have reviewed a number of arguments which aim to solve this Philosophical Problem of political obligation – arguments from consent and contract in a variety of forms, from fairness and gratitude as proper responses to the receipt of benefits from the state, from utility and from the natural duties of justice and (Samaritan) care for others. The conclusion that I drew was that the arguments were generally plausible as philosophical exercises, but that some put out more hostages to fortune than others. In the case of the argument from utility its success depended entirely on the independent question of whether utilitarianism as a normative ethic can be given acceptable foundations, and that is a hugely contested issue. In the same way, the normative version of the hypothetical contract argument depends entirely on how far one can articulate attractive and defensible independent values of equality and liberty. All of the other arguments have been revealed as conditional. How far they apply to the circumstances of some or most citizens will depend upon the particular facts of the matter which may or may not hold in the case of the citizens of some particular state. Needless to say, and despite the pretensions of some of our colleagues, authority over these factual matters, matters of history and current affairs, is not given to philosophers. These facts (and opinions concerning them which may be true or false) together with the independent cogency of other philosophical arguments asserting the value of, say, justice, will feed into an assessment of who owes which political duties or obligations (in each case to be specified) to their state or to their fellow citizens. This is how things should be if the philosophical issues in this domain can be properly represented in the slogan which I claimed expresses the dialectic of liberalism: ‘the state proposes; the citizen disposes’.
