ABSTRACT
We saw earlier that a statement of good reasons, as advanced by the political authority and accepted by the citizens to whom it is addressed, will have the form of an argument. The conclusion of the argument can be more or less ambitious. The most ambitious argument will conclude that all citizens of all states – de facto political powers – should accept all the duties imputed to them by the sovereign authority. The least ambitious argument will seek to establish that some citizens of some states should accept some of the duties ascribed to them. In between these extremes there will be a range of claims, differing in the scope of the different elements identified in the arguments: all, most or some states; all, most or some citizens; all, most or some of the duties that states may impute. These offer a range of permutations and we shall review these possibilities in a schematic fashion.
