ABSTRACT
The critics argue that the search for 'necessary and sufficient conditions for obedience' is prompted by a confusion. We can answer 'Why should I obey the Road Traffic Act?' and 'Why should I obey the Incitement to Disaffection Act?', because they presume a particular situation. We can refer to their aims, to their chances of achieving them in that situation, to possible alternatives, etc. But to ask 'Why should I obey any law?' is to divorce the question of obligation from all circumstances. It is tempting to look for some general principle in the answers to all the particular questions, from which we could later derive answers to similar questions. But if the particular situation is deliberately excluded, a generalized answer, in respect of any law, would be too broad to indicate the necessary and sufficient conditions for obedience in any new particular instance. This is only another way of saying that particular prescriptions are not deducible from general rules; that the application of a rule requires, not the method of deductive reasoning, but decision.
