ABSTRACT
Up to this point I have framed the governing dialectic of arguments for and against the authority of the state and the concomitant duties of citizens in terms of the slogan expressive of modern liberalism: ‘the state proposes; the citizen disposes’. For a number of philosophers, notably those who, first, believe that the standard set of arguments in favour of the state’s authority and citizens’ concomitant obligations all fail and yet, second, resist the move to scepticism or the brands of anarchism discussed in Chapter 6, the alternative has been to reject this dialectic. Such a strategy identifies the fault of such approaches in the search for a justification that can be made good to the citizen who demands one. Let us purloin without attribution a term of contemporary jargon and dub this position ‘communitarian’, though I well understand that those who advocate it may reject the label as confusing.
