ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses several different senses of the priority of obligations by briefly introducing some historical and comparative examples. It aims to consider how linguistic communication embodies ethical and symbolic dimensions that continue to operate through priorities of obligation. Communal, linguistic, and moral obligations furnish a key sense of the priority of obligations, one on which positive laws and institutions are themselves reliant. Beyond the linguistic aspects, obligations exhibit a priority within certain practices that form part of the ineliminable makeup of social life. It is true, as we have seen, that obligations are fundamental to desirable practices of co-operation and co-ordination that have a priority as features of any society. Robert Cover noted just how central obligation and practices of obedience have been to Jewish life and culture: “The basic word of Judaism is ‘obligation’ or mitzvah”. The idea that rights and obligations are correlative is therefore a highly contingent and modern one.
