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Protest, Resistance, and Political Obligation*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
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- Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , March 1970 , pp. 1 - 17
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- Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1970
References
1 Sometimes political obligation is understood to be an obligation to obey, not the law, but the state, the government, the constitution, or the principles undergirding the constitution. If I am not mistaken, the line of argument pursued in this paper can be applied to all of these formulations.
2 Ethics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1963), 8–9.
3 Hart, H. L. A., “Legal and Moral Obligations,” in Essays in Moral Philosophy, ed. Melden, A. I. (Seattle and London, 1958), 82–3.Google Scholar
4 Ibid., 82.
5 Ibid., 100, 102.
6 (New York, 1960), 8.
7 Ibid., 25.
8 Ibid., 36.
9 Ibid., 39, 35.
10 Ibid., 44.
11 Ibid., 32.
12 In the first of her two penetrating articles on “Obligation and Consent” (American Political Science Review, LIX (Dec. 1965), 990–9), Hanna Pitkin argues very persuasively that Tussman – like Locke before him – states some views that are quite inconsistent with his professed conviction that consent is the sole ground of political obligation. I suspect that the same point could be made against everyone who professes to decide issues concerning political obedience and disobedience solely in the light of political obligations in the narrow sense. It remains true, however, that both political philosophers and laymen often profess to adhere to such perspectives and that they often express judgments which presuppose that obligations in the narrow sense are the only relevant considerations. When I describe someone as an adherent of such a perspective I mean no more than this.
13 Obligation and the Body Politic, 7.
14 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1957), 48–9.
15 American Political Science Review, XLIV (June 1954), 386–403.
16 Ibid., 395.
17 Of course I do not maintain that these are the only grounds on which it has been argued that citizens are bound to abide by all majority decisions.
18 For a thoughtful analysis of this line of argument, see Hyneman, Charles S., Popular Government in America (New York, 1968), 266–73.Google Scholar Also, Cohen, Carl, “Essence and Ethics of Civil Disobedience,” The Nation, CXCVIII (March 16, 1964), 260–1.Google Scholar
19 This line of criticism was suggested by the remarks about consent theories made by Pitkin, Hanna in “Obligation and Consent – II,” American Political Science Review, LX (March 1966), 40–1.Google Scholar
20 I settle on “towards the other extremes” rather than “at the other extreme” because the term “revolution” has been applied to such a wide variety of phenomena, from coups d'etat to very radical alterations of political, social, and economic relationships.
21 “The Obligation to Disobey,” Ethics, LXXVII (April 1967), 163–75.
22 Walzer does not go this far. He maintains that the obligation to disobey is a prima facie rather than a perfect obligation and that even the prima facie obligation to disobey compels only to the extent that “disobedience of laws or legally authorized commands does not threaten the very existence of the larger society or endanger the lives of its citizens” (Ibid., 170–1). Moreover, he maintains that anyone who is obligated to disobey could be “given good reasons why he ought not to do so” (p. 173). As far as I can see, the article contains no indication of what could count as “good reasons.”
23 Cf. Pitkin, “Obligation and Consent – II,” 41.
24 At the risk of stressing a point that is too obvious to deserve comment, I emphasize that the statement in the text is a statement about the considerations that are relevant to the moral justification of political disobedience, not a statement about how anyone “must” use the term “political obligation.” Of course one can employ only the narrow sense of “political obligation.” But if one does so, one must acknowledge (if my reasoning has been sound) that questions concerning the moral justification of political disobedience are not (only) questions of political obligation. And this is just a different way of stating the conclusion reached in the text.
25 It may be useful here to mention some of the recent literature which, in addition to writings cited elsewhere in this essay, seems to me most likely to be helpful to anyone interested in questions concerning the morality of political obedience and disobedience. As far as I know, the only recent work that attempts an extended analysis of the concept of political obligation is McPherson, Thomas, Political Obligation (London, 1967Google Scholar). Part I of Hook, Sidney, ed., Law and Philosophy: A Symposium (New York, 1964Google Scholar), contains a number of essays on legal and political obligation. And in “The Obligation to Obey the Law,” U.C.L.A. Law Review, XL (May 1963), 780–807, Richard Wasserstrom examines critically a wide range of arguments concerning the strength and extent of obligations to obey the law.
Thoughtful discussions of disobedience of superior orders and of resistance to tyranny are found in Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem (New York, 1964Google Scholar); Hook, Sidney, The Paradoxes of Freedom (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1962Google Scholar) Lewy, Guenter, “Superior Orders, Nuclear Warfare, and the Dictates of Conscience,” American Political Science Review, LV (March 1961), 3–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ofstad, Harald, “The Ethics of Resistance to Tyranny,” Inquiry, IV (1961), 148–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The largest part of the recent literature on political obligation and political disobedience has addressed itself to questions concerning civil disobedience. Four collections of essays on this subject that are worth examining are: Bedau, Hugo A., ed., Civil Disobedience: Theory and Practice (New York, 1969Google Scholar); Freeman, Harrop A.et al., Civil Disobedience (Santa Barbara, 1966Google Scholar); Goldwin, Robert A., ed., On Civil Disobedience: American Essays Old and New (Chicago, 1969Google Scholar); and Urquhart, Clara, ed., A Matter of Life (London, 1963Google Scholar).
Among the most thoughtful essays on civil disobedience not included in these collections are Bay, Christian, “Civil Disobedience,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, II (New York, 1968), 473–86Google Scholar; Bay, , “Civil Disobedience: Prerequisite for Democracy in Mass Society,” in Spitz, David, ed., Political Theory and Social Change (New York, 1967), 1961), 653–65Google Scholar; Brown, Stuart M. Jr., “Civil Disobedience,” Journal of Philosophy, LVIII (Oct. 26, 1961), 669–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; King, Martin Luther Jr., “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience,” New South, XVI (Dec. 1961), 3–11Google Scholar; Neumann, Franz, “On the Limits of Justifiable Disobedience,” in The Democratic and the Authoritarian State (Glencoe, Ill., 1958), 149–59Google Scholar; and Weingartner, Rudolph H., “Justifying Civil Disobedience,” Columbia University Forum, IX (Spring 1965), 38–44.Google Scholar
Finally, anyone who chooses to read former Justice Abe Fortas's contribution to the American debate about civil disobedience, Concerning Dissent and Civil Disobedience (New York, 1968Google ScholarPubMed), should also read Zinn's, Howard critique, Disobedience and Democracy: Nine Fallacies on Law and Order (New York, 1968Google Scholar).
26 Cf. Plamenatz, John, Mann and Society, I (London, 1963), 238–41Google Scholar; and Plamenatz, , Consent, Freedom and Political Obligation (Oxford, 2nd ed., 1968), 170–1.Google Scholar
27 Three Tests for Democracy (New York, 1968), 92.