Abstract

Essentially, I examine in my dissertation whether a Kloskovian version of the fair play theory of political obligation meets the conditions on a successful theory which both Klosko and Simmons agree on. Roughly, these conditions require a theory to have the consequences that a large-enough number of people in a political community come to have obligations to it ; that a person comes to be obligated to one political community more than to any other if he falls under obligation ; and that a person comes to be obligated to the political community just in case he falls under the scope of the principle employed by the theory . ;I arrive at this fairness theory by first establishing the existence of political obligations of the members of a political community, formulating a version of the fair play principle which most philosophers in the field would agree on, and applying this version to political cases with a view to explaining the moral basis of the political obligations whose existence was earlier established. I then show how this fairness theory of political obligation satisfies these conditions in various degrees, concluding that only Generality is satisfied