Abstract

This dissertation undertakes an analytic survey of the problem of obligation in political and legal philosophy, from the early writings of H. L. A. Hart to the present. Four conclusions are supported by this analysis: first, the concepts of political and legal obligation are of major theoretical and practical importance. Second, liberalism's assumption that obligations must be voluntarily accepted by the individual prevents the formulation of sufficient accounts of political and legal obligation within the framework of liberal political theory. Third, the principle of fairness, as developed by Hart, John Rawls, and Kent Greenawalt, is a source of involuntary obligations, and may constitute a possible ground for a sufficient liberal account of political and legal obligation. Fourth, political obligation and legal obligation are neither identical nor symmetrical. The citizen may have legal obligations to obey certain laws without having a political obligation to the state enacting and enforcing them, or he may have a political obligation to the state without having legal obligations to obey all of that state's laws. ;At the outset of the inquiry, political and legal obligation are defined as sui generis moral obligations, and the criteria are identified which a sufficient account of these obligations must satisfy. The criteria are then applied to recent accounts, beginning with those employing the principle of consent. After analyzing the failure of tacit consent to ground a sufficient account, alternative principles and accounts are considered. These include Hart's four accounts and John Finnis's treatment of obligation in his version of natural law theory. ;John Simmons's position of philosophical anarchism, and the arguments of R. P. Wolff, C. B. Macpherson, and Carole Pateman, supporting the conclusion that liberal theory has failed to account for political and legal obligation, are examined. In response to philosophical anarchism, it is argued that the concepts of political and legal obligation can be abandoned only at a substantial theoretical and practical cost. In response to the critics of liberal democratic theory, it is argued that it may be possible to formulate a sufficient account of political and legal obligation, within the framework of Rawlsian liberalism, by employing the principle of fairness.