¹ It might be argued that while questions of obedience and disobedience were important as recently as the 1950s and early 1960s, they now have been swallowed up by questions of rebellion, revolution, and political terrorism. I would rather investigate the possibility that by keeping creative disobedience alive we might help to achieve much needed social change without quite so much trauma. But, in any case, both disobedience and revolution remind us that problems of obligation lie at the heart of political philosophy, and that our theories of obligation require continual rethinking. See the remarks to this effect by Laslett, Peter and Runciman, W.G. in the introduction to their Philosophy, Politics and Society 2nd series (Oxford, 1967), ix.Google Scholar

² Kelsen, Hans, General Theory of Law and State (New York, 1961), 407ffGoogle Scholar; see also Moore, G.E., Ethics (London, 1966), 65Google Scholar: “It seems evident that one and the same action cannot be both right and wrong.” But, for support of my argument see, for example, Pocklington, Thomas, “Protest, Resistance, and Political Obligation,” this Journal III, no. 1, (March, 1970), 13Google Scholar: “A man contemplating disobedience may have both an obligation to disobey and an obligation to obey.” See also Walzer, Michael, “The Obligation to Disobey,” Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War, and Citizenship (Cambridge, Mass. 1970), 14Google Scholar and passim.

³ McPherson, Thomas, Political Obligation (London, 1967), 72.Google Scholar “Conflict between different kinds of obligation is a more theoretically trivial matter than it has been supposed. (It can still be serious practically).”

⁴ Pocklington has discussed these obligations of interpersonal commitment (or performatives) under the category of “obligation in the narrow sense.” “Protest, Resistance, and Political Obligation,” 4 and passim.

⁵ Carnes, John R., “Whether there is a Natural Law,” Ethics, 77, no. 2 (January, 1967), 124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar “The law of nature, which enjoins the keeping of promises, guarantees that the social contract is binding.” Carnes is here expounding John Locke, but he elsewhere asks us to “take seriously” this Lockean argument (p. 127). See also Baier, Kurt, “Moral Obligation,” American Philosophic Quarterly, 3, no. 3 (July, 1966), 212, 213, 218.Google Scholar Baier holds that the binding force of promises arises from a “blank” moral directive: “keep promises” (p. 213).

⁶ Prichard, H.A., “The Obligation to Keep a Promise,” Moral Obligation (London, 1968Google Scholar). I take it that when Prichard's argument is demystified it will turn out to be much like that of Rawls and Searle, to the effect that promising only makes sense as a social “practice” or “institution.” Stated thus, the argument is true and helpful. See John Rawls, “Two Concepts of Rules,” and Searle, John R., “How to Derive ‘Ought’ from ‘Is,’” both in Theories of Ethics, ed. Foote, P. (London, 1967Google Scholar).

⁷ “Promising is, by definition, an act of placing oneself under an obligation.” Searle, “‘Ought’ from ‘Is,’” 103 and passim; See also Rawls, “Two Concepts,” 156: “The promisor is bound because he promised.”

⁸ Searle, “‘Ought’ from ‘Is’” 113. See also Rawls, “Two Concepts,” 153ff; Prichard, “Obligation to keep a Promise,” passim; and Pitkin, Hannah, “Obligation and Consent-II,” The American Political Science Review, LX, no. 1 (March, 1966), 45–9.Google Scholar

⁹ See chapter 1 of Tussman, Joseph, Obligation and the Body Politic (New York, 1960Google Scholar). Tussman rightly and unobtrusively assumes that rights and obligations follow as a matter of course from “voluntary agreement.”

¹⁰ “To consent precisely is to take on an obligation,” McPherson, Political Obligation, 25. But in the same passage McPherson argues that, in some contexts, promises and consents fail to obligate (that is, if they are mere “acquiescence,” or if they are morally blameworthy). I do not see how he can have it both ways, and the first position seems to me the correct one. See also Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, P., (New York, 1965), 376.Google Scholar “And Thus every Man, by consenting with others to make one Body Politick under one Government, puts himself under an Obligation …” (my italics).

¹¹ For a brief but useful discussion of knowing shown through behaviour see Oakeshott, Michael, “Rationalism in Politics,” Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (London, 1962Google Scholar).

¹² “Having obligations is inseparable from being a social creature.” McPherson, Political Obligation, 64. For an extended discussion of the reciprocal connections between “community” and “duty” see Toulmin, Stephen, Reason in Ethics (Cambridge, 1964), 132ff.Google Scholar

¹³ For discussion of other kinds of examples see Pocklington, “Protest, Resistance, and Political Obligation,” 12 and 13, and Walzer “Obligation to Disobey,” 10ff.

¹⁴ Kelson argues that legal norms must inhere within a system and be backed by sanctions. Hart agrees that laws form a system, but denies that they necessarily have sanctions attached. See Kelson, General Theory chapters 1 and 2, and Hart, H.L.A., The Concept of Law (Oxford, 1961Google Scholar), chapters 2, 3, 5, and 6.

¹⁵ For a related distinction – between “internal” and “external” points of view – see Hart, Concept of Law, 55–7, 86–9, 99, and passim. A recent argument from the outsider's point of view is that of Wolff, R.P. in “On Violence,” Journal of Philosophy, LXVI, no. 19 (2 October 1969Google Scholar). Wolff holds that “legitimacy” or legal authority is a “myth” (604, 616); that “there is no such thing as legitimate authority” (608); that “there are no legitimate governments” (609); and the like. It follows that he should view legal rules as merely coercive, and not as imposing obligations or “oughts.”

¹⁶ It is possible, of course, that one might be an “insider” with respect to law in the abstract (that is, one is not a thorough-going anarchist), yet an “outsider” with respect to a particular legal system. A revolutionary is often, perhaps typically, in this position during the state of insurgency. It is also possible that an “outsider” be neither an anarchist nor a revolutionary, but simply an external observer, for example, a man from Mars or an academic wearing his “social scientist” hat. This is the outsider with which Hart is primarily concerned in his Concept of Law.

¹⁷ “Moral Obligation,” 217.

¹⁸ Ibid., 216.

¹⁹ Hart, Concept of Law, 111, 113 and passim.

²⁰ It is instructive to note that both Tussman and Carnes are uneasy about their espousal and revival of contract theory, hence neither ask us to take it quite literally. For Tussman, Obligation, 7, it is a “model”; for Carnes, “Natural Law,” 125ff. it is a “myth.”

²¹ For an extended critique of Tussman in particular, and consent theories in general, see Pitkin, Hannah, “Obligation and Consent” (Parts I and II), The American Political Science Review LIX, no. 4 (December, 1965Google Scholar) and LX, no. 1 (March, 1966).

²² Treatise on Law (Chicago), 78. Aquinas, in turn, is leaning on the authority of Augustine.

²³ Baier, “Moral Obligation,” 213. Note the parallel to the argument, discussed earlier, that promises and other performatives require a moral building force.

²⁴ Hart makes essentially the same argument Concept of Law, 203–7.

²⁵ Austin, John, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (London, 1965), 185.Google Scholar

²⁶ Everyone has heard of anachronistic laws which are no longer enforced, but are still on the books. For example, see Hart's remark that “Americans are accustomed … to the inclusion among their statutes of much legal lumber in the form of penal provisions no longer enforced, and I am assured that, in California at least, the provision making a conspiracy to corrupt public morals a crime may safely be regarded as a dead letter.” Hart, H.L.A., Law, Liberty, and Morality (London, 1963), 7.Google Scholar A few pages later, Hart continues: “the existence of criminal laws which are generally not enforced places formidable discriminatory powers in the hands of the police and prosecuting authorities.”

²⁷ Laws requiring or allowing the persecution of minorities are an obvious example; there are, of course, many others.

²⁸ “Why Should I Obey the Law?” Ethics, 71, no. 1 (October, 1960), 16.

²⁹ We should note that an outsider with respect to the law may deny the very concept of legal validity (though the revolutionary, for example, denies merely the authority of a particular legal system). The outsider with respect to a moral code, however, typically rejects just that particular code (or rule, or principle), not morality as such. A thorough-going denial of the very concepts of moral right and wrong is comparatively rare.

³⁰ For development of this argument see Oakeshott, Michael, Religion and the Moral Life (Cambridge, 1927Google Scholar).

³¹ “The truth of the matter is that there is no single simple answer to the question why we ought to obey the government,” McPherson, Political Obligation, 22; see also 52: “If we were to insist on having a general theory of political obligation, it would have to be … an eclectic one.”

³² I am in agreement with the salvage job performed by Professor Pitkin on Tussman's consent theory (and Locke's), except that the result seems to be not consent theory at all, but a quite different theory. This is almost conceded at the end of the first part of the article, where Professor Pitkin suggests that “in one sense this ‘nature of government’ theory is thus a substitute for the doctrine of consent.” (“Obligation and Consent,” 999, my italics).

³³ Cases of conflict between two laws, or between two levels of legal jursidiction, might be construed as a partial exception to this.

³⁴ Ake, Claude, “Political Obligation and Political Dissent,” this Journal, II, no. 2 (June 1969), 247–8.Google Scholar

³⁵ See the whole of The Concept of Law, but especially chapter 9.

³⁶ Kelsen, General Theory, 406–11 and passim; Weldon, T.D., The Vocabulary of Politics (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1960), 57Google Scholar and passim.

³⁷ For a sobering account of the propensities of ordinary citizens to obey orders unthoughtfully, see Milgram, Stanley, “Some Conditions of Obedience and Disobedience to Authority,” Human Relations, 18, no. 1 (February, 1965CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

³⁸ For further on this see McPherson, Political Obligation, 25–6 and 50.

³⁹ I note that while McPherson agrees with me about the complexities of political obligation, he does not agree that moral considerations are to be given any privileged position. See ibid. 52–4, but also 74ff.

⁴⁰ Wolff, “On Violence,” 607.

⁴¹ Ibid., 608.

⁴² Ibid., 604ff.

⁴³ Ibid., 607.

⁴⁴ For more on this see McPherson, Political Obligation, 21ff, and Pocklington, “Protest, Resistance, and Political Obligation,” 8, 15.

⁴⁵ “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” Forster, E.M., Two Cheers for Democracy (London, 1951), 78.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ For a provocative discussion of these propositions, see Thoreau, H.D., “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” Walden and On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (New York, 1961Google Scholar).

⁴⁷ The Human Condition (Garden City, N.Y., 1959); and On Revolution (New York, 1965).