This chapter develops an original account of political ethics, which details not only what it means to belong to a political community but also the normative contribution that politics makes to the lives of private individuals. Advancing discrete conceptions of authenticity and reasonableness, it discusses two fundamentally political duties that we owe to those who share our communities with us: duties that partly define our membership within those groups and inform the ethical value of politics as a discrete form of human activity. It also describes two ways in which politics enhances our ethical lives in instrumental terms, articulating a conception of political action that foregrounds its objective value. This argument forms the normative core of 'statehood as political community', the conception of state creation advanced within the first part of the overall text.

Chapter 4 provides an alternative argument for rejecting private property. While Chapter 3 derives this conclusion from the Lockean proviso, this chapter begins with the consent theory of legitimacy as its starting premise. It then argues that property ownership is a form of legitimate authority. Thus, if one accepts a consent theory of legitimacy, one must also maintain that ownership has consent as its necessary condition. However, given that no one has ever consented to such ownership, it follows that no one owns any natural resources. The chapter then considers three objections to this argument, namely, that (1) there is nothing problematic about imposing obligations on others, (2) legitimacy only requires consent when it conflicts with previously acquired property rights, and (3) there is a morally salient distinction between land and territory. It concludes with a discussion of what this argument from consent theory implies vis-à-vis self-ownership.

Chapter 1 introduces the five moral principles that compose the social anarchist position. Specifically, it defines social anarchism as the conjunction of five theses: (1) the consent theory of legitimacy, which holds that persons are obligated to obey the laws of the state only if they have consented to do so; (2) the Lockean proviso, which holds that persons can acquire property rights over some natural resource iff they leave “enough and as good” for others; (3) the self-ownership thesis, which asserts that each person has the same rights over her body that she would have over a fully owned thing; (4) the contention that persons do not have private property rights over any external natural resources; and (5) an endorsement of luck egalitarianism as the moral principle regulating the permissible use of unowned external objects. It also adjusts these principles in various ways to render them more plausible.

This chapter discusses the initiation of the euro’s transformation and the shift from negative to positive solidarity, in the form of financial assistance, that it caused. Its origin lies in a historical meeting of the heads of state or government on 11 February 2010. There, the leaders initiated a change in the Founding Contract by jointly committing themselves to safeguard the currency union’s financial stability. The chapter subsequently focuses on the positive solidarity displayed towards distressed member states through various temporary rescue funds. This not only created difficulties for political leaders back home, politically and legally, it also put great strain on the single currency’s legal set-up that still reflected a stability conception from the past. The third part of the chapter therefore discusses how member states tried to take away this strain by incorporating the shift in solidarity in Union law through the creation of Article 136(3) TFEU, allowing member states in the currency union to establish a permanent rescue mechanism. The chapter traces the process and considerations behind both this amendment and the establishment of the mechanism it enabled.

This chapter conceptualises solidarity between the member states on the basis of two spectrums. The first deals with the reasons for acting in the interest of the collective. Its poles are taken up by normative and factual solidarity. Normative solidarity occurs when states display solidarity due to a political obligation. The chapter explains that such political obligations are grounded in joint commitments, how these commitments turn their participants into a unity, and that they may not only exist between individuals, but also between states. Factual solidarity occurs when a state acts in the interest of the whole because it serves its own interest. Two situations are singled out: interdependence and common destiny. The second spectrum is subsidiary in nature and relates to the kind of solidary behaviour displayed. Its poles are negative and positive solidarity. Negative solidarity occurs when the acts displayed by a state in support of the whole relate to itself. Positive solidarity occurs when a state acts in the interest of the collective by directly benefitting another state. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the relation between joint commitments and Union law.

If a just and well-ordered political community is integral to the good for an individual, then it would seem incumbent on the architectonic legislator and prudent statesperson to aim at the optimal condition of the polis and hence to reform defective regimes and laws. The normative structure of Aristotle’s constitutional theory – with its conception of the best regime as an ideal and appeal to the common advantage as a central criterion for distinguishing correct and defective constitutions – likewise suggests a progressive stance towards correction of political injustice. The overall attitude towards the reform of constitutions and laws which emerges from the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics is nonetheless cautious and conservative. In the current chapter I consider the motivations for this circumspection and argue that it reflects both the importance of habituation to the effective functioning of law and a recognition of the limits of law’s capacity to promote virtue and human flourishing. Section 1 engages in a close reading of Aristotle’s treatment of the advantages and disadvantages of legal reform in the Politics Book II.8 discussion of Hippodamus’ legislative proposal to honour innovation. In section 2, I examine Aristotle’s account of constitutional change and stability in light of his theory of ethical virtue. Finally, in section 3, I turn to political obedience and argue for its dual justification within Aristotle’s practical thought.

There are three distinct moments in the trajectory of natural right in On the Citizen. The first occurs when Hobbes makes the argument for the right of nature and then claims that it amounts to the “right to all things” in the state of nature. The second moment happens when Hobbes offers an account of how this expansive right is given up and an argument for why a person cannot be obligated by an agreement not to resist death. The third moment comes in where Hobbes takes up the question of the scope and limits of political obligation. In this last instance he extends the account of when people can disobey the sovereign to include disobedience to dishonorable commands, in particular a command to kill a parent, which a person need not obey. Over the course of On the Citizen, then, natural right expands, contracts, and expands again. This chapter demonstrates that this fluctuation in Hobbes’s articulation of natural right sets the stage for a particularly curious thought experiment that he offers in the guise of a parricide example. I argue that this thought experiment underscores a tension that remains unresolved in On the Citizen.