Why Obey?

Eight steps into the first question of politics: by what right does anyone rule, and why should you obey?

A course on the thought of Political Philosophy.

What you will learn

  • State the two questions of political philosophy — who gets what, and says who? — and tell the normative from the descriptive.
  • Extract the three theses from Lorenzetti's fresco: government shapes lives; the form of government is chosen, not fated; good and bad government can be known.
  • See why agnosticism is self-defeating here: to say or do nothing is to endorse the present arrangement.
  • Reconstruct the argument to war: restless desire + equality + scarcity + uncertainty → gain, safety, glory.
  • State what 'war' means (readiness to fight, not constant fighting) and correct the 'Hobbes thought us wicked' misreading — the driver is fear and the impossibility of trust.
  • Run the prisoner's dilemma: why the laws of nature bind in conscience but are suicidal to follow alone, and how a sovereign changes the game.
  • Distinguish Locke's state of nature from Hobbes's on the same three labels: freedom, equality, law of nature — verbally alike, substantively opposed.
  • State the 'strange doctrine': why EVERYONE in the state of nature holds the executive power of the law of nature, and what work the foreigner argument does.

Course outline

  1. The View from Siena — What political philosophy is and why its question cannot be dodged: two painted cities, three theses, and the discovery that to say nothing about government is already to take a side.
  2. The War of All Against All — Hobbes's full machinery: from matter in motion to restless desire, from equality, scarcity, and uncertainty to the three causes of quarrel, to the war of every man against every man — and the…
  3. The Strange Doctrine of Punishment — Locke's answer: a state of nature under moral law, where everyone holds the right to punish — and why even this politer condition decays, once money is invented, into a place no one can bear.
  4. The Noble Savage and the Rich Man's Trick — Rousseau's deeper objection: Hobbes and Locke described civilized man and called him natural. The solitary savage, pity as the second drive, the long fall into society — and the fraudulent contract…
  5. No Masters! — The Anarchist's Day in Court — The case against the state itself, in both flavors — communitarian and market anarchism — pushed honestly to its dilemma: restrain the troublemaker and you have rebuilt the state; refuse, and you…
  6. The Contract Nobody Signed — The consent cascade and its wreck: what justifying the state must show; then the original contract, express consent, the vote, tacit consent, and hypothetical consent — each version examined and each…
  7. The Happiness Machine and the Scapegoat — The utilitarian justification — the state weighed against the state of nature in the scales of happiness — defended at its strongest, then broken open by the scapegoat: a real courtroom, a real…
  8. Fair Play, Free Riders, and the Verdict — The best surviving argument — fairness: those who benefit owe their share — tested against Nozick's day-138 counterexample; then the radical critiques of the whole contract tradition (Pateman, Mills…

Works read in this course

  • Leviathan — Hobbes's 1651 masterwork: the natural condition, the laws of nature, and the covenant that erects the sovereign
  • Two Treatises of Government — Locke's reply (1689): a moralized state of nature, the strange doctrine of punishment, consent and its limits
  • Discourse on the Origin of Inequality — Rousseau's 1755 conjectural history: natural pity, the fall into society, and the rich man's fraudulent contract
  • Of the Original Contract — Hume's 1748 essay: the refutation of tacit consent — the poor peasant and the ship
  • The Ego and Its Own — Stirner's 1844 refusal of every authority set above the individual — the anarchist seat at the table
  • Bentham, A Fragment on Government; Mill, Utilitarianism — the utilitarian justification of obedience, defended and broken open
  • Plato, Republic II (Glaucon) — the oldest contract picture — justice as a compact of the mutually vulnerable

Terms introduced

state of nature, felicity, right of nature, laws of nature, in foro interno, prisoner's dilemma, sovereign, executive power of the law of nature, perfectibility, political obligation, voluntarism, tacit consent, hypothetical consent, philosophical anarchism, principle of utility, indirect utilitarianism

Part of the Simposeum course library.