In Huemer’s The Problem Of Political Authority an argument is made against the idea of a political authority. The idea in this argument is that the government has certain rights that do not pertain to the citizens as well. The purpose of this paper is to show that Huemer’s argument fails by arguing a consent-based response to Huemer’s criticisms, which shows that the government does not actually violate a “social contract” made with society. The idea behind this is that we have actually consented to the government’s authority in several ways without being explicit.
1. Huemer’s Argument
Huemer’s argument is shown through the following parable. Veronica lives in a town with a lot of crime and she decides to put a stop to it. She decides to go around and capture criminals and lock them up in her basement. She provides food and everything they need. After doing this for a while she goes around and tells her neighbors they owe her $100 for what she has been doing. She also says that if they do not pay her she will label them a criminal and lock them up in her basement. As can be expected none of her neighbors would feel obligated to give her the money because what she is doing is illegal and a little crazy since she is kidnapping and attempting extortion. Based off of this parable here is his argument: It is immoral for Veronica to go around kidnapping people and then extorting her neighbors. There is no morally significant difference between Veronica’s actions and how the government acts by going around imprisoning criminals and taxing the citizens. Therefore the government should not have the authority to act in the way they do.
There are a couple of things that someone could immediately say to reject this argument. One could ...
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... from consent.
3. Rebuttal Against The Consent Argument
The rebuttal to the argument of consent is that something that is tacitly consented is invalid under certain conditions. For the purpose of this paper I will look at the one that is directly arguing against consent through receiving benefits. This argument is known as the absence of mutual obligation and is as follows: “A contract imposes mutual obligations on the parties, with each parties obligation conditional on the other party’s acceptance of its obligation” (). The idea behind this argument is that the citizens have entered a “social contract” with the government where they agree to abide by the laws that are in place and if they do not abide by them they are subjected to punishment. In return for this the state is supposed to protect the citizens from harm that could be caused to them by criminals.
The first justification for the use of immorality is that it is only practiced upon a small number of residents. Machiavelli summarizes that it is better for a ruler to be immoral to a few of his subjects and prevent disorder from spreading because disorder will damage the community as a whole more than it will damage a few individuals in isolated acts of immorality. The priority of the leader is to maintain order and act to prevent disorder because, “the whole community suffers if there are riots, while to maintain order the ruler only has to execute one or two individuals� (51). Citizens of a community would much rather live in a peaceful and orderly world which exemplifies how a ruler is actually a slave to the people. It...
To overcome the gap between norms and facts, Habermas appeals to the medium of law, which gives legitimacy to the political order and provides the system with its binding force. Legitimate law-making itself is generated through a procedure of public opinion and will-formation that produces communicative power. In its turn, communicative power influences the process of social institutionalization.
Therefore, legislation as deliberate law-making and the voice of the state of the sovereign body calls the common good of the life of man to the forefront of this question, both when democracy rules but primarily when totalitarian despots reign. The politicization of bare life as such legitimates the power of the sovereign state. But as repetitive instances of state-sponsored genocide have shown multiple times throughout the 20th century, state power can and does abuse the life of the citizen, whose life is paradoxically the force of the nation-state itself. It is through this e...
Once the Social Contract is agreed to, an absolute power is given to the body politic and, “...it is the same power w...
Each day, billions of people throughout the world affirm their commitment to a specific idea; to be part of a society. While this social contract is often overlooked by most citizens, their agreement to it nevertheless has far-reaching consequences. Being a member of society entails relinquishing self-autonomy to a higher authority, whose aim should be to promote the overall good of the populace. While making this decision to become part of a commonwealth is usually performed without explicit deliberation, there is a common consensus amongst philosophers that something unique to the human experience is the driving force behind this decision. Contained within this something are highly contested points of debate amongst both past and contemporary political philosophers. Two such philosophers are Thomas Hobbes and Thomas Aquinas. Each of these political writers provide detailed arguments regarding the concept of natural law, the role that reason plays in this law, whether some laws are considered truly rational, and why some people choose not to follow certain principles even when they recognize them to be rational. By analyzing each of these arguments, we will arrive at the conclusion that even though the rational principles that reason provides us can easily be disregarded by the populace, that we can still find a common good within promulgating rational doctrine.
Neoconservatism is a variant of the conservative ideology which holds positions that fall between traditional and individualistic conservatism (Ball and Dagger, 2011b, p. 113). Many of the ideas and beliefs that neoconservatives hold, which continue to evolve today, were developed in the 1970s by “disillusioned liberal intellectuals” as a result of the tumultuous societal conditions that were occurring in the United States at the time (Ball and Dagger, 2011a, p. 170). To elaborate more fully, author Irving Kristol, the man known as the godfather of neoconservatives, says, “Many neoconservatives can be described as disenchanted welfare liberals. Once enthusiastic supporters of President Lyndon Johnson’s ‘Grand Society’ programs in the 1960s, these neoconservatives became disillusioned with these programs and with the general direction of welfare liberalism” (Ball and Dagger, 2011b, p. 113). Besides Irving Kristol, some of the other well known individuals who have helped contribute to the development and direction of neoconservatism over the past few decades include Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Norman Podhoretz, UN Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Nathan Glazer, and Dick and Lynne Cheney (Ball and Dagger, 2011b, p. 113). While I personally do not adhere to this ideology, and there are many features I completely disagree with, I will nevertheless stake an affirmative argument for neoconservatism and write as if I am an actual supporter. This is beneficial as it will allow me to empathize with others and put myself in the position of those with whom I disagree. What follows is an argument for a few of the merits of neoconservatism concerning its stance on economic and foreign policy issues.
The idea that consent is essential for the legitimacy of political authority can be argued against in many ways. Traditionally, the argument that God gave government authority was valid and in accepting religion we accept this as well. If you rebel against this order, you rebel against God. It was reason enough for most people to stop questioning such authority. In the last few centuries, however, the idea of personal freedom and independence has shifted mainstream thinking to being skeptical of the religious premise of government. Just because you believe in God doesn’t mean that you believe he gives government authority over you. The rising political awareness in our societies is causing many people to wonder how much power our government should really have over us. Even if the argument of political authority by God still cannot be argued against, then what about those who do not believe in God? Are they expected to follow governmental authority just as everyone else when they do not believe a god gave authority to government? How does on reconcile that they do and still try to argue that everyone has consented in this way?
Are we morally obliged to obey even unjust laws? Think about what this means. This means that laws, regardless of how unfair, unjust, or immoral they may be, must be followed with no better reason that they are the law. To the thesis that we are obliged to obey even unjust laws, I will argue that the standard objections to Civil Disobedience, given by Singer, are incorrect
These features have in a larger way eroded advancements in western civilization. The ideals of individualism, personal interest at the expense of political engagement and reason have been particularly affected. He makes comment on moral energy leading to the rise of what we currently view as modernity. Jean’s “Democracy on trial” on the other hand tries to address the issue of regulation and the political economy. The writer comes to the conclusion that governments do not simply make regulations out of nowhere. There are motivations for such actions (Taylor,
Raven, Bertram, and John French. Jr. "Legitimate Power, Coercive Power, and Observability in Social Influence ." Sociometry Vol. 21.No. 2 (1958): 83. Web. 2 Aug 2010. .
In “The Conflict of Autonomy and Authority” Robert Paul Wolff argues that the state’s authority is in conflict with having genuine autonomy. He reasons as follows. If there were a supreme political authority, which have a right to rule, there would be an obligation for a man to obey its laws. However, a man has an obligation to be autonomous, which means taking responsibility for making one’s own decisions about what one should do. Autonomous man has primary obligation to refuse to be ruled. Therefore, a supreme political authority does not have a right to claim authority over a man who has a moral obligation to be autonomous. He concludes by denying the concept of de jure legitimate state.
is a refusal to be ruled, and authority of the state is the right to rule, there
As Dworkin introduces his idea of political integrity, he begins by introducing his conception of three political ideals: fairness, justice, and procedural due process. According to his claims, a utopian society would only need these ideals to thrive because officials consistently doing what was perfectly just and fair would guarantee coherence. In our system of ordinary politics, Dworkin feels that integrity need be accepted as a fourth political ideal, if we accept it at all. In his definition of political integrity, Dworkin claims that it ought to be used to treat like cases alike, provide equality under the law, be parallel to personal integrity, and demand that the state act on a single set of consistent principles. In layman’s terms, the characterization of political integrity implies total equality under the law by all laws being justified by the same principles. Still though, he finds it important to make the assertion that it may well be the case that some “breaches” of integrity are, all things considered, better than the alternatives. Dworkin claims that we have two separate principles regarding political integrity. These principles, legislative and adjudication, try to make laws morally coherent, and allow them to be seen in such a manner. Also, when speaking of political integrity, he makes two important background assumptions. These background assumptions are that we all, as a society, believe in political fairness and that we know that different people hold different view about moral issues that they all treat as of great importance. From these assumptions and principles, Dworkin presents an interesting view of political compromise in the form of checkerboard laws.
Consent is defined as “an act of permitting something to be done or of recognizing some authority” (Britannica, n.d.). Almost all political theorists share this definition of consent, however the boundaries surrounding this definition leave us asking many questions: how do we consent, to whom do we consent and when do we consent? Most importantly, did we consent at all? When we go back to the fundamentals of defining how, when, and if we gave consent, it is to be derived that we never consented. The following will define the boundaries of consent, give a summary of the various philosophical arguments given for political obligation, and disseminate these arguments.
The author states his thesis as “the central, or most fundamental, question of political philosophy is the question of political obligation”. The question of political obligation has always been the center of discussion. Why would anyone consent to be governed by the state? This question has been supported with the centrality thesis. This question can not be ignored since it has to do with the everyday lives of human beings. However, modern political philosophers have not dealt with supporting arguments towards the thesis. They have also failed to provided a sound critique against it. With the help of other modern philosophers, the author gives himself great authority to aid the reader with his own arguments for the thesis.