A Study of the Principles of Politics: Being an Essay Towards Political Rationalization 0367219611, 9780367219611

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ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: POLITICAL THOUGHT AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

Volume 21

POLITICAL OBLIGATION

POLITICAL OBLIGATION

RICHARD E. FLATHMAN

I~~~o~:~!n~~~up LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published in Great Britain in 1973 This edition first published in 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1972 Richard E. Flathman All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN:

978-0-367-21961-1 978-0-429-35434-2 978-0-367-36934-7 978-0-429-35198-3

(Set) (Set) (ebk) (Volume 21) (hbk) (Volume 21) (ebk)

Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

POLITICAL OBLIGATION Richard E. Flathman

HELM LONDON CROOM

FIRST PUBLISHED IN GREAT BRITAIN I 973 COPYRIGHT© I972 BY RICHARD E. FLATMAN

CROOM HELM LTD ST JOHNS ROAD LONDON SWII

Q.•IO All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be re· produced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY LOWE & BRYDONE (PRINTERSJ LTD., THETFORD BOUND BY G. & J· KITCAT LTD,, LONDON

FOR

Nancy, Kristen, Karen, and Jennifer

Acknowledgments

A

of writing this book on obligation is that I have acquired and can now discharge the obligations to express my gratitude to the many persons and organizations who have assisted me. The generosity of the American Philosophical Society and the Committees on Research of the Division of Social Science and of The College of the University of Chicago helped me meet incidental costs connected with the study and made possible a year of study and reflection in England. Coming at the formative stages of the project, that year was valuable not only for the freedom from other duties which it provided but because it made possible conversations concerning obligation and related problems with, among others, Brian Barry, W. H. Greenleaf, H. L.A. Hart, and above all, J.C. Rees. Throughout the development of the study, colleagues and students at the University of Chicago sustained what must be a uniquely supportive and stimulating intellectual environment. My work has undoubtedly benefited from that environment in many ways that I never recognized or have forgotten, but I must at least thank Leonard Binder, Gerhard N AGREEABLE RESULT

...

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Casper, Harry Kalven, E. W. Kelley, Theodore Lowi, Nancy Hartsock, James Nyman, Frederick Siegler, Herbert Storing, and Aristide Zolberg for their interest and for the ideas and criticisms they contributed. I am particularly indebted to J. David Greenstone and Duncan MacRae, Jr., for many stimulating discussions and for their efforts to improve a long, opaque, and badly organized manuscript. In their role as editors of the Nomos Series, John C. Chapman and J. Roland Pennock did much to improve a paper on obligations and ideals, and, along with Atherton Press, kindly granted permission to reprint it as Chapter Two of the present book. Michael Walzer read the manuscript for Atheneum Publishers and helped me to clarify my thinking concerning the relationship between consent theories of political obligation and the argument that I try to develop in the following pages. I am also grateful for the searching criticisms provided by anonymous readers of the manuscript, and to Marcella Bryant for her superb work in preparing the manuscript. My wife Nancy provided not only helpful criticisms of the manuscript at several stages of its development but also the support and encouragement which did much to make writing it a considerable pleasure. I have quoted short passages from a number of works, and thanks are due to the following persons and publishers for granting permission to do so: The American Political Science Review for permission to quote passages from Hanna Pitkin, "Obligation and Consent-II," Vol 60, pp. 39-52 ( i966). Basil Blackwell for permission to quote a short passage from Elizabeth Anscombe, Intention. Cornell University Press for permission to quote a short passage from Kurt Baier, The Moral Point of View. Routledge and Kegan Paul and Humanities Press for permission to quote a short passage from Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science. Macmillan Company, London and Basingstoke, The Macmillan Company of Canada, and St. Martin's Press, Inc., for permission to quote passages from Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investiga-

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

tions and from Friedrich Waismann, The Principles of Linguistic Philosophy. Methuen & Co. for permission to quote from P. F. Strawson, Introduction to Logical Theory. The Clarendon Press, Oxford, for permission to quote passages from H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law and a passage from R. M. Hare, Freedom and Reason. Oxford University Press of New York for permission to quote a passage from Joseph Tussman, Obligation and the Body Politic and short passages from the paperback edition of Alexander Sesonske, Value and Obligation. Full references to the quoted passages are provided in the appropriate footnotes. Portland, Oregon July 20, 1970

Contents

INTRODUCTION l.

2.

xiii

THESTUDYOFLANGUAGEANDTHESTUDY OF POLITICS 3 I. Language and Meaning 4 n. Use versus Analysis of Language 6 III. Language and Convention 11 IV. Language and Social and Political Practice 13 v. Language and Social Science 17 VI. Some Limitations on Social Science 21 VII. Some Opportunities for Social Science .28 VIII. Concluding Remarks 31 OBLIGATION AND IDEALS I. Obligations and Ideals II. Political and Other Obligations Ill. Political Obligation and the Contagious Effects of Disobedience IV. The Contagicius Effects of Disobedience and Reflecton and Choice v. Concluding Remarks

3· OBLIGATION AND RULES I.

Characteristics of Rules

34 36 42

50 58 63 66

69

:xii

CONTENTS

n. Types of Rules m. Rules and Reasons IV.

Concluding Remarks

77 81 111

4· THE SOCIAL BASES OF OBLIGATION RULES I. Language and Individual Action II. Social Rules and Individual Action m. Hare's Account of Rule Formation IV. Social Rules and Social Change v. Concluding Remarks

117 121 122 127 132 135

5· OBLIGATION, STABILITY, AND CHANGE: PRAISE, BLAME, AND DISINCLINATION I. " 'Obligation' Implies Blame, not Praise" II. Obligation and Disinclination m. Obligation, Stasis, and Stability

142 143 156 167

6. OBLIGATION, POLITICAL FREEDOM, AND COERCION I. Accepted Obligation Rules and Freedom of Political Action rr. Obligation Rules, Political Freedom, and the Use of Sanctions m. Rejected Rules, Political Freedom, and Coercion IV. Obligation, Freedom, and Reason 7· OBLIGATION, CONSENT, AND UTILITY I. The Alleged Monism of Utilitarianism II. Utilitarianism and Rules m. Antecedent Assent and Utility IV. Concluding Remarks 8. THE UTILITY OF OBLIGATION I. Political Obligation and Social Utility: Socrates' Argument in the Crito n. Political Obligation and Personal Interest: the Argument of Hobbes nr. Summary and Concluding Remarks BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

170 172 179 186 194 199 201 203 205 241 245 250

297 315 324 331

Introduction

U

are obedience and disobedience required or justified? To what or to whom is obedience or disobedience owed? What are the differences between authority and power and between legitimate and illegitimate government? What is the relationship between having an obligation and having freedom to act? What are the similarities and differences among political, legal, and moral obligations? The foregoing are among the questions that arise under the rubric of political obligation. Their importance, both from the standpoint of the practical concerns of the citizen and the theoretical concerns of the political philosopher, requires no demonstration. These questions have been discussed by most of the great political philosophers of the western tradition. Much can be gained by examining their discussions and we will do so at various junctures in this work. But the concern of the great political philosophers with these questions, and the answers they gave to them, although no doubt heavily influenced by the discussions of thinkers who preceded them, were rooted in features of the political societies in which they lived and NDER WHAT CONDITIONS

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INTRODUCTION

of which they knew. Aristotle, Hobbes, and Hegel learned much about authority, law, and obedience from Socrates and Plato, but neither they nor Socrates and Plato learned of authority, law, and obedience from political philosophers. They believed that their theories ·were rooted in knowledge and understanding of the institutions, arrangements, and patterns of belief and action that obtained in various forms in the political societies with which they were familiar. If the tradition of reflection concerning political obligation is to continue, and indeed if we are to know whether earlier reflections are relevant to understanding political obligation as we confront it in our political societies, we must acquire knowledge about and understanding of the arrangements and patterns of action that cpnstitute the phenomenon of political obligation in our societies. In this essay we hope to contribute to this end. One of our primary purposes is to identify and analyze the constellation of concepts, rules, institutions, and arrangements, and the beliefs, judgments, and conventions concerning them, in which and through which political obligations are assigned, explained, discussed, accepted or rejected, and discharged or defaulted upon. We will label this constellation "the practice of political obligation," and we will try to prepare the way to answering the questions listed above by identifying its main features and its relationships to other social and political arrangements, institutions, and practices.1 1. Owing primarily to the work of John Rawls, the term "practice" has great currency in contemporary philosophy. Rawls uses it as "a sort of technical term meaning any form of activity specified by a system of rules which defines offices, roles, moves, penalties, defences, and so on, and which gives the activity its structure. As examples one may think of games and rituals, trials, and parliaments" ("Two Concepts of Rules," Philosophical Review, Vol. 64 [1955): 2 n.) As we are using the term, "practice of political obligation" includes these elements. Parliaments and trials are among the institutions that are part of the practice, and the practice also includes the roles of citizen, judge, and legislator. Similarly, we will try to identify the "moves" that are appropriate and inappropriate in reaching and justifying decisions about political obligations. But our use of the term "practice" is broader than Rawls's at least in that our notion of the practice of political obligation includes several practices in his

INTRODUCTION

xv

In Chapter One we will discuss the approach we have em· ployed in exploring the practice, stating the assumptions on which it rests and examining some of the problems that arise in using it. Chapters Two to Seven explore various features and characteristics of the practice and attempt to resolve some of the theoretical problems that are posed by them. In Chapter Eight we attempt to assess the practice in more explicitly normative terms and to advance some criteria for deciding practical questions (such as whether to obey the law or not) that arise for participants in the practice. The purpose of this Introduction is to provide the reader with an overview of the essay by presenting a brief account of the main themes and arguments that are presented in the course of its development. A central theme of the work is that the practice of political obligation operates only if men choose or decide to do or refrain from doing certain actions because they believe that there are good reasons for accepting and obeying or rejecting and disobeying rules that require or forbid those actions. This theme or thesis is developed in large part through analysis of the key concepts in its formulation, especially the complex notions "a rule," "following a rule," and "guiding conduct by calling attention to a rule." 2 The fundamentals of the analy· sis of the latter notions is presented in Chapter Three, but the topic will be under discussion throughout the work. The significance of this thesis can be seen by putting it in sense of the term. It is probably also broader in that we will be concerned with beliefs, judgments, and commitments to a degree that Rawls is not in the article cited. (But see Rawls's paper "The Sense of Justice," Philosophical Review 72 [1963J: 281-305.) In the latter respect our use is probably closer to such ordinary-language expressions as "the practice of medicine" or the "practice of law." 2. Throughout this work we will employ the (American English) convention of marking references to or statements about the use of concepts, as opposed to uses of those concepts (statements in the formal as opposed to the material mode), by putting concepts referred to in double quo· tation marks. The major exception is where reference to the use of a concept occurs within a sentence or phrase that is in double quotation marks because it is a quotation or to set it apart as a statement of a rule or proposition that is under discussion. In such cases concepts referred to rather than used are placed between single quotation marks. B

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INTRODUCTION

a larger philosophical perspective and by noting some of the interpretations of political obligation with which it conflicts. The thesis that use of the concepts "decide/' "choose," "reason," and "rule" (and we could add "belief," "intention," "purpose," "deliberation," "reflection," and "judgment") is a defining feature of the practice as it now operates indicates that in investigating political obligation we are concerned with what men do as opposed to what happens to them or what they undergo or suffer; with actions they take intentionally, to achieve a goal or purpose, for reasons, not with movements they are observed to make as a consequence of the operation of forces over which they have no control. This thesis implies that we can understand the practice only if we concern ourselves with the types of beliefs, reasons, intentions, purposes, judgments, and choices, held, given, framed, and made by men participating in the practice. Stated negatively, our attempt to understand political obligation would be doomed to failure if we dismissed these features of human affairs as epiphenomenal, fictitious, or for some other reason inappropriate objects of social-scientific or philosophic attention. The generic term now most widely used for the realm of human affairs that will concern us is "action" or "human action." There is less consensus concerning how to label that from which human action is distinguished. The generic term we will employ is "behavior," stipulated to refer, roughly, to events and movements that are explainable in terms of the operation of causally sufficient forces, explainable in ways that render irrelevant such concepts as reason, intention, purpose, deliberation, and choice. Thus the thesis that the practice of political obligation involves rules, reasons, and choices is also the thesis that political obligation is in the realm of action, not of behavior.3 3. For useful collections of important recent discussions of this distinction see A. R. White, ed., The Philosophy of Action (London: Oxford University Press, i969); Norman S. Care and Charles Landesman, eds., Readings in the Theory of Action (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, i968); David Braybrooke, ed., Philosophical Problems of the Social Sciences (New York: The Macmillan Co., 2965).

INTRODUCTION

..

XVll

Stating our first themes in terms of the action-behavior distinction points to controversies in social science that will be relevant to our concerns. It is evident that our argument is in conflict with the position that action is fictitious or epiphenomenal, that all there is in human affairs is what we have called behavior. If this position, sometimes called "molecular" behaviorism, were couect, the present essay, and any essay treating political obligation as involving reasons, choices, intentions, and purposes, would necessarily be so superficial as to lack social scientific or philosophic interest. It might even be regarded as an essay about a fiction that "exists" only in a conceptual heaven.' At the most general level the issues raised by molecular behaviorism concern the relationships between language on the one hand and thought and action on the other. We will discuss some of these issues in Chapter One when we try to show that investigating the use of concepts (for example "obligation" and "rule") is a useful way to investigate the practice of political obligation. Moreover, throughout the work we will be concerned to show that leading features of the practice of political obligation, for example, rules, authority, obedience, and disobedience, must be understood in terms of concepts such as intention, reason, purpose, and decision, not in terms of responses to stimuli or drives and instincts-that is, in the concepts characteristic of human action, not of behavior. Much 4. The locus classicus of molecular or radical behaviorism in our time is perhaps the work of B. F. Skinner. See especially his Science and Human Behavior (New York: The Macmillan Co., i953). For a brief but helpful account of molecular behaviorism (as distinct from the "molar" version) see Landesman and Care, op. cit., especially the Intro· duction and the selection from E. C. Tolman. For extended critical discussions of the many variants of broadly behaviorist positions in social science see for example: R. S. Peters, The Concept of Motivation (Lon· don: Routledge and Kegan Paul, i964); Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958); Nonnan Malcolm, Dreaming (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959); A. R, Louch, Explanation and Human Action (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966); Charles Taylor, The Explanation of Behaviour (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964); T. R. Mischel, ed., Human Ac-Eion (New York: Academic Press, i969) •

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INTRODUCTION

of this discussion will be concerned with difficult-to-classify notions such as habit, trained behavior, and acts done out of fear of punishment or other undesirable consequences. But we have no desire to deny the existence or importance of what we called behavior. Indeed we will find that regularities in behavior which meet the requirements of rules of obligation (for example behavior that accords with the requirements of law) coexist with and contribute to some of the same objectives as does action taken out of acceptance of rules of obligation and done with the intention of discharging an obligation. Similarly, social and political institutions and arrangements which are intended to bring about such behavioral regularities (for example processes of coercion and habituation) coexist with and sometimes contribute to the same objectives as do such features of the practice of political obligation as authority, law, and arrangements intended to encourage and facilitate reasoned assessment of rules of obligation. Thus our concern will not be to deny the importance of behavior but to trace relationships among certain salient behavioral regularities and the patterns of action that make up the practice of political obligation. Stating the matter as we have just done, however, is enough to indicate that the position we will develop conflicts with views concerning political obligation that go back to the earliest discussions of the topic and continue to have many adherents today. Many thinkers who never doubted the reality or importance of what we are calling human action have argued that political obligation is, or should be, in the realm that we have called behavior, not the realm of action. The basic thought behind the many variations on this theme seems to be as follows. Any observer of politics will be struck by its complexity and dynamism, and with the difficulty of predicting its course of development. If the flux and variation characteristic of day-to-day politics do not degenerate into chaos and disorder, this must be because they take place within, are undergirded by, a more uniform, stable, and pre-

INTRODUCTION

XlX

dictab1e framework or foundation. If the flux, variation, and unpredictability of politics trace to the fact that human beings reason, frame intentions, and make choices, such stability and predictability as there is must trace to something else; it must be based upon some set of processes more likely to result in order and uniformity. If reasoning, framing intentions, and making choices arc defining features of human action, and if their absence is the defining characteristic of behavior, then such stability and uniformity as there is must be the product of processes in the realm of behavior. In any stable society, the human action characteristic of day-to-day politics must be built upon and limited by behavioral regularities. If political obligation provides the framework or foundation, or part of it, within which day-to-day political interaction takes place or on which it is built, then political obligation must be in the realm of behavior,!1 With the view that a successful politics requires a comparatively stable base we have no quarrel. Nor will we try to disprove (though we will raise some doubts about jt) the contention that this base must be built in part if not entirely out of behavioral regularities, not out of the ingredients of human action. Finally, we do not wish to dispute the position that the practice of political obligation forms a part of or contributes to that comparatively settled base on which much of the rest of political interaction takes place. Our quarrel, rather, is with the inference that the practice of political obligation can perform this service only if, or to the extent that, it consists of behavior, not action; that it has in fact performed this service only where, or to the extent that, it has consisted of behavior, not action. Our quarrel is with interpretations of political obligation that place it in the realm of behavior or 5. For a succinct recent statement of this general line of thought see Sidney Verba, "Comparative Political Culture," Political Culture and Political Development, eds. Lucian W. Pye and Sidney Verba (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1965), pp. 544-50 and passim. For a more developed formulation see Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1965).

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INTRODUCTION

argue that it would be better if it were in that realm. There is a considerable variety of such interpretations, and noting some of the more important of them at the outset will provide a contrasting background against which the view that we will develop here will stand out more clearly. In the Republic Plato's search for a stable basis for politics led him to the question of how to obtain regular obedience from what he thought to be the inconstant and unreliable mass of the population. Although he held out the hope that the latter might be brought to appreciate, on something ap-proaching reasoned grounds, the superior wisdom and hence authority of the philosopher-kings, his choice of methods fell on the formulation and inculation of a great myth (the myth of the metals). Acceptance of this myth and the authority structure said to be consonant with it would relieve the lower strata of the populace, the "brass," of the need to think about the merits and demerits of the Jaws and commands issued by the philosopher-kings. It would also relieve them of the need to think about whether to obey those laws and commands. Obedience would become, if not simply a matter of a uniform and entirely predictable response to a stimulus, at least habitual and unreflective. The philosopher-kings, in tum, could count on obedience and hence on internal stability; they would be relieved of the need to explain, justify, and win acceptance of their decisions and could concentrate on the task of reflecting, judging, and choosing so as to direct the republic to its proper goal. Here then is an exceptionally clear case of the argument that, at least in politics, the realm of action must be built upon a regular and dependable base supplied by behavior. If we could think of the obedience of the brass as obligatory, here would be an exceptionally clear case of an interpretation of political obligation as properly excluding reason, judgment, and choice from the activities of the bulk of the participants in the practice.11 6. See the Republic, esp. 388-