Political Obligation

Recent justification of political actions by #45 as promise-keeping make me want to learn more about the role of promise-keeping in politics, so I am digging in to

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/political-obligation/

Here are some opening lines:

To have a political obligation is to have a moral duty to obey the laws of one's country or state. On that point there is almost complete agreement among political philosophers. But how does one acquire such an obligation, and how many people have really done what is necessary to acquire it? Or is political obligation more a matter of being than of doing — that is, of simply being a member of the country or state in question? To those questions many answers have been given, and none now commands widespread assent. Indeed, a number of contemporary political philosophers deny that a satisfactory theory of political obligation either has been or can be devised. Others, however, continue to believe that there is a solution to what is commonly called “the problem of political obligation,” and they are presently engaged in lively debate not only with the skeptics but also with one another on the question of which theory, if any, provides the solution to the problem.

Whether political obligation is the central or fundamental problem of political philosophy, as some have maintained (e.g., McPherson), may well be doubted. There is no doubt, however, that the history of political thought is replete with attempts to provide a satisfactory account of political obligation, from the time of Socrates to the present. These attempts have become increasingly sophisticated in recent years, but they have brought us no closer to agreement on a solution to the problem of political obligation than the efforts of, say, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke in the seventeenth century. Nor have these sophisticated attempts made it unnecessary to look back to earlier efforts to resolve the problem. On the contrary, an appreciation of the troublesome nature of political obligation seems to require some attention to its place in the history of political thought.

@js357 said
Recent justification of political actions by #45 as promise-keeping make me want to learn more about the role of promise-keeping in politics, so I am digging in to

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/political-obligation/

Here are some opening lines:

To have a political obligation is to have a moral duty to obey the laws of one's country or state. On that point there is ...[text shortened]... litical obligation seems to require some attention to its place in the history of political thought.

@js357 said
Recent justification of political actions by #45 as promise-keeping make me want to learn more about the role of promise-keeping in politics, so I am digging in to

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/political-obligation/

Here are some opening lines:

To have a political obligation is to have a moral duty to obey the laws of one's country or state. On that point there is ...[text shortened]... litical obligation seems to require some attention to its place in the history of political thought.

@whodey said
Morality?

In politics?

Mwhahahahaha!

No matter how much you are lied to, you will vote "D" and like it.

@JS357

The difficulty is that I think a different thing is meant by political promise keeping than the Plato site's article you've cited (although it looks interesting so thanks for bringing it to my attention). By political obligation I think they mean things like paying taxes and doing jury service when called upon. Political promise keeping seems to me to mean the duty of elected officials to keep the promises made during their campaign, or at least make a fair effort. So you need a different article.

@suzianne said
I do not believe that "political obligation" is the same thing as "promise-keeping". One seems a moral obligation while the other is just opportune back-room deal-making, or even just an excuse for horrible behavior wrapped up in the classic "people's mandate" where one pre-supposes that your constituents want you to do something, "otherwise they wouldn't have voted for me. "

@deepthought said
@JS357

The difficulty is that I think a different thing is meant by political promise keeping than the Plato site's article you've cited (although it looks interesting so thanks for bringing it to my attention). By political obligation I think they mean things like paying taxes and doing jury service when called upon. Political promise keeping seems to me to mean the ...[text shortened]... he promises made during their campaign, or at least make a fair effort. So you need a different art

@JS357

But the duties entailed by citizenship are obligatory, one cannot opt out - emigration merely exchanges one set of obligations for another, and abandoning civilization is not a viable option. The duties entailed by political office are voluntary, since one chooses to run for office.

The question the article is examining is why obligations should exist for someone who hasn't signed up for them.

@js357 said
Recent justification of political actions by #45 as promise-keeping make me want to learn more about the role of promise-keeping in politics, so I am digging in to

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/political-obligation/

Here are some opening lines:

To have a political obligation is to have a moral duty to obey the laws of one's country or state. On that point there is ...[text shortened]... litical obligation seems to require some attention to its place in the history of political thought.

@shavixmir said
Keeping promises seems, to me, completely unrelated to obeying the laws of the land.

The latter would mean you can’t stand on a law

@deepthought said
Edit: For some reason the excerpt from your post I'm responding to is being over deleted. The sentence I take issue with is:

The latter would mean that you can't stand on a law changing platform.

It's not necessary to disobey the law to change it.

@mghrn55 said
You mean "R", don't you ?

An example would be the right of women to vote. If you go to vote as a women when it is unlawful to do so, you would just be rejected so there isn't much way to break that law. If you persisted with non-violent protests you might be arrested but under a different law, or violent protests and yet another law covers that but none of that has anything to do directly with the fact a hundred years ago in the US women were not allowed to vote.