The last modules were about science. The next modules are about the foundations of society. Leave what you have learned about science in the back of your head. We will return to it.
Introduction
This module deals with the question of political legitimacy. The state has the power to implement and enforce various restrictions on our lives. It forces you to pay taxes. If you commit a crime, the state can put you in jail. If you are a child, the state may require you to go to school. What gives the state the authority to do these things to you? And what – if anything – gives you an obligation to follow the laws of the state? This module is about what justifies such authority: why should the state have the power to impose (sometimes coercively) restrictions on us? Why do we have obligations to comply? This module introduces the so-called social contract idea to justify state authority.
The question of political legitimacy has both a descriptive and a normative dimension. A descriptive approach to political legitimacy speaks to why people believe in political authority and why many people think that they have political obligations (i.e., why do you think the government has authority and you should comply with rules set out?). A normative approach, by contrast, will take up the question of what justifies such authority: why should the state have the power to impose (sometimes with coercive force) restrictions on us? Why do we have duties to comply with political obligations? Our concern in this module is with the normative question.
When asking about the normative legitimacy of governments, law enforcement, and courts, one natural starting point is to ask: what would life be like without these political institutions that shape our daily lives? Many social contract theorists, like Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, have thought about this question by writing about the so-called ‘State of Nature’. Learn more about what they thought here. Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau all agree that life in the state of nature will (eventually, and for different reasons) be an unpleasant place to live, and that the state is needed to ensure stability and peaceful cooperation. But the mere fact that life under the state is better than the alternative is not necessarily sufficient to justify why the state should have the power it does and why we should comply with our political obligations. This then brings us to different justifications that can be offered for political authority.
Social Contract Theory & The Legitimizing Role of Consent
Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau all belong to the social contract tradition. Social contract theories locate the legitimacy of political authority in the notion of agreement or consent. The basic idea is that the state is given its authority by the consent of the individuals who are governed by it. Learn more about this idea in this video:
Consent thus lies at the heart of the the social contract theorist's conception of political legitimacy. But what kind of consent are we talking about? There are three main options:
- Explicit Consent: individuals have explicitly consented to state.
- Tacit Consent: individuals, in enjoying the benefits of life in civil society, tacitly consent to the state.
- Hypothetical Consent: individuals would, under idealized circumstances, consent to the state.
No conception is without difficulty.
- With respect to explicit consent, the chief problem is identifying when such consent took place. Was there an original contract that our ancestors signed? Even if there was, why should what they signed be binding on us now?
- A central problem for the tacit consent view problem is (as Hume identifies) that it presupposes that an individual can easily leave should they not wish to comply with the rules of the state. Since this is not the case, we cannot take the fact that one remains in a state as tacit consent to its authority.
- And the concern with hypothetical consent is that it relies on a weak form of consent (no one actually consents here!). It is unclear that the consent is doing any real argumentative work here. A mere abstract disposition to consent is normally not assumed to carry much weight.
For further reflection & discussion:
- Review the arguments presented by Wolff on pp.39-46 of your textbook. He is ultimately skeptical that consent can ground political legitimacy. Do you agree?
Anarchism
One conclusion to draw from the problem of justifying state authority is to deny the legitimacy of the state. This is the anarchist’s position. Since I did no consent to the political authority, I do not have an obligation to follow the law, and the state is illegitimate.
Note that the anarchist need not deny that individuals have moral obligations. I might be morally required not to kill or not to deceive. Indeed, according to some moral theories, I am obliged to be strongly altruistic and work for the greater good. Yet, according to anarchism, I should have a critical attitude toward the state and the law: I should not obey them, when I have a moral disagreement with the state.
In some ways, this seems right. Civil disobedience sometimes is justified. One problem with anarchism, though, is that it can easily lead to chaos: some people think that it is morally wrong to pay taxes. Should they be allowed not to pay any taxes? More generally, problems will arise if people have strongly conflicting moral views. On the other hand, anarchism can be attractive to those, like Kropotkin, who think that there is a universal and, basically, altruistic human nature.
Utilitarianism
Consent is not the only way of justifying political authority. Utilitarians offer another solution. Utilitarianism is a consequentialist moral theory. Consequentialists maintain that the rightness or wrongness of actions lies solely in consequences for everyone impartially considered (i.e., everyone's interests are to count for one and none for more than one). Classical utilitarians like Jeremy Bentham maintain that the goodness of consequences will depend on how much happiness is contained in them. A utilitarian defense of the legitimacy of the state (and our obligations to comply with political obligations) will then depend on the consequences, and in particular whether state or adhering to obligations generates the greatest amount of happiness for everyone impartially considered than alternatives to it.
The following video discusses the main elements and criticisms of classical utilitarianism as a moral theory.
As we see, one of the chief challenges to utilitarianism is that no act is in principle forbidden. This makes justifying why we should comply with political obligations challenging, since it seems to entail that we can violate laws so long as the consequences of doing so are good enough.
One reply available to the utilitarian is to shift to indirect utilitarianism. Rule utilitarianism (described in the video above) is a variety of indirect utilitarianism. The basic move here is to say that applying the principle of utility at the level of action (for example, in determining whether one should obey laws) will result in selective violation of laws, and this will be bad for everyone. But a rule indicating that people should follow laws will result in better consequences for everyone (assuming these laws are those that do indeed contribute to human happiness). Thus, adhering to laws is required by the indirect application of the principle of utility.
For reflection & further discussion:
- What do you think of the utilitarian justification of political authority and obligation? Do you think indirect utilitarian is an adequate fix to the problem of political obligation? Do you think that objections to utilitarianism (like the scapegoat objection) are sufficient to dismiss this line of justification?
Fairness
A third line of justification for our political obligations is to appeal to fairness. On this view, fairness demands that one who gains from the state also has a duty to obey its laws. On this view, we have obligations to comply with our political obligations, not because we have consented to, nor because doing so is better for everyone, but because it would be unfair to our fellow citizens for us to benefit from the state without bearing any of the burdens by, for example, following laws.
For further reflection & discussion:
- To what extent does everyone benefit from life in the state? How can these considerations affect the extent to which considerations of fairness impose a duty on us? Does fairness demand a reciprocation of benefits that we do not explicitly accept (think about Nozick’s objection discussed on p. 58-9)?
Additional Material on the Social Contract
The State of Nature
Life in our society is a life with governments, law enforcement, and courts. These political institutions shape our daily lives. What would life be like without them? On this additional page you will learn about what life is like in what is known as "the State of Nature" - through the accounts provided by Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kropotkin.
Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau are social contract theorists. The point of talking about the state of nature, for them, is to explain the emergence of society and justify the legitimacy of the state. You should read their accounts of the state of nature with an eye toward the use they will make of it. As you see in the module on social contract theories, such theories have been developed along a number of different lines. The basic idea is that political obligations originate from and find their legitimacy in an agreement between individuals. Theories diverge when it comes to articulating who the parties to the agreement are, and under what conditions the agreement is made.
Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes's theory has two main aims.
One of Hobbes's central aims was to show that the constraints characteristic of morality were compatible with rational self-interest. To do this, he had to show that the rules of morality, which require a constraint on self-interested pursuit (e.g., rules forbidding lying, cheating, stealing, and so on) in fact worked to one's advantage. According to him, the rules of morality are constraints on action that individuals would agree to in order to get themselves out of the state of nature (which he describes as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short") and to ensure peaceful co-existence. It was to one's advantage to act morally because the alternative - returning to the state of nature - was so bad.
Hobbes's political aim was to legitimize a government with absolute authority (and to reject anarchy). He did this by showing that such a government was needed to ensure that individuals would comply with moral rules. Insofar as everyone gains by adhering to the agreements made, and insofar as compliance can only be guaranteed if there is an absolute authority policing such agreements, he thought that rational individuals would agree to grant such authority to the sovereign again, because this would allow them to exit the state of nature.
We might then ask: why did Hobbes think the state of nature was so bad? This video introduces the main elements of his view:
Locke
Locke held a much less grim view of the state of nature than Hobbes did. He thought that persons were naturally (morally) equal and born into the state of nature with a set of (God-given) natural rights: the rights to life, liberty, and the possession of property (this reminds you of something?). Individuals had a right to pursue what was needed to secure their survival and a right not to be killed; they had the liberty to do anything, so long as that did not interfere with anyone else's right to life; and they had the right to property, which could be derived from their right to self-preservation, since the possession of such property could help them to produce food and better secure their own survival.
This video covers some of the main elements of the Lockean State of Nature:
An interesting feature of Locke's political philosophy is his view of punishment. Contrary to the view that the political body is the only one responsible for punishment, Locke held that everyone had such a right - what he calls the "Executive Power of the Law of Nature." Locke believed that those who violate the Law of Nature post a threat and, thus, individuals in the state of nature have a right to punish transgressions as a means of preserving mankind.
Rousseau
We have seen that Hobbes paints a very bleak picture of the natural state of mankind. But is his depiction accurate? Rousseau thought that the characterization of human nature as found in Hobbes was one that already been tainted by civil society. He thought, however, that life in the state of nature for the "savage" man -- the one untouched by civil society -- would be largely peaceful. While human beings do have a drive to self-preservation, Rousseau also thought that humans are naturally compassionate creatures, capable of pity, and this helps to prevent them from falling into a state of war with one another. He also thought that the savage would be largely a solitary and self-sufficient individual.
In the state of nature, according to Rousseau, people are interested in self-preservation, but they are not interested in their reputation or the opinion of others. People in the state of nature are, as were, separate but equal. Indeed, it is when we started to care about where we stand in comparison to others that problems emerged. While life in the state of nature would be tolerable, we are now very much far removed from it. Rousseau's basic picture is that as we became more civilized, we, on the one hand, reaped the benefits of cooperation and tool making: we started to have leisure time and enjoyed newfound luxury goods. On the other hand, we now stared to acquire ‘corrupted needs’: we couldn’t live anymore without those luxuries and wanted to be better than others. This led to the development of societies, the acquisition of private property and, eventually, inequality. And, as Rousseau says, "The Breakdown of equality was followed by the most frightful disorder" (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, 171-2).
We thus have a very different picture of the emergence of civil society than we get in Hobbes. On both accounts, civil society is needed in order to keep peace. But unlike Hobbes, Rousseau does not think that it is needed to get out of the state of nature, but instead is needed as a remedy for our gradual movement out of it.
Kropotkin
Anarchists like Kropotkin reject the legitimacy of and need for political authority. The starting point for many anarchists is to point to the natural capacity that we as humans (as well as other non-human animals) have to cooperate. On this view, political institutions are not needed to ensure peaceful cooperation with one another. Indeed, anarchists will often think that government intervention is the cause - rather than remedy - for non-cooperative behaviour.
In his 1902 book “Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution” Kropotkin argued that mutual aid and altruism are common in the world of organisms. Though Kropotkin’s specific account of evolution is not widely accepted today, many evolutionary biologists do recognize the existence of altruistic behaviour. The issue of whether we are ‘naturally’ altruistic or egoistic, and how answering this question matters to the question of whether and why we need state authority and what may justify it, is an interesting question that I leave you to think about.
Note: part of the material in this lecture has been produced by Katharine Browne (UiO, Langara College)