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Fall 2007
Volume 07, Number 1

Newsletter on Philosophy and Law

From the Editors

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Edition in Tribute to John Simmons

Plato portrays Socrates as regarding his duty to obey his state as so important that he thought it better to accept execution at the hands of the state than to violate the duty, knowingly foregoing clear opportunities to escape this high cost for obedience. More recent historical treatments of the question of political obligation (Locke’s treatment, for instance) often have framed the discussion in terms of identifying those (extreme) actions or failures of government that would morally justify rebellion or revolution. More recently still, for instance, during the civil rights era in the United States, the practice of civil disobedience well short of revolution was nonetheless widely justified against a presumption that there existed for citizens a general duty to obey the state. It is fair to say that the idea that persons have some kind of duty to obey their states has held sway throughout the history of western philosophy.

Rejecting this long-held idea has gained an eloquent and forceful spokesman, however, in John Simmons. Simmons’ defense of philosophical anarchism takes center stage in this edition, earning critiques from his University of Virginia colleague, George Klosko, and David Lefkowitz. Klosko focuses attention on Simmons’ treatment of arguments grounding political obligation on duties of fairness while Lefkowitz builds on the recent work of Christopher Wellman’s samaritan-based natural duty defense of political obligation. In addition, Chris Naticchia suggests that Simmons understates the case for philosophical anarchism against any natural duty approach to grounding political obligation, a case that can be seen by considering the practical reasoning that would apply to anyone under a natural duty to obey the state. Finally, John Simmons responds to these three essays, focusing primarily on the way in which his particularity requirement for establishing a duty to obey the state is not fully appreciated, though in different ways, by his commentators.

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