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If the state is not a voluntary organisation, how can one be under any obligation to obey its commands?
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Q1 If the state is not a voluntary organisation, how can one be under any obligation to obey its commands? This is a question about justifying the state. What D. D. Raphael calls " the grounds of political obligation.1 If the state can be justified somehow then so can the commands it makes, whether it is voluntary or not. This would be a state built on individual consent; obligation to the commands of the state would flow from that consent. This essay will discuss the possibility of justifying of the state through the idea of a social contract. The state when it creates a law draws a line one cannot cross without consequences. For clarity I am talking about a serious law, specifically one that obviously has a moral base, the law against murder for example. An individualist might say 'I have no intention of crossing that line anyway because I believe...
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