Limits Of Obligation Research Articles

Beyond Obligation? Jean-Marie Guyau on Life and Ethics

There is a tradition of modern French philosophy that contains valuable resources for thinking about the nature and limits of obligation and how a higher calling of life beyond obligation might be conceived. This is a tradition of an ethics of generosity whose best exemplar is perhaps Henri Bergson (1859–1941) and that extends in our own time to the writing of Gilles Deleuze (1925–95).

Resisting the Scaffold: Self-Preservation and Limits of Obligation in Hobbes's Leviathan

AbstractThe degree to which Hobbes's citizenry retains its right to resist sovereign power has been the source of a significant debate. It has been argued by a number of scholars that there is a clear avenue for legitimate rebellion in Hobbes's state, as described in the Leviathan – in this work, Hobbes asserts that subjects can retain their natural right to self-preservation in civil society, and that this represents an inalienable right that cannot, under any circumstances, be transferred to the sovereign. The conclusion frequently drawn from this feature of Hobbes's account is that it places a considerable limit on sovereign authority. The right to self-preservation has been taken as proof that Hobbes sought to ensure that the sovereign's power relies upon the continual consent of the individuals that make up his or her constituency. I want to examine Hobbes's account of this civil right in Leviathan in order to show that this line of interpretation is ultimately unfounded. While self-preservation results from the individual's own judgment of threats to her personal safety, it is justified in only the most strictly delineated contexts. Judgments regarding the overall peace and security of the state do not, and cannot, fall to individual experiences and judgments. Hobbes is quite adamant that individuals are not appropriate judges of right and wrong action in matters the sovereign legislates.

Enlistment and Non-enlistment in Wartime Australia: Responses to the 1916 Call to Arms Appeal

This article examines men's responses to the 1916 ‘Call to Arms’ appeal, in which Australia's federal government questioned military-aged male citizens on their willingness to enlist voluntarily in the armed forces for service at the front. It argues that the appeal illuminated men's difficult negotiation of choice, in which they weighed their personal sense of obligation to the state at war, to their families, and to themselves. It shows how men not only confronted their decision, but measured their responsibilities against others', producing a subjective order of sacrifice that paralysed recruiting. In the absence of conscription, that private decision-making was critical to the nature of Australia's commitment to the war, as men assessed and re-assessed the limits of obligation for themselves.

Supererogation, blame, and the limits of obligation

Supererogation, blame, and the limits of obligation

Health Care for Veterans: The Limits of Obligation

The federal government has a generally unquestioned obligation to provide health care to veterans for diseases or disabilities acquired during military service. Much argued, however, is the government's obligation to offer care for nonservice-connected disorders. The Reagan administration has sharpened the debate recently by attempting to impose a means test on veterans over sixty-five who are seeking such care. But the controversy focuses on the wrong issue. Society has a moral obligation to provide adequate health care to all citizens but has no special obligation to care for nonservice-connected health problems of veterans.

The Limits of Obligation

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The Limits of Obligation.

The Limits of Obligation.

The Limits of Obligation.

The Limits of Obligation

The Limits of Obligation

The Limits of Obligation. James S. Fishkin

<i>The Limits of Obligation</i>. James S. Fishkin

The Limits of Obligation

The Limits of Obligation

Obligation and Consent—II

A reexamination of even the most venerable traditional problems of political theory can sometimes yield surprisingly new and relevant results. The problem of political obligation, for example, and its most popular “solution”, based on consent, turn out on reexamination to be rather different from what we have come to assume about them. The problem of political obligation resolves itself into at least four mutually related but partially independent questions:1. The limits of obligation (“When are you obligated to obey, and when not?”)2. The locus of sovereignty (“Whom are you obligated to obey?”)3. The difference between legitimate authority and mere coercion (“Is there really any difference; are you ever really obligated?”)4. The justification of obligation (“Why are you ever obligated to obey even a legitimate authority?”)And the consent theory of obligation, as exemplified in Locke's Second Treatise and Joseph Tussman's Obligation and the Body Politic, turns out to yield a new formulation—perhaps a new interpretation of consent theory, perhaps an alternative to it—that might be labelled either the doctrine of the “nature of the government” or the doctrine of “hypothetical consent.”It teaches that your obligation depends not on any actual act of consenting, past or present, by yourself or your fellow-citizens, but on the character of the government. If it is a good, just government doing what a government should, then you must obey it; if it is a tyrannical, unjust government trying to do what no government may, then you have no such obligation.