Political Obligation and Democratic Community

Download or read book Political Obligation and Democratic Community written by Daniel Alan Koltonski and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I argue that citizens of a suitably democratic community will have an important duty to uphold their community's laws, even those laws they reasonably think to be unjust, because upholding the law is required if they are to respect their fellows as free and equal citizens. The version of the problem of political obligation that I address, roughly put, is to explain how laws may bind citizens of a community without threatening their status as free persons. This version of the problem must be addressed because, on the one hand, the duty to uphold the law, as a duty to obey (or defer to) another, seems incompatible with freedom, but, on the other, the aspiration of a community of free and equal citizens-the aspiration motivating much of liberal political philosophy-is only realizable if free citizens can have such a duty. I argue here that the persistence of deep but reasonable disagreement between persons about justice requires that an authoritative scheme of laws govern them. However, a law can be authoritative only if it is enacted in a manner that respects all citizens as free and equal, including those citizens who reasonably disagree with that law. Democratic procedures, I argue, are therefore necessary to achieve authoritative law; but, importantly, they are not sufficient, for a problem of freedom still remains. Drawing on the results of an argument about deference in close personal friendships, I argue that democratic procedures result in authoritative law only when those procedures are embedded within a democratic community whose citizens are bound, in their political choices, by genuine ties of civic friendship.