Why Obey?

Eight steps into the first question of politics: by what right does anyone rule, and why should you obey?

A course on the thought of Political Philosophy.

Course outline

  1. The View from Siena — What political philosophy is and why its question cannot be dodged: two painted cities, three theses, and the discovery that to say nothing about government is already to take a side.
  2. The War of All Against All — Hobbes's full machinery: from matter in motion to restless desire, from equality, scarcity, and uncertainty to the three causes of quarrel, to the war of every man against every man — and the…
  3. The Strange Doctrine of Punishment — Locke's answer: a state of nature under moral law, where everyone holds the right to punish — and why even this politer condition decays, once money is invented, into a place no one can bear.
  4. The Noble Savage and the Rich Man's Trick — Rousseau's deeper objection: Hobbes and Locke described civilized man and called him natural. The solitary savage, pity as the second drive, the long fall into society — and the fraudulent contract…
  5. No Masters! — The Anarchist's Day in Court — The case against the state itself, in both flavors — communitarian and market anarchism — pushed honestly to its dilemma: restrain the troublemaker and you have rebuilt the state; refuse, and you…
  6. The Contract Nobody Signed — The consent cascade and its wreck: what justifying the state must show; then the original contract, express consent, the vote, tacit consent, and hypothetical consent — each version examined and each…
  7. The Happiness Machine and the Scapegoat — The utilitarian justification — the state weighed against the state of nature in the scales of happiness — defended at its strongest, then broken open by the scapegoat: a real courtroom, a real…
  8. Fair Play, Free Riders, and the Verdict — The best surviving argument — fairness: those who benefit owe their share — tested against Nozick's day-138 counterexample; then the radical critiques of the whole contract tradition (Pateman, Mills…

Part of the Symposium course library.