Comment on Hobbesian notion of Political Obligation (150 words) (2017, 10 Marks)
Thomas Hobbes changed the central question of politics from who should rule? to why should I obey?, asked of individuals owing no natural duty. His answer in Leviathan (1651) is an obligation that each person takes on himself, absolute in extent but conditional on protection.
Grounds of Obligation
- Consent and authorisation. Each covenants with each to authorise one person or assembly to act for all. The subject is thus the author of the sovereign’s acts and cannot complain of them without self-contradiction.
- Prudence. The alternative, the state of nature, is worse than any government. Covenants made from fear still bind, so conquest obliges as fully as institution.
- Natural law. The third law requires men to perform their covenants, and the laws of nature always bind in foro interno, in conscience.
- Protection. The end of obedience is protection. Obligation lasts as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which the sovereign can protect (ch. 21).
- Michael Oakeshott finds three strands mixed: moral, physical and rational obligation.
Extent and Limits
- Absolute in scope. The sovereign is not party to the covenant, cannot forfeit power and may not be resisted. The subject’s liberty lies in the silence of the law.
- One inalienable right. No one can give up the right to resist those who assault him to take away his life, and no one is bound to kill or accuse himself.
- Individual, not organic. Obligation rests on self-preservation and choice, not on Plato’s justice, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel‘s ethical state or a fascist nation.
Critiques
- John Locke replies that men who avoid polecats or foxes would not choose to be devoured by lions. Government is a revocable trust, and a breach of trust justifies resistance.
- Thomas Hill Green: will, not force, is the basis of the state; habitual obedience cannot rest on fear.
- Alfred Edward Taylor and Howard Warrender grounded it in duty and divine command; Quentin Skinner restores its prudential core.
- The standing paradox. Obligation is founded in the individual, yet leaves him no remedy short of the collapse of protection.
Indian Illustration
In ADM Jabalpur (1976) the Supreme Court accepted near-Hobbesian obedience: with Article 21 suspended, a detainee had no remedy. The 44th Amendment (1978) made Articles 20 and 21 non-suspendable, and K. S. Puttaswamy (2017) overruled the majority. It held life and liberty inherent, not granted.
Conclusion
Hobbes made obligation self-assumed and conditional on protection: his lasting modernity. By refusing any institutional check he left subjects nothing between total obedience and the state’s collapse. Constitutionalism keeps his premise and supplies the remedy he denied.