Government Obligation Analysis
Assessing a government’s responsibilities to its population, including legal, financial, and moral obligations, is a crucial step in examining government obligations. It is an essential instrument that aids in assessing how well a government upholds its duties and responsibilities to its citizens. One of the main topics in political philosophy is the idea of abiding by the law and government authority. It poses significant issues regarding citizens’ responsibilities to the government, their reasons, and whether anything supersedes them. This essay will cover these issues and consider Plato, Thoreau, and King’s perspectives on submitting to authority, rules, and guidelines.
Obligations to the Government and Its Laws
The subject of our responsibilities to the state and its laws can be seen from various angles. Legally speaking, people must abide by the rules since they are society’s norms to uphold order and safeguard the common good. According to Plato, following the law is morally required since it reflects our responsibility to the state (Watt, 2020). In his view, breaking the law amounted to disobeying the state because the law represented the collective will.
However, Thoreau disproved the social contract idea and asserted that our responsibility to obey the law is based on people’s commitment to act by their conscience. For instance, Thoreau argued that only just laws should be upheld and unfair laws should be rejected. He believed that individuals should follow their consciences even when the law disagrees with their subjective sense of right and wrong. According to Thoreau, people are not always required to follow the law; it all depends on how morally sound the rules are (Watt, 2020).
Thoreau and King both argued that there is a difference between just and unjust laws. According to King, it is people’s moral duty to defy unjust laws and oppose them through demonstrations of civil disobedience (Watt, 2020). On the other hand, unfair laws go against justice’s basic tenets and the natural law. He held that good practices are congruent with natural law and based on moral principles.
Grounds for Obligations to the Government
It is also critical to consider the reasons behind our commitments to the administration and its laws. One widely held belief is that the social contract is where duties come from. This perspective holds that individuals have made a social contract to uphold the laws and create the framework for a peaceful and orderly society. The social contract is perceived as being enforced by the government, and compliance with the law is contingent upon our acceptance of the contract’s provisions.
Like Aristotle, Plato believed that if people want to live in a just society, they must uphold the law. According to Plato’s theory, citizens’ consent to participate in the social compact is the foundation of our duties to the state (Apressyan, 2019). He thought people had an unspoken agreement to enforce the government’s authority and obey the law.
However, Thoreau rejected the concept of the social contract and claimed that people are responsible for obeying the law based on their commitment to act according to their conscience. He held that we should abide by our conscience even if it requires breaking the law since it is a higher authority than the government. According to Thoreau, citizens’ duties to the state are dictated by their moral conscience rather than a social compact (Apressyan, 2019).
King’s perspective is akin to that of Thoreau in rejecting the social contract idea and arguing that people’s duties to the state are founded on moral principles. He held that natural law, superior to human law, is the foundation for our commitment to obey the government. King believed people’s responsibilities to the state were based on their loyalty to moral ideals rather than a social compact.
Overriding Obligations and Disobeying the Government
It is also essential to consider whether anything may precede our legal commitments to the state. Thoreau and King thought our moral conscience might forego our obligations to the state, especially when the government enforces unfair laws. He claimed that people have an ethical duty to resist unfair laws in his essay “Civil Disobedience.”
Thoreau thought that citizens should actively oppose and seek to reform unjust laws and that the government should serve as a weapon for justice (Knappik & Mayr, 2019). Famously, Thoreau was imprisoned after refusing to pay a poll tax in opposition to the Mexican-American War. In his essay, he makes the case that by contributing taxes to a conflict he believed to be unfair, he would support the bloodshed and suffering it produced.
King likewise argued for defying unfair laws in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” He stated that peaceful protest is acceptable and required when the government passes unjust laws that infringe on fundamental human rights (Knappik & Mayr, 2019). King thought people had a moral obligation to defy unfair laws and fight to reform them. He is well known for organizing the Montgomery Bus Boycott to denounce racial segregation on public transportation. He was frequently detained for civil disobedience.
Thoreau and King both believed that people have a supreme duty to their ethics and equity, even if it requires them to disobey the government. They maintained that citizens must actively oppose unjust laws and fight to create an equal society and that civil disobedience may be a potent strategy for social change.
References
Apressyan, R. (2019). Moral-philosophical basis for psychological studies of conscience. Part II. Conscience in moral philosophy. Psikhologicheskii Zhurnal, 40(3), 44–52. Web.
Knappik, F., & Mayr, E. (2019). An erring conscience is an absurdity: The later Kant on certainty, moral judgment and the infallibility of conscience. Archiv Für Geschichte Der Philosophie, 101(1), 92–134. Web.
Watt, H. (2020). Improving unjust laws without inviting unjust plans: The case of abortion for fetal anomaly. Logos I Ethos, 53(1), 179. Web.