writers such as Aristotle and Plato regarded man as a naturally social
animal who should abide by the rules of the ‘polity’ (a community
organised politically) which created the civilised conditions within
which they flourished. Both schools of thought, therefore, considered
obedience to the state as a normal part of the moral duty of all
thinking men and women. Disobedience is therefore to be censured
not only for the immediate harm it might do, but also for the example
it sets to others.
The democratic view stresses that it is the duty of the good citizen
to respect the products of the decision-making processes established
in their name and surviving only with their consent. Even a bad law
should be obeyed until it can be amended by democratic processes
since the evil of undermining the democratic system is assumed to be
greater than that for which the law is responsible. However a law
enforcing genocide or slavery or other major breach of ‘human
rights’ would not be covered by this argument. Here the evil done by
the law is unarguable and that done by setting an example in
conscientious refusal to accept a ‘democratic’ enactment much less so.
Because the government reflects the interests of the majority of the
community, minorities should respect its decisions whilst reserving
the right to seek to reverse them. Thus obedience to the state should
reflect a rational act of choice on the part of an educated citizenry
(Singer, 1973).
In terms of the classical theorists, the contrast is neatly illustrated
by that between Hobbes and Locke. Both used the metaphor of a legal
contract adopted in a ‘state of nature’. In Locke’s case the estab-
lishment of a trust between the governors and the governed was
envisaged as well as a contract to set up a civil society. Thus obedience
to the government remains conditional upon it carrying out its part
of the compact. But in Hobbes’s case, the contract simply empowered
a third party – the government – to enforce the peace:
I authorize and give up my right of governing myself, to this man, or this
assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy right to him,
and authorize all his actions in like manner.... This is the generation of
the great Leviathan, or rather (to speak more reverently) of that mortal
God, to which we owe under the Immortal God, our peace and defence.
(Leviathan, Ch. XVII, 176)CONCEPTS 55