Chapter 6
Political obligation
The problems
Alfred Russell Whitehead is said to have said that all philosophy is
a series of footnotes to Plato and Aristotle. It is a good saying and
wouldn’t be such a memorable falsehood if it did not contain a
strong element of truth. It is a falsehood because, in the tradition
of Western philosophy the Pre-Socratic philosophers deserve a
mention. But just as obvious, there are more philosophical prob-
lems than were dreamt of by Plato and Aristotle in their phil-
osophies (but perhaps not many more) and, equally, the repertory
of arguments pro and con, the range of responses to these prob-
lems, has been enlarged well beyond the category of footnotes. But
one can easily mistake the show for the substance in respect of
touted philosophical advances. Another way of making White-
head’s point would be to say that Plato and Aristotle ‘set the
agenda’ and this would be more true as well as more trendy, but
still a falsehood. However, there is one philosophical problem
which has not advanced far beyond the elaboration of Plato’s