Democracy and Political Obligation Essay -- What is Politics?

The humanity life of policy-making servants is characterized by other duties and obligations than private life. Conflicts chiffonier even arise between a persons human beings and private duties. The central point of this paper is to examine whether this difference of duties can be regarded as an effect of different forms of obligation. Can we speak of a particular form of political obligation in the same guidance in which Kant distinguishes between respectable and legal obligation, the former pertaining to intentions and the latter to remote aspects of the action? Could political obligation be distinguished from both of them, for causa by its relation towards ends? The first section develops the thesis that if there is such(prenominal) a thing as political necessity, it must be round kind of moral obligation. The second section focuses on the question of whether political obligation can be conceived of as different from legal and ethical obligation, the only two forms of mo ral obligation that Kant distinguishes. The last section is roughly a differentiated conception of political obligation and virtue, in democracies, for political leaders, for citizens, and for public servants.All modern societies in some way combine the distinction between legal and ethical obligation. The former constitutes an exterior discipline of norms and rules, including duties which citizens can be compelled to perform by the threat of punishment or other legal consequences, the latter concerns the interior sphere of a persons scruples and private intentions. Making this distinction can be seen as the diaphanous acknowledgement of what Agnes Heller has called the first structural change in morals the maturation of a separate subjective sphere of morality within the public ethical life. (1) ... ...cal action the problem of dirty hands, in Philosophy and earthly concern Affairs, 1973, pp. 160-180 doubting Thomas Nagel, Mortal questions, Cambridge 1979, pp. 53-90 Bernar d Williams, Moral Luck. Philosophical Papers 1973-1980, Cambridge 1981, pp. 54-70.(3) Kai Nielsen, There is no dilemma of dirty hands, in South African Journal of Philosophy, 15-1 (1996), pp. 1-7.(4) Thomas Nagel, Mortal questions, p. 89.(5) See e.g. R.M. Hare, Political Obligation, in Ted Honderich (ed.), Social Ends and Political Means, capital of the United Kingdom 1976, pp. 1-12.(6) I. Kant, Die Metaphysik der Sitten, Akademie-Ausgabe, Berlin 1902, Bd VI, p. 232.(7) Cf. Peter Schneider, Recht und Macht, Gedanken zum modernen Verfassungsstaat, Mainz 1970, p. 224.(8) Cf. Bernard Williams, Consequentialism and Integrity, in Samuel Scheffler (ed.), Consequentialism and its Critics, Oxford 1988, pp. 20-50.