Under Construction Journal Issue 6.1 UNDER CONSTRUCTION JOURNAL 6.1 | Page 74

Wolff—does not consider political obligation through the lens of my pluralist account.
I advance the tripartite framework mentioned above to (i) defend political obligation,
as well as (ii) to explicate when political obligation becomes void, which I explain with
my analysis of contemporary Indian politics.
Keywords: Political obligation, philosophical anarchism, three-dimensional model of political obligation.
Introduction
Political obligation is a pivotal theme in political philosophy. According to Horton, the term political
obligation was coined by Green. Political obligation is defined as the ‘obligation of the subject towards
the sovereign, of the citizen towards the state, and the obligations of individuals to each other as enforced
by a political superior.’ The respect of political obligation was demonstrated by Socrates. He was
sentenced to death for corrupting the Athenian youths. Despite his disciples planning his escape, Socrates
refused to flee. He argued that he was obligated to stay, because he had chosen to be a citizen of Athens.
Nevertheless, political obligation is challenged by philosophical anarchists. Political anarchists
portray the state as ‘an evil institution that must be destroyed as a precondition of human liberation.’ By
contrast with political anarchists, while in normative terms philosophical anarchists do argue that the
state is deemed illegitimate, as we cannot find a convincing reason, for instance a contractualist account,
which would justify our obligation, philosophical anarchists do not advocate for the state’s abolishment.
Instead, whether we should obey the state is contingent on ‘what the state does.’ If the state ‘performs a
valuable role it may be appropriate to support it.’ With the term valuable role, we must understand that
the state has an a priori responsibility to protect the life and liberties of its subjects, an argument that will
become clear when I will appraise fascist politics in India.
Philosophical anarchism is evident in Greek antiquity. Keyt explains that Diogenes the Cynic
argued that the only correct constitution lies in the cosmos. As the earthly constitution is a convention,
and the earthly constitution contradicts living with nature because human beings created it, the earthly
constitution is illegitimate. A ‘commitment to one central claim unites all forms of anarchist political
philosophy’, namely, all ‘existing states are illegitimate.’
Despite philosophical anarchists positing that all states are morally illegitimate, in this paper I
maintain that political obligation is the sine qua non of the telos of politics, and we must obey the state if
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