A theory of political obligation : membership, commitment, and the bonds of society / Margaret Gilbert.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gilbert, Margaret, 1942- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Political obligation.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 332 pages)

Other Title:

Membership, commitment, and the bonds of society

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Margaret Gilbert offers an incisive new approach to a classic problem of political philosophy: when and why should I do what the laws of my country tell me to do? Beginning with carefully argued accounts of social groups in general and political societies in particular, the author argues that in central, standard senses of the relevant terms membership in a political society in and of itself obligates one to support that society's political institutions. The obligations in questionare not moral requirements derived from general moral principles, as is often supposed, but a matter of one's part

Contents:

A central problem of political obligation. The membership problem

Obligations : preliminary points

In pursuit of political obligation

Actual contract theory : attractions

Objections to actual contract theory

Societies, membership, and obligation. Social groups : starting small

Joint commitment and obligation

Societies as plural subjects

A solution to the membership problem. Political societies

Reconsidering actual contract theory

The plural subject theory of political obligation

Summary and prospect.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-19-954395-X

1-281-16462-3

9786611164621

0-19-153457-9

1-4356-2315-0

OCLC:

123131733