Does Consent Explains Why You Are Morally Obliged to Obey the Law?

7/28/2019 Does Consent Explains Why You Are Morally Obliged to Obey the Law?

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Consent explains why you are morally obliged to obey the law. Does it?

- Words Count: 1529No, consent does not explain why we ought to obey the laws because very few actually

consent to the government. In this essay, I will first focus our aenon on the source of the

queson rather than the content of this specific queson itself;then we will try to solve the

riddle of consent by answering that bigger queson. I will be considering only explicit and

tacit consent in my work, for hypothecal consent contributes very less tothe consent

theory. Hypothecal consent says that people would want to consent tothestate if they

were askedto considerits benefits. If we are in search of a theory which could jusfy our

obligaon, we shouldnotconsidera theory which already faces a seriouscontradicon, like

hypothecal consent faces by anarchists.

Man is born free(Rousseau and Cress, 1987, p.141), this assumpon can be traced back in

every tradion of consent theory along with the claim that no man is bound to obey the law

unless he personally consents to it. If we go withthe proponents of consent theory, the

puzzle of polical obligaon can be solved if we assert the premise that we have consented

to the laws, or to put it simply; if we willinglyask the state to rule over us, the laws which it

makes would be legimate(Knowles, 2009, p.94). So the queson now becomes: Do we

consent to the state? This queson can be answered in two stepsthat will follow in our

discussion. First,the definion of consent and its relaonship with obligaon should be clear

and secondly we shall check if this relaonship sll holds in the states case.

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As it might seem to the reader, the natural intuion about the noon of consent is to

authorize someones acon and on the same me giving him certain rights. When we say

that a person hasconsented to work under me, we mean that the given personhas

voluntarilyand knowinglyagreed to work under my authority. As Simmons suggested

(Simmons, 1976, p.276), these two condions are pre-assumed, every me we use the term

consent. This should be clear enough that the acts involving violence or force on oneself can

never bevoluntarily consented. Further being voluntary also makes this act: an act of choice;

i.e. the consenter must be presented with a choice to dissent at the me of his consenng in

the first place. Provided the above, one might expect that this sort of consent isenough to

generate obligaons, but,we must also consider the cases where it is terriblyhard to dissent

or the consequences of doingso are extremely disastrous. It is crucialto consider these

special situaons here, but we will see a more clear explanaon of these when we move on

to the states case.

Now that the noon of consent is clear, we can move further to our second step, which is to

verify if our relaon withthestate can be explainedin the way of consent. We need to be

careful about our noon of consent, so I will be referring to my last paragraph again and

again to check if we are sll talking about the same consent that we defined as the only

proper wayto do itin the first instance. Consent can be given in two ways, either explicitly

or tacitly. There is no point for too much discussion on explicit consent as the number of

consenters in this way istoo few to be considered. This form of consent is explicitly

expressed either through wrien or verbal methods,and we can easily see that the current

form of states do not get consent through this way. This,however,does not mean that no

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government can get consent through this way. It is possible at least in theory, to ask

everyone if they consent to the states authority, provided a good alternave if they dissent.

The laer part is vitalbecause given no good alternave, the act cannot be said as involving

a proper consent, as we first established. My lastpremise also puts into queson, the few

people who are thought to be explicitly consenng, if they actually do so? For example, the

Asylum seekers who takeanoath to abide by the laws of some country, are although

promising this but not actually consenng, because they have no good alternave to do

otherwise.

Onecan thereby infer that although explicit consent might explain why he isobliged to the

lawssomeme in the future, inthecurrent situaon, it does not. So we should now consider

a widerand blurred noon of tacit consent to proceed with our discussion further. Contrary

to the case in explicit consent, tacit consent is expressed bythe absence of certain acons as

Simmons puts it (Simmons, 1976, p.279). For example,if I meet my friend every day at a

certain me, he will expect to see my next day as well. This creates a moral obligaon on my

part to either express my dissent;otherwise my silence would be treated as if I agree to

meet him next day. According to the proponents of consent theory, the same can apply to

the states case. Even if we do notconsent to the states authority inanexplicit manner, the

fact that we do not revolt against it and connue using its services, can be treated as our

tacit consent to it. But is this trulythe case? Taking both situaons as parallel, I will point out

the disncons between them and make the situaon clearer in the rest of my essay.

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The seemingly similar cases are not so similar. Unlike in the first case where friend can easily

dissent through calling the other and expressing that he will notbe comingthenext day, in

the states case, it seems virtually impossible for a person to dissent tothe states authority.

One might say that you can easily dissent to a states authority by exing the state itself. This

might seem plausible soluon atfirst but doing so contradicts the two condions that I

menoned as crucialfor a genuine act of consent. Why? Because if an act of dissent is hard

to do, for example,telling the friend to express his dissent by running 100km non-stop, it

does not explain that if the person cannot do it, thereby he expresses his consent. Let us

take another case from the second condion which says that dissent must not be too

detrimental for the consenter. Suppose I ask a prisoner to either work injail or try to escape

and die. He will certainly connue to do the work, not because he agrees to it, but because

he wants to live. According to Hume (Hume 1965 cited in Chrisano, 2012), the person is

merely trying to avoidthe terrible cost of escaping and thus in no sense expresses his

consent.

Similarly, in the states case, people might have an opon to dissent, but it certainly is either

hard to perform like travelling to another state or has terrible costs for the person. For he

will have to leave his home, current occupaon and friends or it might not be possible at all.

Thus, the states scenario does not resemble the same situaon as that of our friends

example. Of course,our example of two friends will lead to the same situaon if any of the

two condions are violated.

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One might argue here that maybe we had a chance to dissent,and weve lost it now. This

surely does notprovide any support to the consent theory, because if we had a chance and

we were notmade aware of it, would defy our standards of dissent. As I menoned earlier, a

chance of dissent must be provided to the person in the first place, and the premise that the

person is aware of it is automacally embedded in itself. For not doing so,would be like

telling the person in prison that you might have escaped safelyif you asked for the keys

yesterday.

It would be a beer idea to make give my argument a formal structure before drawing a

conclusion. I will be referring to the paragraphs at the end of my premises and denong

them with a small leerp. Here is how the argument should look like to the reader:

P0 You are only morally obliged toobeythe law if the state is legimate. p2

P1 State can onlybe legimate if people consent to it. - p2

P2 Consent can be given either in explicit or in tacit manner. - p4

P3 Not many people consent to the state in explicit manner. - p4

P4 Not many people consent to the state in tacit manner. - p7

C State is not legimate.

C0 You are not morally obliged to obey the law.

It is clear that, since not many people consent to the state, we have areason not to believe

in the consent theory for the me being.

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Bibliography

CHRISTIANO, T. 2012.Authority[Online]. Available:

hp://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2012/entries/authority/[Accessed 26 Feb 2013].

KNOWLES, D. 2009. Polical obligaon: a crical introducon, GB, Routledge Ltd.

ROUSSEAU, J.-J. & CRESS, D. A. 1987. Basic polical wrings, Indianapolis, HackePub. Co.

SIMMONS, A. J. 1976. Tacit Consent and Polical Obligaon. Philosophy & Public Affairs,5,274-291.

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http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2012/entries/authority/http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2012/entries/authority/http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2012/entries/authority/

Does Consent Explains Why You Are Morally Obliged to Obey the Law?

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