From Obligation to Loyalty: Gateway to New

Political Thinking
It was the high mark of Hobbes genius to elevate the concept of political obligation to serve as
the cornerstone of his political theory: its main function, to spell out the necessary relationship
between the subject and the sovereign. To drive in the final nail, Hobbes had to ensure the
ensuing kind of obligation be a moral one rather than merely prudential, not therefore subject to
an individual whim or a haphazard circumstance but forever binding. The foundations were laid.
To be sure, the idea of obligation, purportedly underlying most of our social structures, whether
expressly political or not, is hardly surprising. In ancient Greece, for instance, the cradle of
democracy and the birthplace of city-states, it was considered a solemn duty for every citizen to
take active part in the life of the political community. In the Middle Ages, marked as they were by
conspicuous absence of any type of political structure of note, let alone a durable one, political
and social stability was maintained nonetheless by a complex set of reciprocal relations: serf to
vassal, vassal to lord, lord to overlord. And underlying each of these relations there was the
concept of personal obligation, a concept of duty; thats what the Middle Ages were about.
Indeed, even if we look further back, to our primitive or pre-political stage, to the life of a clan, a
tribe, or an extended family, were still drawn to the very same conclusion: its our sense of
obligation that made each of these possible.
In other words, the concepts of obligation and of duty were always present, albeit implicitly so, in
all social structures with any degree of permanence, spelling out the conditions of said
permanence; and they were implicit in the set of complex personal relations which in effect
constituted those structures. It is arguable therefore that the subjects sense of duty and
obligation to a reigning monarch, lets say, wasnt just to the institution of monarchy as such but
also to the person or the personality of the king. Well, with Hobbes, sovereignty and personality
undergo an irrevocable break. Hobbes idea of a sovereign, the rudiments of what was soon to
become a modern state, is as impersonal as it gets. Hence the need to reposition these concepts
front and center, to make explicit what previously was only implicit. Hobbes is merely following
here the dictates of his grand project.
This movement in Hobbes from motivation to obligation, the manner of Hobbes deduction of
the latter from the former, is captured by Macpherson:
Once Hobbes has established that the general inclination of all men is the search for ever more power over
others, he is easily able to show that if there were no power able to overawe them all, their lives would
necessarily be miserable and insecure to the utmost degree. He has already postulated that men
necessarily seek to live, and to live commodiously. It follows that rationally men who fully calculate the
consequences must shun such a condition by acknowledging a power able to overawe them all. To do so
they must make, or act as if they had made, a covenant with each other by which they all simultaneously

transfer to some man or body of men the rights they would have to protect themselves if there were no
common power to protect them. It is this transfer of rights which creates their obligation to the sovereign.
And since this covenant is a restraint on the appetites, it cannot be binding without a power to enforce it;
hence men must transfer their natural powers at the same time as their natural rights. This gives the
sovereign absolute authority, and sufficient power to wield that authority effectively. Only by acknowledging
such authority can men (a) hope to avoid constant danger of violent death and all the other evils which they
would otherwise necessarily bring upon themselves because of their otherwise necessarily destructive
search for power over each other; and (b) hope to ensure the conditions for the commodious living which
they necessarily desire. Hence every man who understands the requirements of mens nature, and the
necessary consequences of those requirements, must acknowledge obligation to a sovereign.

Whether the obligation in question can truly be said to be a moral one is a matter that neednt
concern us. Suffice it to say, Hobbes thought that it was, and his best argument to that effect
rested on another one of his postulates: an equal right to life. To cite from Macpherson again,
Hobbes is able to treat his political obligation as a moral obligation because it is derived from a
transfer of rights which he treats as moral rights. Besides, too much has been made in
philosophical literature of the allegedly inviolable distinction between fact and value, and the
purported fallacy of deriving therefore ought from is, as the writings of Elizabeth
Anscombe and Philippa Foot attest.
For the duration of these essays and until proven otherwise, I propose to treat all obligations and
duties which happen to derive from the nexus of personal relations as essentially moral
obligations. To wit, even the obligations and duties of, say, a slave to his master, or a battered
wife to her husband, shall be considered moral, provisionally at least, until, that is, the
relationship in question shall be deemed and recognized by the injured party as essentially
exploitative or immoral; and when that time comes, all bets are off. But until then, and not until
then, I think its right-headed to consider the slave or the battered wife as morally bound to their
betters; at the very least, thats how they see themselves.
Granted, this operational definition may strike us as being hopelessly subjective and unduly
offensive, but it has the distinct merit of bypassing the utilitarian turn of mind to which even
Hobbes, it seems, was susceptible: theres no calculation here, only sentiment. Meanwhile,
another question suggests itself: Are we justified to extend the same kind of logic and rules of
procedure to impersonal relations as well, such as those which obtain between the subject and
the impersonal state? Are we morally bound to the state in the exact same way that were morally
bound to persons? I suspect this is the right kind of question, but then again, we dont have to
decide right now.
In any case, Hobbes was on to something when he posited the concept of political obligation as
the central concept of political theory. More so than individual rights which merely presuppose,
and consequently arise only in the context of, some preexisting political entity that is expected to
guarantee them, only after the fact, as it were, political obligation is more central because its a

priori: it spells out the preconditions. Thus, not only must we surrender our natural rights to the
sovereign (as most social contract theorists would have it), which is synonymous with
acknowledging the obligation as a kind ofquid pro quo for services yet to be rendered; whats
more, its only by virtue of said obligation, sustained, that there can be such things as the
sovereign, the subject, or the state. Needless to say, individual rights fall by the wayside in the
greater scheme of things. Theyre not a cutting-edge concept in the theory of the state. Political
obligation is.
In what follows, I intend to expand on this insight and develop this concept to the extent possible.
However much on the right track, I find Hobbes notion of political obligation much too restrictive if
its to take us beyond the political configuration limited at present to the liberal state; thats in fact
its greatest weakness, that it was conceived with no other form of polity in mind. In particular, I
find the contractual basis of Hobbes idea of political obligation its weakest link. Not only is it the
case that, for this very fact, it is unduly beholden to some utilitarian picture of Everyman, a
truncated version at best of how humans qua moral agents tend to behave; its also false as an
account of how we typically form and sustain most of our relationships. Its time, I say, to dispel
the philosophers myth which, under the guise of utilitarianism and social-contract theories,
appears to have crept in and, ever since Hobbes, contaminated our thinking about politics and
the state.
As part of this program, I intend to disentangle the concept of obligation from its typical, overly
legalistic/contractual framework. I suspect that moral philosophers have added to the confusion
and share some of the blame, especially insofar as their treatment of rights and responsibilities,
as a set of reciprocal concepts, is concerned. Its not that rights and responsibilities arent
reciprocal in the sense that they both feed off one another, the one legitimizing the other, and vice
versa; that goes without saying. But the concomitant result was, the concept of obligation, already
a related concept, was even further implicated, by association, in the legalistic/contractual
framework: its become too compromised in the process to help us effect the kind of radical break
we were hoping for.
The long and the short of it is, we need a brand new concept of political obligation, a more or less
stand-alone concept, unencumbered by old associations and vestiges from the past, if we are to
move beyond the liberal state and the typically contractual basis of its operations. Likewise with
rights. They, too, must become divorced, to the extent possible, from their typically legalistic
context, as something to be guaranteed by the state by virtue of contract, to approximate rather a
meaning that would be more germane to a purely moral type of discourse: to connote the general
worthiness of the individualqua individual, along with the underlying assumption as to the moral
equivalence of persons, rather than the specific gains that may have already been won, or are yet
to be won, as a result of a bitter struggle against the reactionary elements of the state. Only thus,
by forging a linguistic environment capable of supporting these concepts and a new form of polity,
can we hope to overcome the obvious limitations of the liberal state and its contractual basis of
doing business, its modus operandi, and move beyond.

I alluded earlier to the weakness of all contract-dependent accounts as to the origins of most our
social structures, accounts of how we typically form and sustain the relationships which are the
lifeblood of those structures. And although the notion of obligation or of a set of reciprocal
obligations, to be more precise, does form an integral part of those relationships, its not always
or necessarily an obligation that is born of any kind of contract. Again, the life of a clan, a tribe, or
an extended family; none of them are contingent on anyone signing their name on the dotted line
but come about naturally.
As part of the program to free the concept of obligation and related concepts from their usually
restrictive, contract-laden language and bearings, I propose to trace back the beginnings of all
our social formations to their natural habitat. And here, the notion of loyalty, as a kind of affinity
which comes to us naturally, readily suggests itself. Its certainly both logically and psychologically
prior to mere acknowledgment of an obligation, moral or otherwise: indeed, once we get to
consider the larger context, obligations do come to be seen as a byproduct, as a formal
acknowledgment of, or a testimony to, a set of loyalties already in place. Loyalty is the
springboard, the fertile source of all manner of us coming together as humans; everything else
follows.
In articles to follow, I intend to examine the concept of loyalty, (an articulated) form of social
impulse which manifests itself, it seems, in all manner of groupings, social formations, what else
have you; the likely impetus behind those groupings if not their very source. Right off the bat, it
has two things going for it: a certain affinity we all share in common, which make us huddle
together and form a group, coupled with the functionality of the group; and its a powerful
combination, I daresay. Also notice that with loyalty at the helm, nowhere are we led to infer the
need for a contract in order to reinforce the preexisting arrangements. Granted, the kind of
groupings entertained thus far, a clan, a tribe, an extended family, all stand out for their high
degree of informality, which may be one reason why the idea of contract is out of place in cases
of this sort. Indeed, perhaps the contractual basis of social arrangements goes hand in hand with
the degree to which these arrangements are formal, their necessary aspect.
Must the state, by its very nature, partake of a degree of formality so as to require a contractual
basis for its foundation? Cant we conceive of a state that would be less demanding in the
aforementioned respect? Alternatively, can we think of a polity that would be just as
comprehensive as the state happens to be, or nearly so, but without the added requirement;
namely, the dubious benefit of a contract? And if not, must such a polity be as comprehensive as
the state in order to serve us in an undiminished capacity? Cant we do with less for more?
Needless to say, we may have to tackle some of these questions as we embark on our project.
Meanwhile, lets enjoy the ride.