Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation / Reprinted from Green's Philosophical Works, vol. II., with Preface by Bernard Bosanquet

by Thomas Hill Green

Note of the Editor.

These lectures, which are partly critical and partly expository, treat of the moral grounds upon which the state is based and upon which obedience to the law of the state is justified. They were delivered in 1879-80, following upon the course from which the discussion of Kant's moral theory in this volume is taken. The two courses are directly connected, civil institutions being throughout regarded as the external expression of the moral progress of mankind, and as supplying the material through which the idea of perfection must be realised.

As is implied in section 5, the inquiry into the nature of political obligation forms part of a wider inquiry into the concrete forms of morality in general, 'the detail of goodness.' The lecturer had intended to complete the course by a consideration of 'social virtues' and 'moral sentiments'; but this intention was not carried out. (See section 251.)

LECTURES ON THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION.

A. THE GROUNDS OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION.

1. The subject of this course of lectures is the principles of political obligation; and that term is intended to include the obligation of the subject towards the sovereign, the obligation of the citizen towards the state, and the obligation of individuals to each other as enforced by a political superior. My purpose is to consider the moral function or object served by law, or by the system, of rights and obligations which the state enforces, and in so doing to discover the true ground or justification for obedience to law. My plan will be (1) to state in outline what I consider the true function of law to be, this being at the same time the true ground of our moral duty to obey the law; and throughout I distinguish moral duty from legal obligation; (2) to examine the chief doctrines of political obligation that have been current in modern Europe, and by criticising them to bring out more clearly the main points of a truer doctrine; (3) to consider in detail the chief rights and obligations enforced in civilised states, inquiring what is their justification, and what is the ground for respecting them on the principle stated.

2. In previous lectures I have explained what I understand moral goodness to be, and how it is possible that there should be such a thing; in other words, what are the conditions on the part of reason and will which are implied in our being able to conceive moral goodness as an object to be aimed at, and to give some partial reality to the conception. Our results on this question may be briefly stated as follows.

The highest moral goodness we found was an attribute of character, in so far as it issued in acts done for the sake of their goodness, not for the sake of any pleasure or any satisfaction of desire which they bring to the agent. But it is impossible that an action should be done for the sake of its goodness, unless it has been previously contemplated as good for some other reason than that which consists in its being done for the sake of its goodness. It must have been done, or conceived as possible to be done, and have been accounted good, irrespectively of the being done from this which we ultimately come to regard as the highest motive. In other words, a prior morality, founded upon interests which are other than the pure interest in being good, and governed by rules of conduct relative to a standard of goodness other than that which makes it depend on this interest, is the condition of there coming to be a character governed by interest in an ideal of goodness. Otherwise this ideal would be an empty one; it would be impossible to say what the good actions were, that were to be done for the sake of their goodness; and the interest in this ideal would be impossible, since it would be an interest without an object.

3. When, however, morality of the latter kind has come to be recognised as the highest or the only true morality, the prior morality needs to be criticised from the point of view thus gained. Those interests, other than the interest in being good, which form the motives on the part of the individual on which it rests, will not indeed be rejected as of no moral value; for no one can suppose that without them, or except as regulating them, the pure interest in being good could determine conduct at all. But they will be estimated according to their value as leading up to, or as capable of becoming elements in, a character in which this interest is the governing principle. Again, those rules of conduct, according to which the terms right and wrong, good and bad, are commonly applied, and which, as was just now said, are relative to a standard certainly not founded on the conception of the good as consisting in the character described, are not indeed to be rejected; for without them there would be nothing to define the duties which the highest character is prepared to do for their own sake. But they have to be revised according to a method which inquires into their rationale or justification, as conditions of approximation to the highest character.

4. Such a criticism of moral interests—of the general motives which determine moral conduct and regulate such moral approbation or disapprobation as is not based on a strict theory of moral good—may be called by the name of 'a theory of moral sentiments.' The criticism of recognised rules of conduct will fall under two heads, according as these rules are embodied in positive law (law of which the observance is enforced on the individual by a political superior), or only form part of the 'law of opinion' (part of what the individual feels to be expected of him by some person or persons to whose expectations he ought to conform).