Philosophy is harder than it looks. Moral philosophy, especially so. There are so many ways to unleash oneself onto a philosophical subject. I am convinced that some approaches make more sense than others. Take Gene Callahan’s recent squib on Obligation. My problems begin with his first sentence, which is literally untrue:

Obligation

is the crucial idea denied by libertarian political theory.

Mr. Callahan states this baldly, emphasizing his point with the key concept as the title of his blog post. And yet, if one stops right there, and treats the sentence apart from what follows, one could only shake one’s head in puzzlement. Libertarianism is the doctrine that places liberty as the central — in many constructions, as the only — basic right in a polity. And a right is a claim to obligatory treatment; for every right there is at least one obligation.

So, from the get-go, Callahan has stated a glaring untruth. Libertarians definitely do not deny obligations. Obligations are at the heart of their doctrine. Indeed, the most interesting critiques of libertarianism come from those who see it as a hopelessly narrow philosophy obsessed with obligations and not broader concepts, like virtue, or righteousness, or even the therapy of the soul.

What is Callahan up to? His second sentence gives us a clue:

1. We can have obligations that we did not agree to take upon ourselves.
   

Ah, the old “unchosen obligations” question! That’s more clear.

Maybe.

Geoffrey Allan Plauché, at The Libertarian Standard, counters this ably:

1. But this is something that not all libertarians deny, as a wide and deep enough perusal of libertarian literature will demonstrate.
   

2. At the very least, libertarians recognize the unchosen obligation not to threaten or use initiatory physical force against other rational beings (i.e., to refrain from what we call aggression).
   

Yes, the very basic right to liberty entails an obligation not to initiate coercion, it entails the duty of forbearance. And this duty is not something people choose. It is considered, widely amongst libertarians, to be inalienable. You can’t get rid of it, not without choosing an immoral, criminal path in life.

What Callahan is really doing is saying is “Libertarianism is wrong, there are more rights than liberty, and there are more obligations than respecting the liberty of others.”

Why didn’t he say so?

Apparently he thinks that the nature of obligation is so obvious and so obviously runs against standard grain of libertarian thought that he needed to emphasize the point. Unfortunately, he chose as the capstone of his post a set of assertions about political obligation from one David Walsh, contentions which Callahan, incredibly, says prove his contention as a “fact”:

1. The political is never merely an option, for we are embedded in a network of obligations before we even begin. This was the weak point of all social contract explanations of civil society, with their inevitable implication of the arbitrariness of a state founded on individual choice. Kant reminds us of the extent to which the state provides the conditions for the exercise of free choice and is thus beyond the realm of choice. We are obliged to support the political constitution under whose order we exist, not because we derive benefits from it or because we have given our consent, but because it is part of the order of being. -- The Modern Philosophical Revolution, p. 62.
   

Much can be said to criticize this extremely dubious passage:

1. A sociological revision of the first sentence helps make clear the nature of moral entanglements: “Politics is not merely one strategy to choose from, for, inevitably in society, we are born into a lattice of networks and a long history of institutions; these institutions include past accommodations to coercion and blatant acts and threats of violence.”
   

2. Social contract theory was not devised to explain civil society. It was devised to justify the state and to establish a rationale for reform.
   

3. The weak point of social contract theory was something completely different than Walsh admits: The weak point is that it took the idea of freely made contract as the basis for justifying an institution that was based not on agreement but upon conquest and threat of outrageous force. The sheer chutzpah of this method rarely gets appreciation from philosophers, who thereby tend to prove themselves a rather obtuse lot.
   

4. It’s all very nice and good to note the extent to which the state ensures order, allowing us to carry on our lives, but it is perverse not to mention, in the next breath, the extent to which the state prevents us from exercising free choice. It’s as if political philosophers habitually put on blinders when they appraise the state. Rose colored glasses. They see only what they want to see.
   

5. “We are obliged to support the political constitution under whose order we exist. . . .” Yes. I was taught this by reference to a passage in St. Paul. It was yet another assertion people make to keep youngsters out of trouble, and I am not wholly unsympathetic. But are you saying that a subject (“citizen”!) of the old Soviet Union was obliged to support Stalin, or his constitution? What a load of vile nonsense this is. It is not profound. It is lame. Sometimes the most noble and heroic and ethical thing one can do is oppose the constitution of the polity one lives under.
   

6. “. . . not because we derive benefits from it or because we have given our consent, but because it is part of the order of being.” Mystical horse shit.
   

Walsh has nothing for us. In this squib, neither does Callahan. They take wrong turns at every chance, so it appears.

And yet, I’m probably not far from Callahan on many issues. For reasons that Herbert Spencer examined in his defense of Justice, I believe that the right to liberty is not the sole basic right we should defend. I believe that, for children, some sort of right to sustenance is absolutely imperative, and our obligations in this regard are to some degree unchosen, not dependent upon an underlying right to liberty. The working out of this would require patience and care (thus mirroring the requirements of raising children). It has not received it from libertarian theorists for reasons probably for reasons of fear. Libertarians understandably fear the purveyors of mystic nonsense like David Walsh, and their ability to spin chains upon people as if they were spiders and we their insect prey.

The most important thing to remember about social contract theory, and utilitarianism, and the whole early individualist liberal tradition, is that these enterprises were trying to find a way to disentangle themselves from the perverse chains of obligations they had inherited from kings, nobility, conquerors, priests, and other tricksters. Both Walsh and Callahan seem prepared to dismiss this whole emprise.

I cannot praise them for that.