Hi, my name's Guy Fletcher and I'm a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. In this lecture, we're going to think about the question of whether you have an obligation to obey the law. Political philosophy, is the part of philosophy that examines philosophical questions about the relations between states and their citizens. In this lecture, we'll be thinking about the problem of political obligation. This is one of the central questions of political philosophy and the plan for the lecture is as follows. In part one; I'll introduce the problem of political obligation, in part two; I'll examine some possible solutions to that problem and in part three; I'll explain what the consequences would be if that problem can't be solved. So part one, the problem of political obligation. So states make demands upon us every day, they make demands upon us to pay taxes, to provide certain kinds of information, to do jury duty sometimes and very occasionally to fight in wars. They impose these burdens through the laws that they enact and that they enforce. This gives rise to an important question. Do citizens have an obligation to obey the state and to obey its laws? The problem of political obligation is the attempt to answer precisely this question. Even more precisely we can describe the problem of political obligation as follows. It's the attempt to find an explanation of why we have an obligation to obey the state and its laws. Before we go any further, we need to understand the elements of the problem of political obligation. So first, we need to understand what it is to obey something and what it is to obey the law and secondly, we need to understand the grounds of political obligation. Okay. So first obeying the law. Obeying the law is not the same as complying with the law. Having an obligation to obey the law is not the same as having an obligation to comply with the law. Here's how we can see the difference. Suppose the law tells you to pay your income tax. If your income tax gets paid then that's enough to count as complying with the law. The law told you to do something and you did it. Acting in accordance with the law is sufficient to comply with the law. By contrast to obey the law, you must act in accordance with it because it is the law. So if someone pays their income tax only because they don't want to be punished, then they've complied with the law but they haven't obeyed it. So obeying the law and complying with the law are importantly different. The difference between an obligation to comply with the law and an obligation to obey the law is important here because it's easy to have obligations to comply with the law but it's not so clear that we have obligations to obey the law. We have obligations to comply with the law because of the effects of breaking those laws. So if our income taxes are used to support vital services, then we have a moral obligation to pay our income tax. Similarly, if our family requires us to provide for them, then you have an obligation to comply with the law because we need to stay out of prison and to provide for our families. These are clear cases where we have an obligation but an obligation to comply with the law. Another way of seeing why obligations to comply with the law and obligations to obey the law are importantly different, is to think about problematic states. So states such as Nazi Germany. People living within those states, typically have obligations to comply with the law. They have reasons to comply with the law and they have obligations to comply with the law because of the bad things that would happen to them and to their families if they don't comply with the law, if they don't do what the law says. But in the case of a problematic state, it's not the case that the laws that it makes it legitimate and so perhaps the citizens don't have obligations to obey those laws, they don't have to act in accordance with the law because the law commands it. So far we've seen the difference between complying with the law which is doing what the law commands and obeying the law which is doing what the law commands because it commands it. We've also seen the important distinction between having an obligation to comply with the law and having an obligation to obey the law. It's the obligation to obey the law that is central here to our investigation of the problem of political obligation. We have an obligation to obey the law, if we have an obligation to act in accordance with the law because the law commands it.