Philosophical Studies

, Volume 169, Issue 3, pp 467–488 | Cite as

Fairness, self-deception and political obligation

Article
First Online:

Abstract

I offer a new account of fair-play obligations for non-excludable benefits received from the state. Firstly, I argue that non-acceptance of these benefits frees recipients of fairness obligations only when a counterfactual condition is met; i.e. when non-acceptance would hold up in the closest possible world in which recipients do not hold motivationally-biased beliefs triggered by a desire to free-ride. Secondly, I argue that because of common mechanisms of self-deception there will be recipients who reject these benefits without meeting the counterfactual condition. For this reason, I suggest that those who reject non-excludable benefits provided by the state have a duty to support their rejection with adequate reasons. Failing that, they can be permissibly treated as if they had fair-play obligations (although in fact they might not have them). Thus, I claim that there is a distinction, largely unappreciated, between the question of whether we have a duty of fairness to obey the law and the question of whether we can be permissibly treated as if we had one.

Keywords

Fair-play Political obligation Legitimacy Presumptive benefits Non-excludable goods Self-deception 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the University of Warwick, at the Australian National University, at an IVR Special Workshop on Political Obligation in Frankfurt and at the 2012 MANCEPT workshops. I am grateful to participants at these events for stimulating discussions. I am especially grateful to Christian Barry, Peter Chau, Matthew Clayton, Richard Dagger, Antony Duff, John Horton, Matthew Kramer, Conor McHugh, Fabienne Peter, Victor Tadors, Bas Van Der Vossen and an anonymous reviewer for very helpful written comments. Finally, I would like to thank George Klosko, who co-authored a number of early versions of this paper, before we realized that our positions could not be reconciled.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of PhilosophyUniversity of WarwickCoventryUK

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