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Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on should we regard political obligation as a natural duty.
Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on should we regard political obligation as a natural duty. Coming to the topic question, the ideas of the aforementioned intellectuals as well as contemporary thinkers on the subject are drawn upon in answering it. The group of contemporary thinkers on the subject include Christopher Wellman, David Lefkowitz, Craig Carr, George Klosko and Allen Buchanan.
To begin with, let us now consider John Rawls' principle of fairness. At the time of his writing, the nation-state as we now understand it was not established as the dominant political entity. As a result, Rawls' principle of fairness is applicable to any group of persons, irrespective of the political jurisdictions that they fall under. Rawls articulates the principle as follows:
“When a number of persons engage in a mutually advantageous cooperative venture [or scheme] according to rules, and thus restrict their liberty in ways necessary to yield advantages for all, those who have submitted to these restrictions have a right of a similar acquiescence on the part of those who have benefited from their submission. We are not to gain from the cooperative labors of others without doing our fair share” (Rawls, as quoted in Lefkowitz, 2004).
Political thinkers of our time, including Carr and Lefkowitz, have critiqued Rawls' principle of fairness by pointing out its inadequacy to offer solutions for global warming, climate change, etc. Lefkowitz, in particular, claims that “mere receipt of benefit from a cooperative scheme does not entail an obligation to contribute to its operation” (2004). For example, one of the stark realities of our times is pollution due to automobile emissions. The industrialized nations of the world, that includes the United States, United Kingdom and other western democracies, are major contributors to this pollution. It is fair to expect citizens of these nations to do something about the situation by adopting stringent pollution .control standards for their automobiles.
