Abstract

If we make the simplifying assumption that the state's demands take the form of laws, then we may distinguish at least three questions on the issue of political obligation and disobedience: why is a citizen ever obligated to obey the law? when and why is a citizen not obligated to obey the law? and how should a citizen disobey the law if disobedience is allowed or required? In this essay, first, I try to give a plausible interpretation of the Crito and in doing so to show that Socrates answers, at least implicitly, the three questions as follows: a citizen has a prima facie moral requirement to obey the law; if a citizen's duty or obligation to obey the law is overridden by another moral principle, then the citizen is not obligated to obey the law ; and when a citizen is allowed or obligated to disobey the law, the citizen should disobey the law in a persuasive and non-violent way rather than in a coercive and violent way. To this task the first chapter is devoted. In the second chapter, I give a critical interpretation of Rawls' accounts of political obligation and disobedience. As a result, it will be shown that Rawls is a faithful follower of Socrates on the topic of political obligation and disobedience, i.e., that Rawls' theory of political obligation and disobedience can be seen as a continuation and development of Socrates' accounts. In the third and last chapter, I argue that Rawls' accounts of political obligation and disobedience, if appropriately revised, can stand as a consistent and plausible theory