The Boundary Problem Reconsidered

Abstract

In recent years, political philosophers have devoted growing attention to the questions of political obligation. The debate mainly centers on the question “Is there a moral duty to obey the law?” Political obligation refers to a moral obligation to obey the laws of one’s state, and therefore the question may also be “Do we have political obligations?” At present, there are various theories offered to respond to this question, though none arereceiving widespread consensus.

In this paper, I am going to answer the question “Is there a moral duty to obey the law?” I will defend functionalist theories of political obligation against two well-known objections: the problem of unilateral annexation and the problem of historical injustice.  In Section 1, I will explain what functionalism is. In Section 2, I will explain the main objections against it. In Section 3, I will undermine these objections by showing them to depend on untrustworthy intuitions. In contrast, I will show that the case for functionalism can be made without relying on similarly untrustworthy intuitions. Section 4 is the conclusion.