| Abstract: | Mark Murphy contends that, whatever the merits of any philosophicalargument for anarchism, most people are obligated to obey thelaw. Murphy defends a moral argument designed to show that mostpeople in reasonably just political communities are obligatedto obey the law. And he advances epistemological arguments calculatedto support two key claims. First, people who believe they areobligated to obey the law are entitled to retain their beliefin the face of anarchist criticism. Second, a credible accountof political obligation can accommodate the concerns that driveanarchist arguments in such a way that no anarchist argumentagainst political obligation could, in principle, be successful.I argue that Murphy's moral argument yields relatively limitedresults, and that his epistemological arguments do not succeedin showing that anarchists could not convict folk-believersin political obligation of unreasonableness. |
