Ryan Gabriel Windeknecht

In this article we assess the distributive objection to the claim that we have associative political obligations. We deploy three kinds of strategy in our response: avoidance, mitigation and confrontation. Avoidance and mitigation are accommodating responses, in which we argue that associative political obligations often need not fall foul of the distributive objection in any very damaging way. But they may not always be enough, and thus confrontation may sometimes be necessary. This response involves rejecting the more extreme claims of proponents of the distributive objection, while accepting that occasionally serious tensions between the demands of our associative political obligations and those of global redistribution may remain, both of which have moral standing.

In this article, I examine A. John Simmons’s philosophical anarchism, and specifically, the problems that result from the combination of its three foundational principles: the strong correlativity of legitimacy rights and political obligations; the strict distinction between justified existence and legitimate authority; and the doctrine of personal consent, more precisely, its supporting assumptions about the natural freedom of individuals and the non-natural states into which individuals are born. As I argue, these assumptions, when combined with the strong correlativity and strict distinction theses, undermine Simmons’s claim, which is central to his philosophical anarchism, that a state may be justified in enforcing the law, even if illegitimate or unjustified in existing