Loyalty vs. Disobedience
Text by professor Tiimo Airaksinen
Berkeley's Passive Obedience: The Logic of Loyalty
History of European Ideas 2021, Vol. 47, No. 1, 58-70.
https://doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2020.1777515
Abstract
Berkeley argues in Passive Obedience that what he calls morality is based on the divine laws of nature, which God gave us and whose validity is like that of the principles of geometry. One of these laws is the categorical demand for loyalty to the supreme political power. This is to say, rebellious action is strictly impermissible and passive obedience is morally required: we may disobey but only in terms of action omission and then we must accept the penalty or punishment. This paper clarifies the logic of Berkeley's argument and evaluates the acceptability of his results, especially when he considers possible exceptions in the case of a tyrant, usurper, and mad prince. What should one do? We may "sit still and pray for better times" and think of the day of divine judgement; is this enough when a citizen is under a tyrannical political rule? Can we trust the good will of magistrates, or expect God's help? Berkeley speaks of your moral duty to supreme power but in the last part of his treatise he also mentions the possibility of two competing princes, or no supreme power.
Keywords: Berkeley, ethics, virtue, categorical duty, political philosophy, natural laws, loyalty, Kant, Hobbes, Hume.
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Loyalty vs. Disobedience
Berkeley invites us to read PO as if we agreed on its foundational premises when these are made as simple and obvious as possible. They are of two types: truths that are rationally evident, like the nature and existence of God, and the truths we should take for granted, or, "Only thus much I shall take for granted, that there is in every civil community, somewhere or other, placed a supreme power of making laws, and enforcing the observation of them." (PO 3) Such minimal assumptions look fine: the idea of "civil community" itself logically entails a "supreme power" in a Hobbesian manner. Without supreme power and its laws we may end up with anarchy in the condition of nature or natural state. (PO 16). Alas, all this is an oversimplification, as we will see.
In PO Berkeley argues that moral virtues or duties are based on natural laws established by the good God in order to promote public good and general well-being here on Earth and ultimately in Heaven.[i] These natural laws are categorical in the Kantian sense, that is, their applicability is insensitive to human needs, wants, desires, happiness, and any such individual consequentialist considerations. They are God's own means of promoting public good in the long run. (P 15). "In morality the eternal rules of action have the same immutable universal truth with propositions in geometry. Neither of them depends on circumstances or accidents, being at all times, and in all places, without limitation or exception, true." (PO 53). Like any natural laws, they must be categorical and universalizable: "I call it natural because it is universal" (PO 25, also PO 1).[ii] We must do our duty and remain virtuous come what may. One of the key duties is loyalty and especially loyalty to the supreme power or the prince, in Hobbesian terms, the sovereign. "Loyalty is a natural or moral duty" or a "law of nature" (PO 3, PO 15, Romans 13.2).
[i] Timo Airaksinen, "In the Upper Room: Metaphysics and Theology in Berkeley's Ethics," Philosophical Theology 27 (2015): 427-456; and Daniel Flage, "Rickless and Passive Disobedience," Berkeley Studies 28 (2019), 24-47. Also, Heta Gylling, "Berkeley as a Worldly Philosopher." In Sébastien Charles (Ed.), Berkeley Revisited. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2015, pp. 22-35.
[ii] Nature or the "proper objects of vision" constitute a divine universal language. Natural laws are a model of this language. See Lawrence A. Mirarchi, "Dynamic Implications of Berkeley's Doctrine of Heterogeneity: A Note of the Language Model of Nature." In Colin Turbayne (Ed.), Berkeley, Critical and Interpretative Essays. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982, pp. 447-260.