Abstract
In this chapter, Brown considers the Context-based Approach to Political Obligation. Brown focuses on how the Context-based Approach has articulated itself as the main opposition to the Rational Approach’s emergence as the predominant paradigm for understanding Political Obligation, in particular rejecting the assumption that the citizen is primarily a ‘rational individual’ and instead highlighting the importance of context informed notions of Political Obligation. Brown acknowledges shared ground with the Context-based Approach, in particular the ontological assumption of a historically embedded citizen, but stresses a fundamental difference between this approach and his own lies in the latter’s move to use context as a paradigm for understanding Political Obligation and his own desire to appreciate how arguments concerning Political Obligation are existentially encountered within context-bound situations. This approach is further discussed in regard to dominant theories, such as conservatism and communitarianism, as well as in relation to the particular context of contemporary China.
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Brown, R.J. (2019). The Importance of Tradition and Culture: Context-Based Paradigms of Obligation. In: Political Encounters. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17340-1_3
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