Obedience and opposition are two sides of one consistent attitude

Evidence

Man has an intimate dual relation to the principle of subordination. On the one hand, he wants to be dominated. The majority of men not only cannot exist without leadership; they also feel that they cannot: they seek the higher power which relieves them of responsibility; they seek a restrictive, regulatory rigor which protects them not only against the outside world but also against themselves. But no less do they need opposition to the leading power, which only through this opposition, through move and countermove, as it were, attains the right place in the life pattern of those who obey it. One might even say that obedience and opposition are merely two sides or links of one human attitude which fundamentally is quite consistent. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 5127

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies Simmel’s core distinction between obedience and opposition as mutually constituting attitudes rather than opposites.
• QUESTION: How does this dual attitude bear on Shapiro’s idea that trust requires both freedom and restraint? Obedience as self-relief from responsibility maps suggestively onto Shapiro’s notion of delegating judgment to agents.