When Does a Rule Cease to Be a Basis for Obedience?

Rules enter a person’s life before they develop the ability to evaluate them. First, they learn what is allowed and what is forbidden, whom they are expected to listen to, what behaviour is considered right, and when their own wishes are supposed to give way. Only much later can they ask a different question: why should this particular demand be obeyed?

In many cases, an answer is necessary. Rules protect people from arbitrariness, distribute responsibility, and make trust and coordinated action possible. A person could not reasonably decide from scratch each time whether it is acceptable to cause harm, whether a promise should be kept, or whether another person’s rights should be taken into account.

But the very capacity of rules to organize life also creates a particular vulnerability. A requirement can retain the form of a general law while losing its connection to the common good. It may express habit, the interests of whoever holds greater power, or fear of change. Sometimes a rule appears only after a decision has already been made — merely to present someone else’s will not as a private preference, but as an obligatory order.

The difficulty that then arises cannot be resolved by a simple choice between obedience and rebellion. If a rule is binding merely because it has been called a rule, a person gives someone else the right to determine the limits of their own judgment. But if personal disagreement is enough to reject any demand, then one’s own will simply takes the place of law.

The more important question, therefore, is this: what makes a rule a valid basis for action — and what should take its place when it no longer provides that basis?

The trial of the Knave in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland allows us to examine this transition particularly clearly. The book is not used here as a source of the concept of Human Self-Formative Capacity or as evidence of its scientific validity. The trial serves as a literary lens through which to explore one of the questions raised by HSFC: how does a person move from internalized obedience to their own judgment without replacing someone else’s arbitrariness with their own?

When the Form of Order Conceals the Absence of a Basis

At the trial of the Knave, all the outward signs of lawful order are present: a judge, a jury, witnesses, evidence, and a book of rules. Yet none of them places any real limit on power. A verdict is proposed before the case has been examined, the absence of a signature is turned into evidence of guilt, and when Alice’s increased size becomes inconvenient, the King announces Rule Forty-Two, requiring everyone over a mile high to leave the court.

Alice notices that the rule has only just been invented. When the King claims that it is the oldest rule in the book, she replies that, if so, it ought to be Number One. What is exposed at that moment is not merely the absurdity of a particular requirement, but the structure of the entire system: the decision comes first, and the rule is created afterward to give an already made decision the appearance of legitimacy.

This distinction is easy to lose because outward form has a persuasive force of its own. A requirement appears justified if it is written down. A decision appears fair if it was reached through an established procedure. A statement appears true if it is made by someone who occupies a recognized position.

Form is necessary: without it, justice would depend entirely on the personal qualities of whoever makes the decision. But form fulfills its function only when it actually limits power. If a rule can be created for a particular person, applied selectively, or altered to produce a predetermined result, it ceases to protect against arbitrariness and becomes an instrument of it.

Rule Forty-Two makes this substitution especially clear. The King’s private interest takes on the appearance of a general requirement. Its true origin is concealed behind an appeal to the rulebook, while the absence of a real basis is compensated for by the confidence with which it is announced.

In ordinary life, this rarely appears so openly. Personal inconvenience is called discipline. A requirement never previously applied to others is called tradition. An exception is created for a single case and presented as an eternal principle. The decision has already been made, but the criteria are formulated as though they were what led to it.

A rule, therefore, cannot be evaluated simply by asking whether it exists. We have to see what work it actually performs: whether it limits arbitrariness or conceals it, makes coordinated action possible or preserves a distribution of power, helps us examine reality or forbids us from questioning it at all.

Why the Mere Existence of a Rule Is Often Enough

A person does not obey only what they believe to be right. Sometimes they fear punishment, exclusion, or loss of status. Sometimes they assume that the person in authority has a better understanding. But a rule becomes especially powerful when it enters into a person’s understanding of who they are.

Refusing a family demand may feel like ingratitude. Disagreeing with a group may feel like betrayal. Trying to set a boundary may feel like selfishness. Questioning an authority may feel like a sign of being flawed, immature, or lacking in faith.

A person is then evaluating more than the rule itself. At the same time, they are also putting at risk the self-definition they received along with it. The question “Is this demand justified?” is quietly replaced by another: “Who will I become if I stop following it?”

This is why inner disagreement may fail to change action for years. A person sees the contradiction, feels indignation, discusses the injustice, and still continues to reproduce the same order. They wait for the system itself to acknowledge that its own demand is unfounded and give them permission to stop obeying.

But a system that derives its power from obedience rarely grants such permission. To step outside its logic, a person has to change not only their opinion of a particular rule, but also their own relation to the source of obligation. They must stop treating another person’s position of authority as sufficient proof that they are right.

Recognizing injustice alone is not enough. It merely creates material for possible self-formation. The transition begins when the contradiction that has been recognized changes the person’s position: what was previously followed automatically becomes an object of evaluation and decision.

Rejecting Someone Else’s Basis Does Not Create One of Your Own

This is where the most difficult part of freedom begins. When a rule loses its authority, no ready-made answer appears in its place.

A person can no longer say, “I acted this way because I was told to.” But they do not yet know on what basis they should act differently. The old certainty has disappeared, while their own position has yet to be formed.

Rejecting someone else’s basis does not create one of your own. It only makes one necessary.

This is precisely where resistance can easily be mistaken for inner authorship. A person may say “no” impulsively because the demand interferes with what they want. They may reject any restriction as an attack on freedom. They may treat the intensity of their own feeling as sufficient proof and fail to consider the consequences for others.

Such action comes from within, but coming from within does not make it independently formed. Desire, fear, resentment, and learned reactions also exist within a person. Sometimes refusal reproduces them just as automatically as obedience once did.

Arbitrariness exercised by authority and arbitrariness exercised by the individual are similar in this respect. The King says: the rule is binding because I declared it. A person may reply: the rule is not binding because I have decided not to recognize it. The source of the final decision changes, but the underlying principle remains the same — the decision exempts itself from examination.

HSFC therefore cannot be reduced to independence, disobedience, or the ability to resist pressure. A person participates in their own formation not simply when they stop following someone else’s answer, but when they begin to do for themselves the work that the ready-made answer previously did for them.

How a Basis Worth Following Is Formed

One’s own judgment does not arise outside culture, relationships, or shared language. A person draws on values, knowledge, and ways of reasoning they have received. Inner authorship does not consist in creating a basis from nothing, but in working independently with what has already been given.

The first step is to restore the question behind the rule. What problem is it meant to solve? Whom does it protect? What kind of coordinated action does it make possible? If a rule is no longer connected to its purpose, keeping it in place may serve only habit or power.

The next step is to test it against the facts. Does the requirement describe the actual situation, or replace it with a convenient category? Did it exist before the conflict arose? Is it applied equally to different people? Does it constrain those at the top as well, or does it operate only downward?

But examining the external rule is not enough. A person must also examine their own disagreement. Are they defending a principle they would be willing to accept as binding on themselves as well? Or are they seeking an exception only because the rule has become personally inconvenient? How will their refusal affect others? What will they propose in place of the rejected order?

These questions do not guarantee freedom from error. One’s own judgment remains vulnerable to limited knowledge, self-interest, and self-deception. But the possibility of error does not negate inner authorship. It defines its responsibility: a decision must remain open to consequences, objections, and revision.

A person forms a basis not when they achieve absolute certainty, but when they can explain the connection between what they have recognized, what they consider significant, and how they have decided to act. They accept this basis not as a final truth about the world, but as a position for which they are prepared to take responsibility — and which they are prepared to change if reality shows it to be untenable.

The right to one’s own judgment does not remove the need to justify it. It makes that necessity a matter of personal responsibility.

Obedience Can Also Be an Independent Decision

If inner authorship is associated only with refusal, obedience will inevitably appear to be a sign of weakness. But independent examination does not necessarily lead to rejecting the rule.

A person may discover that a requirement limits their own desire but protects someone else. That a slow procedure prevents a quick result but also prevents the more powerful participant from determining the outcome alone. That unpleasant feedback arises not from an attempt to suppress them, but from the real consequences of their actions. That a tradition preserves not only the power of the past, but also experience that should not be discarded without understanding it.

Following a rule can then become no less an act of authorship than refusing it. Outwardly, two people may behave in exactly the same way: both obey. But one has never allowed for the possibility of evaluating the rule, while the other has recognized the basis of the requirement, related it to their own values, and consciously accepted it as binding.

The same distinction exists between two acts of refusal. One person refuses because they cannot tolerate restriction. Another refuses because continuing to follow the rule would require them to participate in something they have judged, after examination, to be unjust. Identical behaviour tells us nothing by itself about the process that produced it.

HSFC is not expressed in any particular outcome of a choice. It is expressed in the capacity to transform an external requirement from a command that operates automatically into material for understanding, decision, and subsequent action.

Inner authorship is therefore compatible with discipline, obligation, and shared norms. What it is incompatible with is not obedience as such, but a person’s refusal to examine for themselves the basis on which that obedience rests.

Why One’s Own Judgment Can Become a New Rule Forty-Two

Once a person has freed themselves from someone else’s demand, they may easily begin to treat the position they have formed as final proof of their independence. A decision that once emerged from deep inner work gradually stops being examined. It turns into a formula: “I never submit to pressure,” “authorities cannot be trusted,” “if a rule restricts me, it should be destroyed.”

Past liberation then becomes a new automatism. The person no longer evaluates the specific requirement but reproduces their own ready-made moral. Their judgment retains its personal origin but loses its living connection with experience.

This is why inner authorship does not end with the formation of a position. It includes the capacity to allow new facts to change that position. Otherwise, a person reproduces the structure of the very order they once opposed: first comes the desired answer, then reasons are found to support it, and disagreement is treated as evidence that the other person is mistaken.

A new rule must withstand the same examination as the old one. Does it apply to everyone it affects? Does it constrain its own author? Does it remain connected to its purpose? Does it allow for revision? If not, a person who has challenged the old order may, once in power, simply create their own Rule Forty-Two.

Self-formation therefore requires not only the courage to step outside someone else’s order. It also requires the capacity not to turn one’s own liberation into something untouchable.

From One’s Own Judgment to Revising the Common Order

A person who examines a long-accepted rule may sometimes discover not only a basis for their own action, but also a limitation of the existing order. This does not mean that the person who disagrees is automatically right. But well-grounded disagreement can make visible a question that had previously gone unexamined and, in doing so, open the possibility of revising the norm.

Social change continues the logic of HSFC only when a new basis is offered for discussion and examination rather than imposed on others through the power of its author.

Inner authorship does not give a person the right to become a new King. It allows them to participate in creating an order capable of explaining its own foundations and changing in response to reality.

When Alice Stops Asking for Permission

The significance of the trial scene does not lie simply in Alice recognizing the absurdity of Rule Forty-Two. Throughout her journey, she has already encountered contradictory demands and other people’s certainty many times. What matters is what this accumulated experience has become by the end.

Earlier, Alice often assumed that not understanding something meant that she herself must be mistaken. She tried to remember the correct lesson, find an acceptable answer, and adapt to rules that others presented as self-evident. At the trial, her accumulated experience allows her to distinguish between complexity she does not yet understand and a lack of basis concealed by status.

She no longer waits for authority itself to confirm that its own demand is unfounded. She does not ask the system for permission to regard what is happening as absurd. Her judgment no longer depends on whether the King, the Queen, or the jury recognize it.

But Alice’s inner change consists not simply in greater courage. She has learned to examine the connection between words and facts, evidence and conclusions, rules and purposes. Her refusal does not replace reasoning; it grows out of it.

This is precisely what makes the scene significant for HSFC. The repeated experience of other people’s definitions, absurd demands, and confident authority does more than irritate Alice. It becomes material from which a new way of acting is formed: not to mistake status for truth, to recognize the absence of a basis, and to act in accordance with her own judgment.

When a Rule Is No Longer Enough

A rule ceases to be a sufficient basis for obedience not when it becomes inconvenient, and not when a person feels strong enough to break it.

Its mere existence is no longer enough when it loses a testable connection to the purpose its restrictions are meant to serve; contradicts the facts; is applied selectively; appears only after the decision it was supposed to justify; or protects power from the very possibility of being questioned.

But recognizing this loss of basis does not yet provide a new one. It merely returns to the person the work that the rule previously performed for them: to distinguish what matters, examine their own motive, take others into account, make a decision, and remain willing to revise it in light of its consequences.

Self-formation does not move a person from a world governed by other people’s laws into one in which they themselves become the law. It makes them a participant in creating and sustaining an order — capable of recognizing what is well-founded, challenging what is arbitrary, and taking responsibility for the distinction between the two.

Inner authorship begins not when a person stops recognizing external rules. It begins when they stop treating the mere existence of those rules as a sufficient basis for obedience — and take responsibility for determining what, exactly, they are prepared to follow and why.

Freedom does not begin with the right to break a rule. It begins where a person can no longer hide their decision behind either someone else’s command or their own will — and must take responsibility for the basis that turns their choice into a position.