The Rights To Punish and Resist Punishment in Hobbes's Leviathan
Received: October 31, 1989 First Revision Received: July 9, 1990 Second Revision Received: August 9, 1990 Accepted for Publication: August 21, 1990 NOTE: I thank Stanley Anderson and Naomi Rosenberg for very helpful readings of an early version. Peter Digeser read more than one draft, his keen judgment repeatedly saving me from myself. Dean Mann and John Moore, as well as anonymous referees at the Western Political Quarterly, made incisive critiques of the penultimate draft. I alone, of course, am responsible for the flaws that remain. This work has been supported by a grant from the Research Committee of the Academic Senate at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I am grateful to Robert Faulkner, John Rogers, Brad Wilson, and Michael Zuckert for creating occasions on which to present versions of this paper. Questions about Hobbes's declaration of a preservationist right to resist unexceptionable punishment, administered by an unexceptionable government, must of course be distinguished from what Francisco Suarez called "the well-worn question of whether or not it is permissible for a private individual or his subjects to kill a tyrannical king" (1944b: 705-III.iv.1). To be sure, some will consider resistance to either kind of government, for any reason, primafacie contempt for Romans 13:2 ("Whatsoever ... resisteth the [higher powers], resisteth the ordinance of God"). Hobbes does not mention Romans 13:1-7 in the vicinity of his declarations of the right to resist (cf. Lev, 42, 100, 308 [589]). 2 Where it is said that "the essence [of a body politic] . . . is the not-resistance of the members" (II, i, 18); see also Elements (El), II, i, 7. On a relevant difference between De Cive (DC) and the Elements, see note 52, below. Tuck (1979: 119-30) traces the emergence of the right to resist in Hobbes's texts.
Beyond political obligation: Reconceptualizing the individual's relationship to political institutions
Beyond Political Obligation: Reconceptualizing the Individual’s Relationship to Political Institutions by Thomas Michael Hughes Political obligation has been the dominant concept to explain individual obedience to political institutions. It claims that a free individual has performed some voluntary act which generate a new set of moral requirements to support and comply with a particular set of political institutions. However the concept of political obligation has come under successful attack, rendering all existing formulations inadequate. This project explicitly abandons the language of political obligation, and presents an understanding political institutions that are not obligatory. I begin by reviewing the recent defenses of political obligation, and show that none consider all of the relevant critiques that have been used to reject the political obligation narrative. After the inadequacy of the current formulations has been shown, I return to the early modern writings on political obligation to consider the political relations of individuals who had no political obligations: foreigners. Once it has been shown that social cooperation with foreigners is possible without political obligations, I utilize Thoreau to show how citizens might behave as foreigners, through his
Insanity in Ancient and Modern Life, with Chapters on Its Prevention
be well received by the profession and the public The first eighty-four pages treat of the prevalence of the causes of insanity amongst the nations of antiquity. We know that madness has existed in all the times of which we have any record, and that it had much the same train of symptoms as at present. But it is impossible to find out whether insanity was more or less frequent amongst the Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, or liomans. In