Table Of Content

Hobbes on Legal Authority and Political Obligation Hobbes on Legal Authority and Political Obligation Luciano V enezia National Scientific and Technical Research Council – National University of Quilmes, Argentina © Luciano Venezia 2015 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–1–137–49024–7 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. For Lau, with love Contents Acknowledgments ix Note xii 1 Introduction 1 1 .1 The project 2 1 .2 Method 8 1 .3 Strategy 13 1 .4 Textual evidence 1 6 2 Coercion, Rational Self-Interest, and Obligation 19 2 .1 Conflict in the state of nature 20 2 .2 A nti-social passions and sanctions for non-compliance 25 2 .3 L egal coercion, private good, and the common good 2 8 2 .4 The end of the story? 30 2 .5 Lloyd’s account 3 4 3 The Authority of Law 41 3 .1 The concept of authority 43 3 .2 Even for the rationally and morally perfect 4 6 3 .3 The command theory of law 5 4 3 .4 Arbitration 5 7 3 .5 Beliefs or actions? 6 0 4 Political Obligation 63 4 .1 Egoism 6 4 4 .2 Moral reasons in Hobbes? 69 4 .3 The theory of political obligation 7 6 4 .4 The mutual containment thesis 84 4 .5 The rationale for political disobedience 9 1 5 Contractarianism 9 3 5 .1 Hobbes’ account: an interpretation 9 4 5 .2 What difference does the sovereign make? 105 vii viii Contents 5 .3 Contractual obligation: prudential or deontological? 110 5 .4 Obligation and reason 119 6 The Hobbesian Analysis of Contracts under Coercion: A Critique 126 6 .1 Hobbes on voluntariness, coercion, and obligation 1 28 6 .2 Coercion, rationality, and voluntariness 130 6 .3 Rationality without voluntariness 134 6 .4 Conclusion 141 7 Final Remarks 143 Bibliography 148 Index 157 Acknowledgments This project started as a doctoral dissertation at the University of Buenos Aires and the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. Afterwards, I worked on the draft during a series of post-doctoral research stays at the University of Buenos Aires, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and the Raymond Aron Center for Sociological and Political Studies in Paris. Finally, I completed the definitive version during my first year as Assistant Research Fellow at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina. The generous help of several people and institutions was essential to bringing this project to fruition. I would like to express my gratitude to them all. First, I would like to thank Claudio Amor, Luc Foisneau, and Andrés Rosler, who supervised my dissertation and were a continuous source of useful comments and suggestions. I am also greatly indebted to their written work. Andrés Rosler’s Political Authority and Obligation in Aristotle , as well as his papers on Hobbes’ political and legal philosophy, were very important for my own work, as were Luc Foisneau’s works on Hobbes. I would also like to thank Leiser Madanes, Pasquale Pasquino, and Horacio Spector for their comments. I am indebted to Emmanuel Picavet for his valuable remarks on the preliminary report for the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. I especially acknowledge the interest in my work shown by Thomas Christiano and Gerald F. Gaus. I first discussed with them an early project on Hobbes’ legal philosophy while studying at the University of Arizona. Both of them also gave me very useful feedback at an advanced stage of the book draft. I am indebted to numerous other people, including Timo Airaksinen, Noel Boulting, Philippe Crignon, Miranda del Corral, David Dyzenhaus, William A. Edmundson, Daniel Eggers, Eldon J. Eisenach, Paula Gaido, David Gauthier, Pedro Francés Gómez, Kinch Hoekstra, Matthias Kiesselbach, George Klosko, María Lukac de Stier, James R. Martel, José Luis Martí, Johan Olsthoorn, Thomas Pink, John T. Sanders, Peter Schröder, Johann P. Sommerville, Pablo ix