Recognizing Rights: Hobbes on the Authority of Mothers and Conquerors

2003 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-60
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Political Authority ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Maternal Authority ◽  
The Right ◽  
As If

This article follows Hobbes's distinction between man as the artificer of a commonwealth and man as the material of the commonwealth, by exploring the meaning of natural right and consent from the perspective of an artificer or potential sovereign. From this perspective, natural rights are transformed from alleged attributes of humans into decisions by a victor in war to treat the defeated as if they had natural rights. Similarly, consent is transformed from actions of subjects or citizens into a decision by a victor to recognize the defeated as if they had a right to consent and to treat them as if they had consented. Moreover, Hobbes's concept of a commonwealth by institution is understood as a definitional standard for the creation of commonwealths by force or acquisition, rather than as a possible historical event. Hobbes sought to explain and substantiate this view of natural right and consent by comparing the emergence of political authority from victory in war to the emergence of authority of a mother over her infant in a state of nature. According to Hobbes, just as maternal authority rests on a mother's recognition of the right of her infant to consent, political authority rests on the victor's recognition of the right of the defeated to consent. The practical policy thrust of Hobbes's thought emerges from his comparison of the authority of mothers and conquerors.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Rowan Cruft
Keyword(s):  
Natural Rights ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
The Right

The aim of the book—to offer a philosophical assessment of the concept of a right—is introduced, along with terminological distinctions. Chapter 1 defends the author’s Hohfeldian assumption that all claim-rights entail correlative duties owed to the right-holder. The chapter ends by clarifying the idea of a ‘natural’ right as simply a right that exists independently of anyone recognizing that it exists. So conceived, natural rights need imply neither a theistic nor a ‘state of nature’ grounding, and can include many rights protecting our sociality.

12. Easements

2019 ◽  
pp. 434-467
Author(s):  
Martin George ◽  
Antonia Layard
Keyword(s):  
Land Ownership ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Restrictive Covenants ◽  
Controversial Subject ◽  
Public Rights ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Right

An easement is a form of third party right that allows one to enjoy the benefits of land ownership. Some examples of such rights are rights of way, rights of light, the right to use a washing line on a neighbour’s land, the right to use a neighbour’s lavatory, and the right to park a car on another person’s land. The easement must exist for the benefit of land and cannot exist in gross. The rule that an easement cannot exist in gross has been a controversial subject. This chapter, which explores the nature of easements and considers their related concepts such as natural rights, public rights, restrictive covenants, and licences, also discusses legal and equitable easements, the creation of easements, and proposals for reform of the law on easements.

Natural Rights as Powers to Act

2020 ◽  
pp. 102-120
Author(s):  
Susan James
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
The Right

Spinoza grounds his political philosophy on a highly counter-intuitive conception of natural right as the right to do anything in your power. Just as big fish eat little fish by the right of nature, so humans act by natural right, regardless of what they do. In this essay I explain what leads Spinoza to hold this view and show how, in doing so, he contentiously rejects some of the most central assumptions of the natural law tradition. Finally, I consider whether Spinoza’s view can contribute anything of value to current discussions of natural right. I argue that he draws our attention to prerequisites of a cooperative way of life that contemporary theorists frequently neglect.

Teleological Groundings of Rights and Duties

2019 ◽  
pp. 89-117
Author(s):  
Rowan Cruft
Keyword(s):  
Natural Rights ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
The Right

Chapter 7 develops a teleological account of the grounding of duties and rights. It argues that a ‘natural’ right—that is, a duty that is owed to someone independently of anyone’s recognizing or deciding that it is owed to them (i.e. a duty that bears Chapter 4’s ‘Addressive’ requirements independently of anyone recognizing this or creating it)—must be a duty grounded wholly or predominantly on the right-holder’s own good. By contrast, legal, conventional, and promissory rights need not be grounded or justified by the right-holder’s good. Many alternative accounts of the grounding of ‘natural’ rights—from e.g. Darwall, Kamm, Nagel, Ripstein, Scanlon—are considered and rejected.

Leviathan No More: The Right of Nature and the Limits of Sovereignty in Hobbes

2016 ◽  
Vol 78 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher R. Hallenbrook
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Political Society ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Political Work ◽  
The Right

AbstractThis article challenges the prevailing interpretations of Hobbes's thought as providing only minimal protection for the natural right of individuals in political society. Natural right requires the protection of not just the subjects' lives, but their ability to live commodiously, and as a result the protection that natural right receives in political society places substantive constraints on the actions of the sovereign. When those entrusted with sovereign power overstep this constraint, they cease to be sovereign and the former subjects are returned to the state of nature to seek protection as each judges fit. I develop the substance of commodious living more thoroughly than similar analyses and demonstrate that this understanding is not limited to Leviathan but can be found in Hobbes's earlier political work as well.

Rights to Punish for Libertarians

Dialogue ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 675-694
Author(s):  
Jordan Howard Sobel
Keyword(s):  
Natural Rights ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
Upper Limit ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
Equal Right

Thomas Hurka derives rights to punish from what I will term the Libertarian Rights Principle, which is “that there is really only one natural right, namely the equal right of all persons to the most extensive liberty compatible with a like liberty for other persons, and that all other natural rights are species or instances of the right to liberty.” These rights to punish, he says, (1) extend only to punishing violators of rights, never to “punishing” the innocent; (2) extend only to punishing for violations pursuant to intentions publicly announced prior to these violations; (3) are subject to the “upper limit qualification” (p. 652) that a permissible punishment for the violation of a right cannot be an act that would violate a more important right (i.e., a punishment that would infringe on a liberty more important than the one infringed upon in the violation); and (4) are subject to the “minimum necessary qualification” (p. 653) that a punishment p for violating a right r is not permissible if a punishment p' that would, were it permitted, violate a less important right than would p, would protect r as effectively as would p.

13. Easements

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark P. Thompson ◽  
Martin George
Keyword(s):  
Land Ownership ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Restrictive Covenants ◽  
Controversial Subject ◽  
Public Rights ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Right

An easement is a form of third party right that allows one to enjoy the benefits of land ownership. Some examples of such rights are rights of way, rights of light, the right to use a washing line on a neighbour’s land, the right to use a neighbour’s lavatory, and the right to park a car on another person’s land. The easement must exist for the benefit of land and cannot exist in gross. The rule that an easement cannot exist in gross has been a controversial subject. This chapter, which explores the nature of easements and considers their related concepts such as natural rights, public rights, restrictive covenants, and licences, also discusses legal and equitable easements, the creation of easements, and proposals for reform of the law on easements.

On Using the Concept of Hypothetical Consent

1989 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 793-808
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Political Authority ◽  
Political Obligation ◽  
Subjective Meaning ◽  
Hypothetical Consent ◽  
The Right ◽  
As If

AbstractThis article argues that the concept of hypothetical consent advanced by Hanna Pitkin has little force as a basis for political obligation. It reformulates the meaning of hypothetical consent by emphasizing the subjectivity of consent, and it points out how this subjective meaning expresses the right of actual citizens to dissent. It suggests how subjective hypothetical consent can be used from the perspective of a sovereign as a standard that requires the sovereign to treat citizens as if they had consented, although they have not consented. It concludes by arguing that although this standard may appear to corrode political authority, instead it enhances political authority. It drives the sovereign to relinquish the claim that citizens are obligated to obey, and to treat them so they will have reason to obey.

scholarly journals Philosophical and Legal Interpretation of Individualism in Philosophy of Montesquieu and Voltaire

2020 ◽  
pp. 337-345
Author(s):  
Pavlo PYLYPYSHYN
Keyword(s):  
Natural Rights ◽  
Natural State ◽  
Legal Interpretation ◽  
Citizenship Status ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Equal Citizenship ◽  
Legal Sense

The article attempts to find individualistic ideas in philosophy of Montesquieu and Voltaire, who continued to discourse on legal themes specific particularly to the Enlightenment: the theme of natural condition, social contract, rationalism, morality, human’s place in the world and God in a human. Revealing, first of all, the most topical issues of this time, the thinkers in their philosophy deal with the matters that are utterly individualistic. It is about: the idea of equality, freedom, natural rights (rights to life and ownership), human nature, etc. It is determined that Montesquieu and Voltaire, like other thinkers of the Enlightenment, revealed the essence of individualistic tendencies through rationalism, because human is a rational person who makes decisions, fights his desires supported by reason. The mind, as a source of law, allows man to develop on the basis of science, learnt by him patterns. It is defined that Montesquieu also discoursed on the individualist attributes; in particular, he pays attention to the problem of equality and freedom: 1) as thinker emphasizes, all were equal in natural state but afterwards this equality could be ensured only by the laws, which have to be just; 2) freedom in his philosophy is considered in two aspects: political and personal. For individualist issues important are revealing the personal aspect of freedom, which firstly was in safety of citizen. Providing this freedom is just laws and proper organization of statehood. It is studied that basic individualist principles of Voltaire are: 1) humanity, which lies in declaring the natural right of every person to life and to meet basic needs; 2) freedom manifests in that people become autonomous entities and are no longer formally dependent on one another; freedom lies in depending only on the laws; 3) people are equal and free to each other individuals, and equality is understood by him in just political and legal sense: acquiring equal citizenship status by all people, alike dependence of all citizens on the law and their equal protection by law; 4) ownership — freedom of labor, which is the right of every person «to sell his work to those who pay the highest price for it, as labor is the property of those who have no other ownerships.»

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