Abstract
According to the interpretation I described in the previous chapter, the distinctive feature of law is its capacity to use physical force or the threat of physical force to compel subjects to obey. This, however, assumes that Hobbes’ account of law conflates the causal and normative aspects of legal guidance or, simply, that his political and legal philosophy lack the concept of authority altogether. Fortunately, this assumption is too quick.1 As I will argue in this chapter, the notion of authority occupies a prominent role in Hobbes’ political theory. I will show that the directives issued by the sovereign authoritatively regulate the subjects’ actions; the causal power to usu physical force or the threat to use physical force normally included in legal systems is merely a back-up mechanism to further motivate subjects to comply with the law.
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Notes
The assumption made by the standard interpretation would be unfortunate because the idea that the law is authoritative is really a commonplace, so that any reasonable analysis of the concept of law must account for this feature. See M. C. Murphy, Philosophy of Law: The Fundamentals ( Oxford: Blackwell, 2006 ), pp. 6–9
S. J. Shapiro, Legality ( Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011 ), p. 15.
The classic example is John Austin’s theory of law. See J. Austin, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined, W. E. Rumble (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), I, 21–5, 29–30.
Despite some points in common, Hobbes’ and Austin’s accounts of law are fundamentally different. See M. C. Murphy, ‘Hobbes (and Austin, and Aquinas) on Law as Command of a Sovereign’, in A. P. Martinich and K. Hoekstra (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Hobbes ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015 ).
H. L. A. Hart, Essays on Bentham: Studies in Jurisprudence and Political Theory ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982 ), pp. 254–5.
J. Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 44, 47–8, 78–9
J. Raz, Between Authority and Interpretation: On the Theory of Law and Practical Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 145. However, some mistakes may be so important that authoritative directives may stop being binding. See Raz, The Morality of Freedom , p. 62.
G. S. Kavka, ‘Why even morally perfect people would need government’, Social Philosophy & Policy, 12(1) (1995), pp. 2–3. It should be borne in mind that this is not the way Hobbes understands angels. See Leviathan, XXXIV, 622.
S. J. Shapiro, ‘Authority’, in J. L. Coleman and S. Shapiro (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law ( New York: Oxford University Press, 2002 ), p. 383.
A. Hamilton, J. Jay, and J. Madison, The Federalist (New York: Modern Library, 1937), p. 337, quoted in Kavka, ‘Why even morally perfect people would need government’, p. 1.
H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law , 3rd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012), p. 40; Shapiro, Legality , pp. 69–71.
L. Green, The Authority of the State (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 71, 75, 151–2.
See also D. Dyzenhaus, ‘Law and Public Reason’, McGill Law Journal/Revue de droit de McGill , 38(2) (1993), pp. 373, 381
E. R. Ewin, Virtues and Rights: The Moral Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991 ), pp. 44, 53
L. Foisneau, ‘Hobbes y la autoridad de la ley’, Derechos y libertades, 17 (2007), pp. 60–1
Green, The Authority of the State , p. 37; L. Green, ‘Law and Obligations’, in J. L. Coleman and S. Shapiro (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 518, n. 13; Hart, Essays on Bentham , pp. 253–4
A. P. Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992 ), pp. 128–32
C. W. Morris, An Essay on the Modern State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 ), pp. 175–6, 214, n. 101
C. W. Morris, ‘The Very Idea of Popular Sovereignty: “We the People” Reconsidered’, Social Philosophy & Policy, 17 (1) (2000), p. 3
C. W. Morris, ‘State Legitimacy and Social Order’, in J. Kühnelt (ed.), Political Legitimization without Morality? (Heidelberg: Springer, 2008), pp. 23, 31, n. 32
C. W. Morris, ‘State Coercion and Force’, Social Philosophy & Policy, 29 (1) (2012), p. 39
G. J. Postema, Bentham and the Natural Law Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 56–8; Rosler, ‘Racionalidad y autoridad política’, p. 6; Rosler, Political Authority and Obligation in Aristotle , p. 99
A. Rosler, ‘El enemigo de la república: Hobbes y la soberanía del Estado’, in T. Hobbes, Elementos Filosóficos. Del Ciudadano, A. Rosler (trans.) ( Buenos Aires: Editorial Hydra, 2010 ), pp. 55–60
A. Rosler, ‘Odi et Amo? Hobbes on the State of Nature’, Hobbes Studies , 24(1) (2011), p. 98; Shapiro, ‘Authority’, p. 396, n. 27
S. Sreedhar, Hobbes on Resistance: Defying the Leviathan ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010 ), pp. 113–19
E. N. Yankah, ‘The Force of Law: The Role of Coercion in Legal Norms’, University of Richmond Law Review, 42 (5) (2008), p. 1210.
See also D. Dyzenhaus, ‘How Hobbes Met the “Hobbes Challenge”’, The Modern Law Review, 72 (3) (2009), p. 496
D. Dyzenhaus, ‘Hobbes’s Constitutional Theory’, in T. Hobbes, Leviathan, I. Shapiro (ed.) ( New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010 ), p. 460
D. Dyzenhaus, Hard Cases in Wicked Legal Systems: Pathologies of Legality, 2nd edn ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010 ), p. 213
D. Dyzenhaus, ‘Hobbes on the authority of law’, in D. Dyzenhaus and T. Poole (eds.), Hobbes and the Law ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012 ), p. 195
G. F. Gaus, ‘Hobbes’s Challenge to Public Reason Liberalism: Public Reason and Religious Conviction in Leviathan ’, in S. A. Lloyd (ed.), Hobbes Today: Insights for the 21st Century ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013 ), p. 162
D. Gauthier, ‘Thomas Hobbes and the Contractarian Theory of Law’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Suppl. 6 (1990), p. 30
L. Krasnoff, ‘Voluntarism and Conventionalism in Hobbes and Kant’, Hobbes Studies, 25 (1) (2012), p. 44
S. A. Lloyd, Ideals as Interests in Hobbes’s Leviathan: The Power of Mind over Matter ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992 ), p. 119
M. C. Murphy, ‘Hobbes on Conscientious Disobedience’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 77 (3) (1995), p. 268
L. Madanes, El árbitro arbitrario: Hobbes, Spinoza y la libertad de expresión (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 2001), pp. 38–9, 43; Sreedhar, Hobbes on Resistance , p. 114.
See also K. Hoekstra, ‘Disarming the Prophets: Thomas Hobbes and Predictive Power’, Rivista di storia della filosofia, 21 (1) (2004), p. 109
K. Hoekstra, ‘The End of Philosophy (The Case of Hobbes)’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , 106(1) (2006), p. 50; Lloyd, Ideals as Interests , pp. 140–1, 183
S. A. Lloyd, Morality in the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes: Cases in the Law of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 342, 348–51, 370–2; Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan, pp. 297–8
J. B. Murphy, The Philosophy of Positive Law: Foundations of Jurisprudence (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), p. 168; Sreedhar, Hobbes on Resistance, pp. 101–2, 117–18
H. Warrender, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: His Theory of Obligation ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957 ), p. 172.
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Venezia, L. (2015). The Authority of Law. In: Hobbes on Legal Authority and Political Obligation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137490254_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137490254_3
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