The Rights To Punish and Resist Punishment in Hobbes's Leviathan

Abstract

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 Western Political Quarterly, made incisive critiques of penultimate draft. I alone, of course, am responsible for flaws that remain. This work has been supported by a grant from Research Committee of Academic Senate at 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 [higher powers], resisteth ordinance of God). Hobbes does not mention Romans 13:1-7 in vicinity of his declarations of right to resist (cf. Lev, 42, 100, 308 [589]). 2 Where it is said that the essence [of a body politic] . . . is not-resistance of members (II, i, 18); see also Elements (El), II, i, 7. On a relevant difference between De Cive (DC) and Elements, see note 52, below. Tuck (1979: 119-30) traces emergence of right to resist in Hobbes's texts.