Search

The most influential justification of individual property rights is the Propertarian Argument. It is the idea that the institution of private property renders everyone better off, and crucially, even the worst-off members of society. A recent critique of the Argument is that it relies on an anthropologically false hypothesis – the idea, following Thomas Hobbes, that life in the state of nature is one of widespread scarcity and violence to which property rights are a solution. The present article seeks to reformulate this Anthropological Objection in a way that more directly addresses Hobbes' original argument. It then shows that private property is justified to the extent that it allows anyone to reclaim their free time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines one often overlooked aspect of Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics : the analogy he makes between firms and states. Specifically, I contrast this 'states as firms' analogy adopted by Waltz with the state of nature analogy that has often been attributed to him. I make three separate but interrelated claims: (1) the state of nature analogy is not only different from the states as firms analogy, but may also be an inappropriate one for structural realism in the sense that it fails to account for some of the theory's key theses; (2) the states as firms analogy helps us to better understand, if not to fully embrace, how Waltz arrives at certain central premises of his theory; and (3) the states as firms analogy provides a more comprehensive account of dynamic effects of the international system, including the transformation of state attributes that would have been neglected by those who subscribe to the state of nature analogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cumhuriyet Üniversitesi Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi is the property of University of Cumhuriyet, Faculty of Sciences & Arts and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses is the property of Universidad de La Laguna and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper corrects a historical injustice that has been perpetrated against Kant for some time now. Mostly on good grounds, Kantian ethics has been accused of neglecting the role played by the emotions in moral deliberation and in morally informed action. However, the contemporary moral philosophers who have put forth such a claim tend to bypass textual sources, on the one hand, and to downplay the role played by the anthropological writings on Kant’s practical philosophy as a whole, on the other. Relying on highly relevant pre-critical texts in which Kant sketches future argumentative patterns and discusses the role of a negative emotion like shame on the improvement of the human species, I address a mistaken conclusion about Kantian ethics as a whole that is common in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. I also raise paradoxical conclusions that follow from Kant’s argument, once its implicit premises have been brought to light. I conclude that Kant did indeed think seriously about a so-called ‘shame-instinct’, however much his central ideas diverge from contemporary readings of the emotion, and fall short of fulfilling the ultimate target one can assume his insights would be drawing at

Locke bases his moral and political philosophy on his doctrine of the 'law of nature'. Scholars have debated the content and grounding of this law and its relationship to Christian theology. The ambiguities of the Lockean natural law's content are traceable to an unclear grammatical construction in a crucial passage of the Treatises of Government, which can be resolved by following out a related set of arguments in that work. The ambiguities of the Lockean natural law's grounding can then be resolved by the hypothesis, strongly supported by textual evidence, that Locke relies tacitly on the reasoning of a parallel passage in Hobbes. Lockean natural law rests on neither atheistic nor specifically Christian premises but on a hypothetical natural theology. Locke's conclusions from that natural theology represent an attempt to follow out Hobbesian logic while also tightening it up on one important point on which Hobbes himself appears to vacillate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Michel Serres's natural contract is not merely a proposal for an alternative legal or political paradigm. It offers something deeper: a new imaginary to unsettle and confront the deep assumptions of classical social contract theories and their retrojected justification: the state of nature. The argument of this article is that Serres systematically unpicks the conditions of possibility of the contractual paradigm in the modern social imaginary, replacing them with an original noise, a primacy of parasitic relationships and a telos of symbiosis. This reframes the natural contract as the visible profile of a comprehensive social and natural imaginary that radically refigures society and ecology otherwise than on the basis of primacy of reciprocal exchange relationships between self-sufficient individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with Thomas Hobbes' conception of the state of nature. Deviating from its interpretation as a logically indispensable hypothesis for the purpose of the individualist-contractualist legitimation of the state, the article directs the discussion away from the question of the state of nature's status within Hobbes' anthropological or legal framework and towards the issue of where and what kind of evidence for this narrative is supposed to be found. If one interrogates this narrative in epistemological terms, an interpretative perspective is opened up in which ordinary forms of competitive and exploitative behaviour as well as of unmediated rule are of central importance, and the consideration of the state of nature as both a situational-relational and gradual concept is made possible as well as necessary. This contribution not only shows how such interpretative possibility is substantiated by the primary sources, but also asks how it relates to Hobbes' own reflections on knowledge and scientific method. It is shown that what is crucial here is not the distinction between empirical and idealist approach, but the one between two kinds of experience, the second of which corresponds to a nominalist view of knowledge about politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We approach law with deep ambivalence. On the one hand, we take immense pride in living under the rule of law. On the other hand, we often catch ourselves lamenting the existence of law. When we lament the existence of law, we are not just saying that there is too much of it. We are not just complaining about the amount of law. Rather, our complaint goes to the very nature of law itself. We complain that its rules are constraining, that its generality ignores the particularity of each situation, that its coercive force rides roughshod over our autonomy, and the list goes on. However, notwithstanding the frustration with law, it is not that we want to get rid of it. This paper seeks to express and explain our conflicting sentiments about law – why we sometimes view law as a monumental moral achievement and why we are sometimes so frustrated with it. The answer, as this paper will argue, lies in the nature of norms. The value and limit of law is traceable to the value and limit of norms. Kierkegaard helps us see that. This paper will argue that our ambivalence about law mirrors Kierkegaard's ambivalence about ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annals of Philosophy / Roczniki Filozoficzne is the property of John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Faculty of Philosophy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper corrects a historical injustice that has been perpetrated against Kant for some time now. Mostly on good grounds, Kantian ethics has been accused of neglecting the role played by the emotions in moral deliberation and in morally informed action. However, the contemporary moral philosophers who have put forth such a claim tend to bypass textual sources, on the one hand, and to downplay the role played by the anthropological writings on Kant's practical philosophy as a whole, on the other. Relying on highly relevant pre-critical texts in which Kant sketches future argumentative patterns and discusses the role of a negative emotion like shame on the improvement of the human species, I address a mistaken conclusion about Kantian ethics as a whole that is common in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. I also raise paradoxical conclusions that follow from Kant's argument, once its implicit premises have been brought to light. I conclude that Kant did indeed think seriously about a so-called 'shame-instinct', however much his central ideas diverge from contemporary readings of the emotion, and fall short of fulfilling the ultimate target one can assume his insights would be drawing at. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democracy is upheld through the principle of majority rule. To validate the application of democracy, it is imperative to assess the sincerity of voter decisions. When voter sincerity is compromised, manipulation may occur, thereby undermining the legitimacy of democratic processes. This paper presents a general version of a symmetric dichotomous choice model. Using simple majority rule, we show that when a voter receives one or more private signals, sincere voting is an equilibrium behavior. A slight change to this basic model may create an incentive to vote insincerely. We show that even in a more restricted model where every voter receives only one private signal whose level of precision is the same for all the voters but depends on the state of nature, voters may have an incentive to vote insincerely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Politische Theorie is the property of Verlag Barbara Budrich GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper connects Hobbes the political philosopher with Kierkegaard the existentialist philosopher through the prism of the state of nature. It compares Kierkegaard's account of the emergence of ethical norms from the aesthetic stage of life with Hobbes's account of the emergence of legal norms from the state of nature. The paper argues that the transition from the state of nature to the state of civil society involves, not only a change of state, but also a transformation of self. This view of the relationship between the self and the state sees the Hobbesian state through the lens of the Kierkegaardian self. An internal change takes place within the self when we move from the state of nature to the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the various statements related to the political philosophy of the Laozi《老子》, Chapter 80 is distinguished by its particular depiction of what may be dubbed an ideal state. By examining the viewpoints of various authors in both English and Chinese works, the chapter will be analyzed and compared with three concepts independently discussed in political philosophy: (1) the call for returning to the past, also referred to as nostalgia; (2) utopianism; and (3) the state of nature. It is probably more than evident that the ideal state is at least reminiscent of these theories. Despite the possible and hypothetical similarities, however, this article will attempt to show that it is acceptable to claim that there is neither sufficient evidence nor support for the argument that the Laozi advocates returning to the past, proposes utopia, or describes a state of nature, and, moreover, that some of its statements are not completely adequate for such interpretations. The thesis that this article will support is that the ideal state is only a metaphorical description of a better world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long before Thomas Hobbes wrote systematic works on political philosophy, he produced the first English translation of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War directly from Greek. Published in 1629, it was a result of several of his formative years spent in Thucydides' close company. Starting from the premise that such an experience could have informed Hobbes's own ideas to a certain extent, this article tries to establish points of connection between Thucydides' text and Hobbes's conception of the state of nature. The aim is to identify ideas that might be at work behind different aspects of one of the focal points of Hobbes's political thought. The analysis begins with Thucydides' Archaeology depicting the manner of life of the ancient Hellenes; moves to 'the three greatest things' that, working on both individual and collective levels, impelled Athens to build an Empire and consequently trigger the war with Sparta; subsequently turns to the disintegration of Corcyraean polis during stasis; and in the end engages with the same problem that in Athens was caused by the plague. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions about politics and human power, including discussions about the concept of the state, have been a discussion that has been going on since Greek times until the time of the growth of Islamic philosophy. The overemphasis on the power of reason led early modern Western societies to reject religion in all political discourse. At this stage, all views of man, power, the constitution, and the state eventually ceased to be associated with God. On the other hand, especially among Muslims, religion is still connected with discussions of politics and human power. This paper will reveal how secularization in political thought grew and developed through principles such as the state of nature and the social contract. Then, based on the thought of one of the influential Muslim scholars, Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas, the author tries to provide a critique of the views of Western thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and other philosophers, by presenting the concept of the ideal state form derived from the concept of tamaddun formulated by Al-Attas. This research is literature review research using the descriptive method. The findings of this research show that secularization is a product purely born by Western secular thinkers and not taken from any religious teachings, so Western political concepts cannot always be applied, especially in Muslim societies.

Critical approaches to the canon of Western political and legal thought from the point of view of race or gender have developed in recent years, as have studies highlighting the connections between supposedly universalist philosophies and their role in sustaining or legitimizing imperial and colonial conquests. On social contract theory in particular, seminal works include Charles Mills' The Racial Contract and Carole Pateman's The Sexual Contract. The importance of this type of work cannot be understated, and Mills is right to insist on the "blinding whiteness of the discipline." In the case of Hobbes, I argue, the privilege established in his texts is better qualified as "civilizational" rather than "racial." Hobbes's texts construct a certain image of civilization, a form of exclusion and domination that eschews biological determinism in favor of social, historical bias. This "civilizational" thinking certainly can work – and will work later on in conjunction with modern racism and white privilege – to exclude many. The racial contract – as per Mills – is only a late installment on a more fundamental one, the civilizing contract. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper questions Waldow reading of Rousseau's 'Letter to M D'Alembert' [Letter]. It claims that Waldow fails to address the social and political argument that lies behind Rousseau's critique of the theatre and, as a result, her conclusions are misplaced. First, Rousseau does not seek to quench critique rather his aim is to show that the theatre distracts us from our real concerns in life and thus quells discontent and, indeed, the possibility of dissent. Second, Rousseau does not refer to the naturally intact morals of the Genevans but argues that the Genevans are closer to the state of nature and thus less corrupt. Finally, his account of the state of nature in the Letter is not at odds with his own views about the state of nature. Just as in his other writings, he uses the state of nature as a heuristic device to justify his claim that social relations give rise to vice and virtue. It is a necessary fiction that provides us with the principle of hope that things could be otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thomas Hobbes’s England was deeply troubled by the successive plague visitations regularly occurring in the late 16th and 17th centuries. The catastrophic outbreak in 1625 found Hobbes working on the first ever direct translation of Thucydides’ History from Greek to English. This fact allows for the supposition that Hobbes paid special attention to Thucydides’ masterful account of the plague at Athens and its social and political consequences. These circumstances authorise the here proposed enquiry into the relation between Hobbes’s understanding of the state of nature in Leviathan and the epidemics, mediated by his experience of the plague and the translation of the plague narrative in Thucydides’ History. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to consider a series of politico-symbolic aspects in a specific politicized dystopia of the twentieth century: Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding (1911–1993). This analysis is paired with a brief overview of the relationship between utopian fictions and politics.

Long before Prospect Theory and Loss Aversion Theory, Thomas Hobbes's account of self-interest and risk assessment formed the basis of a powerful argument for the benefits of negative appeals. Dismissing the pursuit of highest and final goods as inherently incapable of yielding collective action, Hobbes proposed a method focusing instead on the highest evil, something that individuals with different goals could agree on as a barrier to their respective pursuits. In his own theory, that evil was violent death in the dystopian setting of his notorious state of nature. The staying power of Hobbes's memorable image itself validates Hobbes's rationale and offers important reminders regarding the limits of utopian appeals to collective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In my paper, I will argue that, although it is common knowledge that Hobbes and Locke strongly and openly disagree about the desirable form of government, and equally have different description of the state of nature, the careful reader might notice that after all the needed qualifications are added and the colours of persuasion removed (i.e. the violence of homo homini lupus for Hobbes and the idyllic peace and abundance of resources for Locke), the state of nature à la Hobbes is not significantly different from the state of nature à la Locke. Which makes room for the subsequent question that I plan to address here: if the starting point is in both cases (almost) the same, how could the desired (and somehow resulting) forms of government be so different? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I argue that Thomas Hobbes's theory of the "state of nature" should be understood as describing a thoroughly political situation. Hobbes's exemplification of the state of nature by resorting to the "savages" of America should be taken in its ultimately paradoxical character, one that puts in question the stark opposition between a prepolitical natural state and the properly political state resulting from the "social contract." Through the lenses of ethnographic studies and anthropological theory, I propose a reinterpretation of Hobbes's characterization of the state of nature as a state of war. In the first section, I present my interpretation of Hobbes's understanding of war, arguing that war is characterized not by actual battle but by the uncertainty of conflict, already entailing a social dimension to it. In the second section, I engage with Pierre Clastres's theory of the society against the State to discuss how, for Amerindian peoples, war not only has a social character but is itself the basis of sociality. In the last section, I discuss Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's theory of potential affinity to propose that Hobbes's state of nature is also a form of schematization of alterity as enmity. I conclude by showing how this provides an understanding of peace as a precarious situation, one that is the outcome of ethical practices ultimately independent from the State. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thomas Hobbes, like other early modern social contract theorists, has been accused of promoting racist views in his philosophy – ideas used to justify European imperialism and the devastation of Indigenous peoples. I argue that his philosophy does not assume or promote a naturalized racial hierarchy. I demonstrate that the logic of Hobbes's project requires rejecting a racially essentialist conception of human nature. His is a thoroughgoing and unrepentant anti-essentialism; he claims that there are no objective, immutable, necessary differences between 'civilized' people and 'savages.' Instead, I locate Hobbes's bias in his reliance on culturally-specific notions of government. Finally, I suggest that the Hobbes's natural law requirement of 'acknowledging' equality can be applied to questions about race. Though this was not its purpose, this requirement might provide a useful – and distinctively Hobbesian – tool to combat the impulse behind the problematic and persistent desire to find 'real' differences among racial groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is it anachronistic to talk about racism in Hobbes? After all, racism is usually seen as biological: the disliked group must have innate characteristics which are inherited biologically. This is mostly said to be a modern idea. Yet biological racism can be found in medieval and early modern times, as with the Spanish doctrine of limpieza de sangre (cleanliness/purity of blood). Racism, including biological racism, was much more common in Hobbes's England than we might think, including in texts he may have read; the language of race was hardly uncommon either. Moreover, someone can be called a racist whether or not their dislike of a group is based on characteristics of a group that are inherited biologically, I argue. Whether Hobbes was a racist remains open to debate; this paper offers evidence both for and against that proposition. But we should not reject the question of Hobbes's racism as anachronistic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bajo Palabra: Journal of Philosophy is the property of Bajo Palabra: Journal of Philosophy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The intellectual property theory of Kenneth E. Himma aims to vindicate natural rights to the "intellectual content of creations", which is believed to consist of abstract objects. Himma proposes a reformulation of John Locke's well-known argument in terms of value. He maintains that even if abstract objects preexist their alleged creation, then they are not yet ready for consumption until the access to them is provided by the labor of innovators and artists. He declares that making them available is an act of value creation that justifies granting intellectual property rights. In this paper several assumptions on which Himma's theory relies are identified and challenged. Against his claims, it is argued that no human labor can improve the availability of abstract objects. It is then demonstrated that "intellectual commons" cannot be "stocked" by human activities and that the alleged value creation cannot happen, because the concept of value is inapplicable to abstract objects. This derails Himma's IP justification. Finally the meaning of rights envisaged by Himma is investigated. It is shown that they cannot be exercised with respect to causally inert entities.

The literature on International Relations theory has yet to align relational theory with role theory, despite the fact that these two theories share so much epistemological common ground. This article uses role theory to bridge the gap between the Confucian and Western conceptions of relationality, whose practitioners regard each other as strangers. With the support of role theory, the comparative analysis of relationality in this article has mainly focused on two different types of relations: prior rule-based relations and improvised relations. The differences in the cultural preparation for these two relations partially explain the plurality of the relational universe and the perception of stranger. Role theory is one way to reconnect the seemingly irreconcilable relational universes. To illustrate the value of a composite agenda of relational theory and role theory, the article will use Kim Jong-un of North Korea as its case. Confucian relations propose that, for all nations, the necessity of having a certain role relation is a more important agenda than insisting on exactly what role to take. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robinson Crusoe is a mythic character who lives not only in the popular imaginary but through the history of political and social thought. Defoe's protagonist lives marooned on his island, isolated and apart from society. The narrative is a perfect naturalisation of the 'bourgeois' world, dependent on an ontology of the self-sufficient individual. This article analyses this lineage in the social contract theory of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. Later, Hegel used the novel to illustrate his dialectic of mastery/servitude. Challenging the atomism of the state of nature, Hegel's theory of recognition gives an account of positive freedom, where the individual is formed in and through social interdependence. This sociality is continued by Marx, who satirises Defoe's novel in his value-form critique of political economy. The value-form provides insight into Robinson's island labour and Marx's difference with Locke's labour theory of value. For Marx, the myth of 'natural man' hides the domination of capitalist development and Robinson Crusoe reflects the internalisation of the abstract rationality of commodity society. However, Marx's immanent critique of the novel points to a radical idea of social life and freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to consider a series of politico-symbolic aspects in a specific politicized dystopia of the twentieth century: Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding (1911-1993). This analysis is paired with a brief overview of the relationship between utopian fictions and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Walking Dead is a popular TV series depicting a catastrophic and violent world. After a pandemic that turns humans into zombies, we witness the collapse of civilization with all its institutions, the depletion of the resources, and the struggle to build a new world in the middle of the wars between surviving groups. It illustrates a world of literal and metaphorical homo homini lupus. Some people choose sheer survival, and others try to build a moral, civil world. In this article, I propose a reading of this series from a Kantian perspective by employing his interrelated ideas on history, ethics, and politics. I claim that The Walking Dead represents the state of nature and the violence it contains, and illustrates the course of history toward a civil society as defined by Kant.

This study deals with the political theory of Thomas Hobbes and its implications to the political dynamism in Indonesia. The aim of this research is to analyze the philosophical concept of Hobbes on human rights and the theory of liberalism, and its relevance to the current situation in Indonesia, which has recently been exposed to the politics of populism. The presence of the populist movement is not new in Indonesia; but the rise of the politics of identity, it could threaten the protection of human rights and liberal democracy. We utilize the methodology of text analysis based on Hobbes’s original writing, Leviathan, and his other political treatises to explore his account on human rights and liberalism, and then employ Hobbes’s thoughts to investigate the phenomenon of populism. We divide the study into two sections, the first deals with the philosophy of human rights which Hobbes elucidates in the perspective of his hypothetical notion of the state of nature, the concept of authority, and his theory of liberalism; the second discusses populism in Indonesia today. The study found that the concept of human rights and liberalism would lead to awareness of mutual respect in society, while the populist movement becomes a real challenge to the implementation of human rights and the development of liberal democracy. The philosophy of human rights is in accordance with the political dynamism of Indonesian society. On the contrary, the populist movement could possibly plunge the country into a conflictual precipice of religious, racial-regional, and socio-political identities.

This article identifies an argument in Hobbes's writings often overlooked but relevant to current philosophical debates. Political philosophers tend to categorize his thought as representing consent or rescue theories of political authority. Though these interpretations have textual support and are understandable, they leave out one of his most compelling arguments – what we call the lesser evil argument for political authority, expressed most explicitly in Chapter 20 of Leviathan. Hobbes frankly admits the state's evils but appeals to the significant disparity between those evils and the greater evils outside the state as a basis for political authority. More than a passing observation, aspects of the lesser evil argument appear in each of his three major political works. In addition to outlining this argument, the article examines its significance both for Hobbes scholarship and recent philosophical debates on political authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waiting for Godot and Endgame are rich in terms of interaction between characters and their surrounding contexts. The present paper examines these interactions according to the mathematical theory of games proposed by Steven J. Brams in Divine Games: Game Theory and the Undecidability of a Superior Being. The framework of Search Decision is used to examine the differences between the two plays in terms of interaction between the "state of nature" and Person, which provides a clear understanding of the reasons behind strategies characters may take within uncertain environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Game theory has proven useful in clarifying Hobbes’s argument that the state of nature will inevitably devolve into a state of war. Mathematically-leaning philosophers, however, have paid little attention to Rousseau’s depiction of the state of nature as a peaceful, asocial state of solitary wanderers. This paper articulates Rousseau’s critique of Hobbes in formal terms, which pinpoints two crucial issues in Hobbes’s account: the lack of an exit option and an unrealistic depiction of human nature. Building upon recent game-theoretic treatments of Hobbes, we first construct a model that incorporates Rousseau’s criticisms by permitting an exit option and (partly) endogenizing human preferences and capacities. Second, we draw out the implications of Rousseau’s analysis for the question of political authority, which cannot be answered, as Hobbes believed, by invoking a hypothetical state of nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Locke rejected anarchism. Locke defended the universal necessity of political governments on the grounds that the state of nature will occasionally generate the inconveniences of war. The standard interpretation of Locke identifies three main causes of war in the state of nature: the lack of a common judge, moral disagreement over the law of nature, and self-love. In this paper, I argue that the combination of these three factors does not guarantee that war will occur in every plausible scenarios of Locke’s state of nature. Instead, in order for war to occur at least sometimes in every plausible scenario of Locke’s state of nature, there has to be some sort of epistemic deficit. In this paper, I show via the tools of modern game theory, how Locke’s state of nature may occasionally generate war by two kinds of epistemic problems implied by Locke’s own epistemology: (a) disagreements in subjective probabilities, and (b) uncertainty in other people’s moral motivation to use force to enforce the law of nature. The fact that war occurs primarily because of such epistemic problems suggests a role for a very limited form of government; namely, the ultra-ultra-minimal state, whose role is confined to solving such epistemic problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Locke’un Hükümet Üzerine İki İnceleme adlı eserindeki; iktidarın kaynağının toplum olduğuna dair toplum sözleşmesi hipotezi ve bu hipotezi açıklarken oluşturduğu ihtilal teorisi, insan haklarının(tabii hukukun) yıllar süren mücadelesinin zafere ulaşmasına büyük katkıda bulunmuştur. Bu hipoteze göre Locke’un tabiat halindeki insanı; sosyal, ahlaklı ve akıl yoluyla kavradığı tabiat kanunlarının güdümünde, barış içinde yaşayan insandır. Devletleşmemiş bu nitelikteki insan topluluğu, kısmi çatışmalar ile bozulan barışın yani insanların tabii hukuka uymalarının teminatı ve cezalandırmanın kurumsallaştırılması amacıyla, toplum sözleşmesinin neticesinde devleti oluşturmuştur. İnsanlar devleti kurarken yalnızca cezalandırma yetkisini devlete devretmiş, tabii haklarını ise saklı tutmuşlardır. Tarihi gerçekler, Locke’un tabiat haline dair düşüncelerini kanıtlar niteliktedir. Lakin toplum sözleşmesi açısından, bazı istisnalar hariç aynı kanıya varmak mümkün değildir. Tabiat hali ve toplum sözleşmesinin günümüzdeki benzerleri uluslararası insan hakları metinleri ve yeni kurulan devletlerin kurucu anayasalarıdır. Locke’a göre sonraki insanlar, atalarının devleti kurarken yaptıkları toplum sözleşmesi ile bağlı tutulamazlar. Ancak açık olarak toplum sözleşmesine rızasını açıklayan kişiler, devletin uyrukluğundan çıkamayacaklardır. Modern dünyada ise toplum sözleşmesini reddederek tabiat haline dönüş mümkün görünmemektedir. Locke’un “olması gereken” devleti; kuvvetler ayrılığına ve genel iradeye dayanan, çoğunlukçu demokrasiye sahip, liberal bir hukuk devletidir. Locke’a göre tabii hakların tamamen devredildiği despotik iktidarlar, rızai iktidar olamayacaklarından meşru da değillerdir ve bunlara direnmek insanlık için bir ödevdir.

This paper explores the relationship between private and common property. It starts with the state of nature, works its way through Roman law, and finishes with a discussion of the application of these principles in a modern context. It explains how the intensification of property use often leads to the need for a public trust doctrine for common pool assets, and explains why long and skinny assets have single dedicated uses, chiefly for communication and transportation which enable them to link together productive property sites used for residence, manufacture, and farming. These long and skinny assets have a large perimeter relative to area, which makes them difficult to defend on the one side, and often exposes them to multiple legal regimes with inconsistent commands. It deals with such specific issues as the distinction between alluvion and avulsion, and offers a detailed analysis of the difficulty of permitting oil and gas pipelines in the United States.

This article examines the social intelligence of the first three seasons of the American television series Fargo, based on the Coen brothers' 1996 film and broadcast on the FX channel from 2014 to 2017. These three seasons have a common schematic structure despite the anthological format of the series, which is supposed to guarantee their narrative independence. In each of these seasons, a large Mafia company decides to expand at the expense of a family production unit. The Reagan revolution of the 1980s unleashed desires for appropriation in the crude form of predation, and the stakes of securing capital became vital for the targeted entrepreneurs. These analogical recurrences from one season to the next testify to a meticulous work of serial exploration of the great American mythologies, and in particular of social Darwinism, which represents the economy as a biotope structured by trophic networks and homo œconomicus as an animal. To this permanent interweaving of the registers of economics, biology and war, the series classically opposes a moral resourcing of American capitalism in its original Protestant ethic, but also proposes a far more radical political critique of economic ultra-liberalism.

The paper addresses Locke's political implications in the theory of fiduciary powers presented in the Second Treatise on Government. I proceed by analysing Locke's conception of natural rights in the state of nature as well as his conception of property in accordance with its different articulations (particularly the idea of the private ownership of an acquired object). I reconstruct the logic of the social contract theory and the foundation of the modern bourgeois (liberal) state. The paper concludes by showing the limits of Locke's minimalist conception of the state. It argues that the original placing of the civil society in the state of nature prevents the recognition of a conflictual and dynamical composition of class interests whose mediation is the proper task of politics at the parliamentary level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Active learning—and gaming, in particular—is now a well-established part of many political science courses. First, we discuss the design and implementation of a "Gateway Game", a pedagogical tool with broad applicability and test its effectiveness in increasing student motivation, satisfaction, and learning. Crucially, we provide instructors with all the tools necessary to run the game in their classroom to experience this for themselves. Second, using surveys of classroom participants, we show that the game increases student satisfaction, motivation, and learning, suggesting that this game comprises an exciting entry point for learning in many environments. Third, we describe how this game can be integrated into a variety of courses and subfields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines how entrenched ideas such as 'state of nature' and 'traditional societies', as outlined primarily in the political thought of liberal imperialists such as John Locke and Henry Maine, cause modern colonial and post-colonial states to enforce a 'limit of the political'. It argues that such a limit of the political excludes from the political domain imaginaries of collective life shaped by communities that came to be categorised as tribal. By marking the influence of these categories on British parliamentary debates on Schedule VI of the Government of India Act, 1935, the arguments of Gopinath Bardoloi and his Sub-Committee Report on the 'Excluded Areas' of Assam, and on the Constituent Assembly Debates of India on 'Excluded Areas' and 'Partially Excluded Areas' in India, this paper demonstrates that a 'limit of the political' came to be enforced by the legal creation and maintenance of 'murky boundaries'. It defines murky boundaries as non-dichotomous boundaries drawn between both people and areas to demarcate the gradated manner in which those the modern state categorises as tribes are included, partially excluded, and excluded altogether from the political. This paper argues that such murky boundaries were created so that the state could organise its standoffishness towards routine administration, standardisation, and legibility of its diverse tribal subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Istvan Hont's classic work on the theoretical links between the seventeenth-century natural jurists Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf and the eighteenth-century Scottish political economists remains a popular trope among intellectual and economic historians of various stamps. Despite this, a common criticism levelled at Hont remains his relative lack of engagement with the relationship between religion and economics in the early modern period. This paper challenges this aspect of Hont's narrative by drawing attention to an alternative, albeit complementary, assessment of the natural jurisprudential heritage of eighteenth-century British political economy. Specifically, the article attempts to map on to Hont's thesis the Christian Stoic interpretation of Grotius and Pufendorf which has gained greater currency in recent years. In doing so, the paper argues that Grotius and Pufendorf's contributions to the 'unsocial sociability' debate do not necessarily lead directly to the Scottish school of political economists, as is commonly assumed. Instead, it contends that a reconsideration of Grotius and Pufendorf as neo-Stoic theorists, particularly via scrutiny of their respective adaptations of the traditional Stoic theory of oikeiosis, steers us towards the heart of the early English 'clerical' Enlightenment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]