Hobbes and the Right to Punish
On The Right to Punish in Leviathan: A Defence of Hobbes from his Critics
Chapter XXVIII of Leviathan, Of Punishments, and Rewards, has no parallel in Hobbes’ previous political works[1] and has attracted surprisingly little critical attention.[2] Yet the chapter is indispensible to Hobbes’ project of establishing that all legitimate sovereign power is both absolute and yet grounded in the consent of the ruled.[3] To see this recall that Hobbes’ sovereign wields the public sword so as to keep men in awe, ensuring that they obey the civil laws and thus escape the nasty, brutish state of nature (the infamous bellum omnium contra omnes), securing commodious living and the many benefits of peace. Yet for this to be possible the sovereign must have the right to enforce laws and that requires the right, as well as the ability, to punish transgressors. Furthermore this right to punish must itself be consistent with Hobbes’ project of demonstrating that all legitimate power is based on consent.[4] Establishing the sovereign’s right to punish is therefore crucial. If Hobbes fails his Leviathan will be, as one commentator has dramatically alleged, “still-born” ensuring that “there is no sovereign, hence no commonwealth”.[5]
Hobbes offers a definition of punishment at the outset of Chapter XXVIII, yet this rests upon earlier arguments regarding the nature of civil law. This is helpfully illustrated by the distinction drawn between crime and sin given in Chapter XXVII. “A CRIME, is a sinne, consisting in the Committing (by Deed, or Word) of that which the Law forbiddeth, or the Omission of what it hath commanded. So that every Crime is a sinne; but not every sinne a Crime”.[6] Although sin requires mere intention, crime requires actual performance and as a result “where law ceaseth, sin ceaseth”. However because “the Law of Nature is eternal…all facts contrary to moral virtue, can never cease to be a sin”.[7] The possibility of sin is therefore ubiquitous, but what of crime? This applies only to the transgression of actual positive law, which Hobbes identifies with the civil law only (the Laws of Nature being “not properly Lawes, but qualities that dispose men to peace”).[8] Hence “the Civill Law ceasing, Crimes cease: for there being no other Law remaining, but that of Nature, there is no place for Accusation; every man being his own Judge”.[9] Accordingly “when the Sovereign Power ceaseth, Crime also ceaseth”.[10]
This noted we turn to Hobbes’ definition of punishment in Chapter XXVIII:
A PUNISHMENT, is an Evill inflicted by publique Authority on him that hath done or omitted that which is Judged by the same Authority to be a Transgression of the Law; to the end that the will of men may thereby the better be disposed to obedience.[11]
Hobbes’ dictum that punishment is an evil inflicted specifically by “public authority” is not introduced by fiat but rests upon earlier arguments that positive law supposes sovereign power, a conceptual precondition for crime. Correspondingly, there are no punishments in the state of nature but only “private revenges” that cannot “properly be stiled Punishments; because they proceed not from publique Authority”.[12] Hobbes thus ties punishment both definitionally and conceptually to the possession of sovereign power.
Yet immediately Hobbes alerts us to a matter of “much importance”: “by what door the Right, or Authority of Punishing in any case, came in”. His answer has caused consternation, leading milder-mannered commentators to allege contradiction[13] and the more vociferous to proclaim Hobbes’ reasoning a “shambles”[14] or “no solution at all”.[15] It is therefore worth quoting the relevant passage in full:
For by that which has been said before, no man is supposed bound by Covenant, not to resist violence; and consequently it cannot be intended, that he gave any right to another to lay violent hands upon his person. In the making of a Common-wealth, every man giveth away the right of defending another; but not of defending himselfe. Also he obligeth himselfe, to assist him that hath the Soveraignty, in the Punishing of another, but of himself not. But to covenant to assist the Soveraign, in doing hurt to another, unless he that so covenanteth have a right to doe it himself, is not to give him a Right to Punish. It is manifest therefore that the Right which the Common-wealth (that is, he or they that represent it) hath to Punish, is not grounded on any concession, or gift, of the Subjects. But I have also shewed formerly, that before the Institution of Common-wealth, every man had a right to every thing, and to do whatsoever he thought necessary to his own preservation; subduing, hurting, or killing any man in order thereunto. And this is the foundation of that right of Punishing, which is exercised in every Common-wealth. For the Subjects did not give the Sovereign that right, but only in laying down theirs, strengthened him to use his own, as he should think fit, for the preservation of them all: so it was not given, but left to him, and to him only; and (excepting the limits set him by naturall Law) as entire, as in the condition of meer Nature, and of warre of every one against his neighbour.[16]
Hüning believes Hobbes’ claim that the right to punish rests upon subjects’ mutual agreement to renounce immediate exercise of the right of nature reveals a weakness in Hobbes’ rationale that is “quite striking”.[17] He alleges that Hobbes “was wrong in claiming that the ius puniendi ‘was not given but left to the state’ [sic] by the renunciation of the right to all things because natural right in the state of nature is an unlimited right to self preservation” and that accordingly the right to all things “cannot be understood as a competence right to punish because it could not mean having the right to exercise legitimate power over another person. There is thus no way to derive the right to punish on the basis of Hobbes’s theory of the sovereign’s right to all things.”[18]
Yet Hüning’s charge appears ill founded. As we have seen punishment gains conceptual traction for Hobbes only when positive laws have been promulgated by a sovereign power. Given that there is by definition no punishment in the state of nature, the “door” by which the right of punishment “comes in” can open only when sovereign power is established. In other words (and as Hobbes tells us) there can be no pre-societal right to punish which the subjects somehow “gift” to the sovereign.
For sovereign power to be such it must be able to keep men in awe – “covenants without the Sword, are but Words, and of no strength to secure a man at all”[19] – and it is to escape the state of nature where covenants cannot with safety be kept and man’s condition becomes one of war that individuals consent to be ruled by over-awing power.[20] To this end, Hobbes tells us, subjects have made not just an “artificial man”[21] but “artificial chains, called civil laws, which they themselves, by mutual covenants, have fastened at one end to the lips of that man, or assembly, to whom they have given the sovereign power, and at the other to their own ears”.[22] And although the bonds imposed by law are “in their own nature but weak” they “may nevertheless be made to hold, by the danger, though not by the difficulty of breaking them”.[23]
Hobbes’ point is clear: sovereign power and the establishment of laws go hand-in-hand. To secure commodious living requires not simply that artificial man the Leviathan, but artificial chains which have been fastened to men’s ears by their “mutual covenants”. That is the civil laws and their enforcement are authorised by subjects who have consented to the sovereign power – regardless of whether that power be originally by institution or acquisition.[24] Indeed how could it not be so? Hobbes establishes in the pivotal Chapter XVI that “Of Persons Artificial, some have their words and actions Owned by those whom they represent. And then the Person is the Actor; and he that owneth his words and actions, is the Author: In which case the Actor acteth by Authority”. Accordingly “it followeth, that when the Actor maketh a Covenant by Authority, he bindeth the Author no lesse than if he had made it himself; and no lesse subjecteth him to all the consequences of the same”.[25] It is this innovation – absent from the earlier works[26] – that allows Hobbes to make a further dramatic, and essential, claim: that subjects “have authorized all [the sovereign’s] actions, and, in bestowing the sovereign power, made them their own”.[27]
We may now put the pieces together. The Hobbesian sovereign – whether founded by institution or acquisition – is consented-to by its subjects, and is the actor who is authorised by them. For sovereign power to be such it must wield the public sword, enforcing as well as enacting laws so as to keep men in awe and secure commodious living. Punishment, therefore, is a concomitant part of civil law’s being meaningful – as Hobbes tells us, “Of all Passions, that which enclineth men least to break the Lawes is Fear. Nay, (excepting some generous natures,) it is the onely thing”.[28] It is by punishing transgressors that the sovereign is able to make men fearful of breaking the civil laws, rendering strong the “artificial chains”. The right to punish is therefore intimately bound-up with the logic of what a Hobbesian sovereign is, for it is only by having the right to punish that a sovereign can be properly considered such. Unsurprisingly, the outcome of Hobbes’ logic is thereby guaranteed in his favour: subjects authorise the sovereign and in the process authorise the sovereign to enforce civil laws. Put another way, insofar as subjects will the end – to live under sovereign power – they must also will the means – that the sovereign have the “Right, or Authority” to enact and enforce civil laws, which necessitates the right to punish. An authorised sovereign, therefore, just is a sovereign authorised to punish. Hüning is therefore mistaken, for Hobbes clearly identifies by which door the right of punishing comes in: the very same one through which the sovereign passes. Indeed the sovereign’s right to punish enters not simply when the sovereign does, but precisely because the sovereign does.
Yet the right to punish – as Hobbes tells us – cannot exist antecedently to the erection of a commonwealth, nor be transferred by the subjects to the sovereign. Hence the exercise of the right to punish is but an extended use of the right of nature, “the Liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own Nature, that is to say, of his own Life; and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own Judgement and Reason, hee shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto”.[29] Or to summarise, the right of nature is a blameless liberty to do whatever is deemed necessary to survive. Hobbes tells us that when a sovereign power is erected, subjects renounce the immediate exercise of their own rights of nature and instead consent to live under the public sword (as the first and second laws of nature command).[30] Yet because the sovereign remains ex hypothesi above the laws[31] the sovereign eo ipso retains the right of nature – a blameless liberty to do anything and everything deemed necessary by the agent possessed of that liberty.[32] The only difference is that this blameless liberty is now exercised not for the preservation of a single individual, but to promote the protection and commodious living of all. And just as the individual’s right of nature in the state of nature includes the use of violence, the extended right of nature of the authorised sovereign includes whatever is deemed necessary to enforce civil laws – even the use of “violent hands” for inflicting “Evill” upon law-breakers.
Hobbes cleared of Hüning’s charge and his account of the right to punish brought into focus, a defence can be provided against Norrie’s claim that Hobbes’ account renders “the institution of the Commonwealth…a self-defeating proposition”.[33] Norrie’s conclusion rests upon the construction of two separate arguments he claims to have identified in Leviathan. The first is the account of authorising the Sovereign to punish, as given above. But against this Norrie believes Hobbes advances another, incompatible, argument from the inalienability of individuals’ rights of nature.
Hobbes tells us that “no man is supposed bound by Covenant, not to resist violence; and consequently it cannot be intended, that he gave any right to another to lay violent hands upon his person”[34] and that “Whensoever a man Transfereth his Right, or Renounceth it; it is either in consideration of some Right reciprocally transferred to himself, or for some other good he hopeth thereby”.[35] Hobbes is clear that men do not renounce their rights of nature when entering civil society, but simply suspend their immediate exercise of it. In situations of physical and mortal danger the right of nature is retained to do whatever is deemed necessary to survive. From this Norrie argues that: “Punishment…is the infliction of evil, and so it could not be the case that the individual would give the sovereign the right to inflict it upon him”.[36] But is this correct?
We must focus upon Hobbes’ claim that “it cannot be intended, that [an individual] gave any right to another to lay violent hands upon his person”. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, Hobbes believes that men only ever aim at their own perceived best interest.[37] A man’s will is the last act of his deliberation, and that is determined by the strength of his relevant appetites and aversions.[38] Correspondingly: “of the voluntary acts of every man, the object is some Good to himselfe”.[39] Excluding the minimally problematic case of S&M thrill-seekers, violence is treated with aversion by human beings; on Hobbes’ psychology one could not consistently intend for another to inflict violence upon one’s person. One would not, in full consciousness, ever transfer any right to lay “violent hands”. Secondly, the fact that individuals always retain the right of nature means that no right to lay violent hands can truly be transferred: I cannot transfer a right for you to inflict violence upon me because as soon as you begin that violence I will inevitably resist, meaning my original rights-transfer was no such thing.
Yet this is not the situation regarding the sovereign’s right to punish. Firstly, Hobbes is clear that no right to punish is actually transferred by the subjects. Secondly the situation vis-à-vis punishment is not one of simple rights-transfers in any case. Rather, it is to accept that authorising the sovereign entails authorisation to inflict punishment on those who transgress promulgated laws. The situation is thus of subjects knowing that if they break the sovereign’s laws then the authorised sovereign will retaliate with violent hands. Is this consistent with Hobbes’ psychological account and his view of rights transfers? Manifestly so: it is only by authorising the punishing Sovereign that men can secure commodious living, which is in their own best interests. Furthermore, subjects do not straightforwardly authorise the sovereign to punish them simpliciter – it is conditional upon their first breaking laws that the sovereign promulgates and upholds with the public sword, thereby allowing individuals to escape the state of nature. We must here recall Hobbes’ point that “though a man may covenant thus, Unless I do so, or so, kill me; he cannot Covenant thus, Unless I do so, or so, I will not resist you, when you come to kill me”.[40] There is no doubt that individuals retain a right of resistance if the sovereign comes to lay violent hands upon them (“every man giveth away the right of defending another; but not of defending himself”), yet this betrays no contradiction in Hobbes’ thought. It is in each individual’s best interest to authorise a sovereign who is ipso facto a sovereign with punishing power (“unless I do so, or so, kill me”). But if that sovereign comes to punish any individual, their right of nature guarantees a right of resistance (“he cannot covenant…I will not resist you”). There is certainly conflict (of rights), but there is no contradiction.
Ristroph’s recent account – likewise alleging that Hobbes falls into “contradiction” – can now be considered, being at root much the same as Norrie’s: that although the sovereign is authorised by the subjects, the inalienability of the right of nature means individuals cannot authorise the sovereign to punish them.[41] Ristroph accordingly interprets Hobbes as claiming that subjects authorise the sovereign to punish others, but not themselves.[42] Yet given the above reply to Norrie we see that Hobbes is not committed to Ristroph’s alleged contradiction, and against her repeated claim that “the criminal himself has not authorised his own punishment” we recall that Hobbes tells us the express opposite.[43] As noted above, subjects “have authorized all [the sovereign’s] actions, and, in bestowing the sovereign power, made them their own”. Indeed, Hobbes tells us that even rebels authorise their own punishment: “if he that attempteth to depose his Sovereign, be killed, or punished by him for such attempt, he is author of his own punishment, as being by the Institution, Author of all his Sovereign shall do”.[44] Certainly when the sovereign comes to lay violent hands upon the rebels they can (and will) resist – but their punishment is authorised by themselves, insofar as they authorised the sovereign. Again we have conflict – between the right of nature of the punished and that of the punishing sovereign – but this does not constitute contradiction. Rather it is a coherent consequence of Hobbes’ startling claim that men authorise all their Sovereign does, including the punishing of lawbreakers. It is by understanding this that Chapter XXVIII’s significance can come properly into focus – with dramatic consequences.
Hobbes is clear that punishment should be inflicted only for its efficacy as a deterrent (“to the end that the will of men may thereby the better be disposed to obedience”).[45] Violence for the sake of vengeance is “hostility”, violating the seventh law of nature that revenges look only to future peace.[46] Yet as sovereign duty includes the promotion of peace, there is strictly nothing to prevent the sovereign laying violent hands upon even the innocent, should it be calculated that this best promotes peace. Certainly Hobbes tells us in line with the first, fourth and ninth laws of nature that the sovereign will never punish the innocent because allegedly this can never promote peace.[47] Yet Hobbes’ assurances are contingent upon both the sovereign always realising this, and it being always true – which is unlikely; imagine the innocent man hanged to appease the baying mob preparing to burn down the capital. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that the sovereign will (always) obey the laws of nature; after all such “laws” are but theorems of reason, mere qualities that dispose men to peace. Accordingly subjects have – by virtue of the sovereign’s absolute power, standing above civil law – no legal redress, no ultimate right of remonstrance, should the sovereign lay violent hands upon the innocent. Indeed, as subjects are author of all their sovereign does, they will be authors even of hostility against innocents.
This is the dramatic upshot of Hobbes’ right to punish, and of which he was perfectly aware. For he closes Chapter XXVIII with reference to nothing less than the Book of Job “where God having set forth the great power of Leviathan, calleth him King of the Proud.”[48] Just as the innocent Job must endure the travails cast upon him by the immortal God, Hobbesian subjects must accept, as by their own authorship, whatever hardships that “mortal God Leviathan”[49] visits upon them – a final inalienable right of physical resistance notwithstanding.
[1] In the Elements of Law Hobbes makes scattered references to punishment, for example with regards to rebellion, but the subject receives no sustained treatment (see Hobbes 1994). In De Cive Hobbes refers to punishment specifically on just two occasions (Hobbes 1997, p.49, pp.61-2).
[2] A brief review of the secondary literature reveals only five articles offering a sustained discussion of the topic. This essay focuses upon Hüning 2007, Norrie 1984 and Ristroph 2009. Cattaneo 1965 offers a basic exposition of Hobbes’ Chapter XXVIII, before comparing this to later accounts of punishment offered by Bentham and Beccaria, and is correspondingly of minimal interest to the contemporary Hobbes scholar. Schrock 1991 offers an extremely detailed discussion of Leviathan and Hobbes’ conception of punishment, yet its length and complexity make it unsuitable for analysis here. However, Schrock employs many of the criticisms advanced by other commentators, and which are argued against in what follows. Furthermore, his claim that Hobbes’ fails to establish a Sovereign right to punish, and that his political-philosophic system fails outright (let-alone the esoteric suggestion that this is “the teaching” of Leviathan (Schrock 1991 p.859)) is a version of the contention that Hobbes fails to establishment a sovereign right to punish that this essay resists.
[3] This innovation is made possible by Hobbes’ understanding of freedom as the absence of physical restraint, such that even covenants made in extreme fear – or what we might now call duress – are valid (Hobbes 2006, p.97, p.138). It thus follows that submission given to a conquering victor at the point of a sword is deemed an act of consent. This allows for absolute sovereign power acquired even by “acquisition”, as oppose to “institution”, to be based on the consent of subjects. See especially Leviathan chapters XVIII, XX, XXI and the Review and Conclusion. For an extended discussion of Hobbes’ conception of freedom and its consequences for his political philosophy, see Skinner 2008.
[4][4] See Skinner 2008, pp.200-203 for an effective summary of Hobbes’ view that even in conquest it is not the fact of victory that makes a conqueror sovereign but the fact that his enemies “cometh in, and Submitteth to the victor” (cf. Hobbes 2006, p.141). What Skinner fittingly denotes Hobbes’ “expansive view of consent” underpins his project of arguing that all legitimate political authority is based on consent, even when such consent is given at the point of a sword.
[5] Shrock 1991, p.887.
[6] Hobbes 2006, p.201.
[7] Ibid., p.202.
[8] Ibid., p.185.
[9] Ibid., p.202.
[10] Ibid., p.202.
[11] Ibid., p.214.
[12] Ibid., pp.214-5.
[13] This is broadly the position taken by Hüning 2007 and Ristroph 2009.
[14] Schrock 1991, p.873.
[15] Norrie 1984, p.308.
[16] Hobbes 2006, p.214.
[17] Hüning 2007, p.232.
[18] Ibid., p.232.
[19] Hobbes 2006, p.117.
[20] This is straightforwardly the case with sovereigns by institution, (see Hobbes 2006, Chapter XVII). Subjects who are conquered however give their consent to the victor, who thereby becomes the sovereign (see Hobbes 2006, Chapter XX). In this case, consent is given to escape death by the sword of the victor. Yet once the victor is established as sovereign he has all the rights of a sovereign by institution (Hobbes 2006, p.139), and indeed by holding men in awe via the public sword fulfils the same functions and makes life under his rule far-preferable to the state of nature which is, for Hobbes, the state of perpetual war and therefore the worst (and, allegedly, the natural) condition of mankind.
[21] Throughout the work Hobbes refers to the Leviathan as an “artificial man” as apparently distinct from the “artificial person” of the sovereign, who is the representative of, and actor for, the subjects. (See Hobbes 2006, p.9, p.135, p.147, p.175). For contrasting views on the relationship between the sovereign and the Leviathan see Skinner 2002 and Runciman 2000.
[22] Hobbes 2006, p.147.
[23] Ibid., p.147.
[24] Hobbes tells us explicitly that the rights of sovereigns by acquisition are the same as those by institution (Hobbes 2006, p.139). In part this is because both are founded upon consent – either at the point of the victor’s sword, or the foundational democratic institution of individuals covenanting to erect a common power so as to better secure their rights of nature as commanded by the first and second laws of nature (to seek peace and follow it, and to mutually give up equal rights when possible in order to secure the advantages of peace). (See Hobbes 2006, Chapters XIV and XVIII).
[25] Hobbes 2006, p.112.
[26] Runciman 2008, p.38.
[27] Hobbes 2006, p.172. Occurring as this claim does in Chapter 24, it seems clear that Hobbes means it to apply to sovereigns by both institution and acquisition – as we would expect, given that both have the same rights and duties regardless of how they were originally constituted.
[28] Ibid., p.206.
[29] Ibid., p.91.
[30] Ibid., pp.91-2.
[31] “The Sovereign of a Common-wealth, be it an Assembly, or one Man, is not Subject to the Civill Lawes” (Hobbes 2006, p.184). This is a simple consequence of the fact that the sovereign is the supreme arbiter and lawmaker. Were it possible for the laws to constrain the sovereign, then the sovereign would be subjected to a superior power and therefore would not truly be the sovereign after all.
[32] This understanding of the right of nature as the wielding of blameless liberty helpfully serves to alleviate Ristroph’s fear that Hobbes is committed to extending the right of punishment only to natural persons who also bear the representative person of the sovereign, and can thus apply only to monarchies. Understood on the above reading, the extension of the right of nature to the sovereign is applicable to sovereigns by monarchy and assembly. Both – as the representative person of the commonwealth – will retain the blameless liberty of doing whatever is required to secure protection and commodious living for subjects, regardless of whether the representative artificial person of the sovereign is constituted by a single or several natural person(s). (See Ristroph 2009, p.614).
[33] Norrie 1984, p.308, p.309.
[34] Hobbes 2006, p.214.
[35] Ibid., p.93.
[36] Norrie 1984, p.302.
[37] See Hoekstra 1997, p.622 for further elucidation.
[38] Hobbes 2006, p.45.
[39] Ibid., p.93.
[40] Ibid., p.98.
[41] Ristroph 2009, p.613.
[42] “Though I never authorise the sovereign to punish me”; “the criminal himself has not authorised his own punishment”; “the punishing sovereign acts with authority, but only with the authorization of those subjects who are not themselves punished”; Ristroph 2009, p.618, p.620, p.622.
[43] Ristroph 2009, p.620.
[44] Hobbes 2006, p.122. This passage may appear confusing as in Chapter XXVIII Hobbes explicitly tells us that harm inflicted upon rebels in war is not punishment but hostility (Hobbes 2006, p.219); a relapse into the condition of war – i.e. the state of nature – has taken place, therefore punishment is conceptually impossible. Confusion is resolved when we recall that in the earlier passage from Chapter XVIII Hobbes is making the point that if failed rebels return to, or remain in, the state of civil society by accepting their (unvanquished) sovereign as such, then they authorise that sovereign as their representative actor and are thereby authors of all he does – including their own punishment. If they refuse to acknowledge the sovereign as being their sovereign, then they exist in the state of nature and may be destroyed as enemies accordingly (the situation described in Chapter XXVIII). Hobbes’ point is that rebels exist either in a state of war – where they may be destroyed by the rules of war – or re-enter society, which means being author of all the Sovereign’s acts, including of their own punishment. Again, sufficient clarity on the structure of Hobbes’ thought clears him of any charge of incoherence.
[45] Ibid., p.214.
[46] Ibid., p.106.
[47] “All Punishments of Innocent subjects, be they great or little, are against the Law of Nature: For Punishment is only for Transgression of the Law, and therefore there can be no Punishment of the Innocent. It is therefore a violation, First, of that Law of Nature which forbiddeth all men, in their Revenges, to look at anything but some future good: For there can arrive no good to the Common-wealth, by Punishing the Innocent. Secondly, of that, which forbiddeth Ingratitude: For seeing all Sovereign Power, is originally given by the consent of every one of the Subjects, to the end they should as long as they are obedient, be protected thereby; the Punishment of the Innocent is a rendering of Evil for Good. And thirdly, of the Law that commandeth Equity; that is to say, an equal distribution of Justice, which in Punishing the Innocent is not observed.” Ibid., p.219.
[48] Ibid., p.221.
[49] Ibid., p.120.
Bibliography
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Hobbes, Thomas (1994). Human Nature and De Corpore Politico, J.C.A. Gaskin, Oxford.
(1997). De Cive, ed. Richard Tuck, Cambridge.
(2006). Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck and Michael Silverthorne, Cambridge.
Hoekstra, Kinch (1997). ‘Hobbes and the Foole’, Political Theory 25, pp.620-654.
Hüning, Dieter (2007). ‘Hobbes on the Right to Punish’ in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan, Cambridge, pp.217-240.
Norrie, Alan (1984). ‘Thomas Hobbes and the Philosophy of Punishment’, Law and Philosophy 3, pp.299-320.
Ristroph, Alice (2009). ‘Respect and Resistance in Punishment Theory’, California Law Review 97, pp.601-632.
Runciman, David (2000). ‘What Kind of Person is Hobbes’ State?’ A Reply to Skinner’, The Journal of Political Philosophy 8, pp.268-78.
(2008). Political Hypocrisy – The Mask of Power, from Hobbes to Orwell and Beyond, Princeton.
Schrock, Thomas (1991). ‘The Rights to Punish and Resist Punishment in Hobbes’s Leviathan’, The Western Political Quarterly 44, pp.853-890.
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(2008). Hobbes and Republican Liberty, Cambridge.
Here’s some I made earlier « Bad Conscience said,
August 22, 2010 at 3:17 pm
[...] “mistake” about justice may not have been as stupid as is often supposed; why Hobbes is certainly not as stupid as some of his critics suppose; and why a certain take on “Republican” freedom may be more stupid than some of its [...]
Fiona Spurling said,
March 2, 2011 at 12:49 pm
Thoroughly enjoy reading these essays.