109 research outputs found
Comment on Benhabib\u27s Dismantling the Leviathan : A Republican-LiberaI Perspective
Get PDFThose who think of themselves as republican or civic liberals, as I do, will surely be of two minds about Seyla Benhabib\u27s Dismantling the Leviathan: Citizen and State in a Global World [Spring 2001 ]. In some respects, Professor Benhabib\u27 s thoughtful essay is quite congenial to republican liberalism. She insists on the importance of human rights, for instance, and she looks for ways to expand political participation. Her indictment of civic republicanism, however, requires a republican-liberal response
Authority, Legitimacy, and the Obligation to Obey the Law
Get PDFAccording to the standard or traditional account, those who hold political authority legitimately have a right to rule that entails an obligation of obedience on the part of those who are subject to their authority. In recent decades, however, and in part in response to philosophical anarchism, a number of philosophers have challenged the standard account by reconceiving authority in ways that break or weaken the connection between political authority and obligation. This paper argues against these revisionist accounts in two ways: first, by pointing to defects in their conceptions of authority; and second, by sketching a fair-play approach to authority and political obligation that vindicates the standard account
Jean Hampton’s Theory of Punishment: A Critical Appreciation
Get PDFJean Hampton’s work first came to my attention in 1984, when the summer issue of Philosophy & Public Affairs appeared in my mailbox. Hampton’s essay in that issue, “The Moral Education Theory of Punishment,” did not persuade me—or many others, I suspect—that “punishment should not be justified as a deserved evil, but rather as an attempt, by someone who cares, to improve a wayward person” (Hampton 1984, 237). The essay did persuade me, though, that moral education is a plausible aim of punishment, even if it is not the “full and complete justification” Hampton claimed it to be (Hampton 1984, 209). It also persuaded me that I would do well to keep an eye out for further work by this gifted philosopher
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