A talk prepared for: - UC Berkeley, Jurisprudence & Social Policy, Gateway Conference (2021) - UCLA Graduate Political Theory Conference (2021)

1. CITIZENS IN
CHAINS
H A L E Y S . A N D E R S O N
U C B E R K E L E Y , J U R I S P R U D E N C E & S O C I A L P O L I C Y
U C L A G R A D U A T E P O L I T I C A L T H E O R Y C O N F E R E N C E
A P R I L 2 3 , 2 0 2 1

2. THE PROBLEM
What becomes of Hobbes’s theory of
citizen obligations in cases of genocide?
@h_s_anderson

3. THE STATE OF
NATURE
• No physical security
• No epistemic certainty
• No trust
• No durable agreements
@h_s_anderson

4. ESCAPE TO THE
COMMONWEALTH
• Original convention: individuals submit their
wills to a single will (sovereign)
• Transfer right to resist and to judge
• “in the act of our Submission, consisteth both our
Obligation, and our Liberty” (L ch. 21)
• Commonwealth by design’s aims: peace and
security
@h_s_anderson

5. ESCAPE TO THE
COMMONWEALTH
Citizen
Sovereign
Fellow
Citizens
@h_s_anderson

6. ESCAPE TO
SLAVERY
• Options: death or slavery
• Agreement forms “natural commonwealth”
• Chains rupture commonwealth
• Demonstrates lack of trust
• Slave returns to state of nature
What about a citizen in chains?
@h_s_anderson

7. GENOCIDE
“an episode of mass violence directed at the members of a particular social group”
Andrew Altman, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity: Dispelling the Conceptual Fog, 29 SOC. PHIL. & POL’Y 280, 281 (2012) .
@h_s_anderson

8. GENOCIDE VIOLATES
HOBBES’S NATURAL
LAW
First law of nature:
“to seek peace when it can be had” (DC II.2)
@h_s_anderson

9. METHODS OF
REDRESS?
• Enforcement by higher authority
• Restriction through civil law
• Challenge by citizens
@h_s_anderson

10. “SPOILING” CITIZENS “IS
NOT TO [THE SOVEREIGN’S]
ADVANTAGE”
H O B B E S ’ S O P T I M I S M
@h_s_anderson

11. PERSECUTED GROUPS
@h_s_anderson

12. RIGHT OF RESISTANCE
S T A N D A R D V I E W
• Being dragged to the gallows
M Y V I E W
• Being dragged to the gallows
• Placed in chains
• Trust withdrawn
• “the will to contend by force is made
sufficiently known by words or actions”
(DC I.12)
SUSANNE SREEDHAR, HOBBES ON RESISTANCE:
DEFYING THE LEVIATHAN 28–40 (2010) . @h_s_anderson

13. OPTIONS IN THE
RENEWED STATE
OF NATURE
• Escape à abandon others
• Fight à death
• Collaborate à enslavement
@h_s_anderson

14. FELLOW CITIZENS
@h_s_anderson

15. FELLOW
CITIZENS’
RESISTANCE
• Refusing orders
• Substituting their judgment for the sovereign’s
@h_s_anderson

16. ESCAPE TO THE
COMMONWEALTH
Citizen
Sovereign
Fellow
Citizens
@h_s_anderson

17. OBEDIENCE
PARADOX
Fellow citizens violate the original
agreement if they:
• Disobey the sovereign
• Obey the sovereign
@h_s_anderson