Book contents
- Hobbes’s On the Citizen
- Cambridge Critical Guides
- Hobbes’s On the Citizen
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Excavating On the Citizen
- Chapter 2 Hobbes and Aristotle on the Foundation of Political Science
- Chapter 3 All the Mind’s Pleasure: Glory, Self-Admiration, and Moral Motivation in On the Citizen and Leviathan
- Chapter 4 The Right of Nature and Political Disobedience: Hobbes’s Puzzling Thought Experiment
- Chapter 5 Motivation, Reason, and the Good in On the Citizen
- Chapter 6 Property and Despotic Sovereignty
- Chapter 7 Sovereignty and Dominium: The Foundations of Hobbesian Statehood
- Chapter 8 Corporate Persons without Authorization
- Chapter 9 Hobbes on Love and Fear of God
- Chapter 10 “A Rhapsody of Heresies”: The Scriptural Politics of On the Citizen
- Chapter 11 On the Citizen and Church-State Relations
- Chapter 12 Sovereign-Making and Biblical Covenants in On the Citizen
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Critical Guides
Chapter 6 - Property and Despotic Sovereignty
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 November 2019
- Hobbes’s On the Citizen
- Cambridge Critical Guides
- Hobbes’s On the Citizen
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Excavating On the Citizen
- Chapter 2 Hobbes and Aristotle on the Foundation of Political Science
- Chapter 3 All the Mind’s Pleasure: Glory, Self-Admiration, and Moral Motivation in On the Citizen and Leviathan
- Chapter 4 The Right of Nature and Political Disobedience: Hobbes’s Puzzling Thought Experiment
- Chapter 5 Motivation, Reason, and the Good in On the Citizen
- Chapter 6 Property and Despotic Sovereignty
- Chapter 7 Sovereignty and Dominium: The Foundations of Hobbesian Statehood
- Chapter 8 Corporate Persons without Authorization
- Chapter 9 Hobbes on Love and Fear of God
- Chapter 10 “A Rhapsody of Heresies”: The Scriptural Politics of On the Citizen
- Chapter 11 On the Citizen and Church-State Relations
- Chapter 12 Sovereign-Making and Biblical Covenants in On the Citizen
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Critical Guides
Summary
In this chapter I seek to show that in On the Citizen Hobbes completes a conceptually coherent defense of despotic sovereignty, in a manner not previously appreciated. I will do so by presenting a novel reading of Hobbes’s treatment of the nature of property. I will suggest that ownership consists in having preeminent power with a natural right to exercise that power. On that basis, I shall argue, Hobbes is entitled to conclude that sovereigns, by virtue of their sovereignty, necessarily and fully own their subjects and all they possess. Sovereigns own their subjects and everything they possess because they rule over them with preeminent power and (at a minimum) a natural right to exercise that power. On the Citizen thus contains a philosophically coherent account of why all sovereignty is necessarily despotic. Perhaps even more importantly, it provides him access to a very powerful, but profoundly illiberal, argument against the existence of property titles of citizens against their sovereign: it is a conceptual truth, on Hobbes’s conception of property, that the sovereign owns everything in the commonwealth that can be owned.
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- Hobbes's On the CitizenA Critical Guide, pp. 108 - 125Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019