Obligation and its limits in Hobbes's moral and political philosophy (Thomas Hobbes)

Much Hobbes scholarship focuses on his justification for political obligation, characterizing his project as a prescription for virtually unconditional obedience to the sovereign's will. In my view, this is a mischaracterization. I take as my starting point Hobbes's account of political disobedience, a feature of the doctrine often criticized or largely ignored by commentators. This account begins with Hobbes's claim that subjects in a commonwealth retain a right of self-defense. I show that Hobbes has a conception of the right to disobey or resist the sovereign which goes far beyond the narrow right to defend one's life against immediate deadly attacks. In fact, he has a doctrine of retained rights including resistance rights that serve to justify a range of actions from resisting arrest to avoiding the draft. Moreover, Hobbes allows subjects to disobey in certain cases where their own lives and security are not in danger at all, extending the subject's right against self-incrimination to protect also those whom the subject loves or upon whom he depends. He even allows subjects, under certain special circumstances, to disobey commands they find dishonorable.; Hobbes's broad right to disobey the absolute sovereign, his Leviathan, has exposed his theory to some prominent objections. Gregory Kavka calls Hobbes's applications of the right of self-defense "arbitrary and ad hoc" and argues that Hobbesian subjects do not enjoy any of the broader resistance rights. Jean Hampton argues that Hobbes's rights to resist serve as the Achilles' heel of his political theory because they contradict his justification for absolute sovereignty. His contemporary, Bishop Bramhall, and others charge that Hobbes unwittingly provides a "Rebel's Catechism," thereby undermining the anti-revolutionary purpose of his theory.; I argue that all three objections are based on a misinterpretation of Hobbes's theory. I show that Hobbes has a unified and coherent doctrine of resistance rights that has heretofore gone unnoticed and undefended; a doctrine not only compatible with Hobbes's justification for absolute sovereignty but entailed by that justification. In sum, I offer a comprehensive analysis of Hobbes's account of political disobedience and demonstrate its central significance for how we understand his philosophical project.