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Susanne Sreedhar. Hobbes on Resistance: Defying the Leviathan. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp vii + 183. Cloth, $85.00.
Hobbes, the avowed absolutist, in fact advances a theory of resistance rights, or so Susanne Sreedhar argues in her recent book. She recognizes just how vexed a thesis this is: Hobbes's account of the initial sovereign-making covenant dismantles the dominant justification for collective resistance, the idea of a conditional contract between a people and their ruler (19). Nevertheless, she seeks to draw from Hobbes's texts a comprehensive rationale for an entire battery of resistance rights retained by individuals in commonwealth, including the right to rebel.
The first half of the book aims to debunk the prevalent belief that Hobbesian subjects retain only a very narrow right to self-defense. According to this "standard interpretation," it is impossible to alienate the right to defend oneself against life-threatening attacks because death, as the greatest possible evil, cannot be rationally willed. Any transfer of right is a voluntary act, "and of the voluntary acts of every man the object is some good to himself" (Leviathan 14.8).
Sreedhar deftly reveals the weaknesses of this interpretation, especially its inability to make sense of the contractual obligations of enlisted soldiers...