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Is There A Social Contract?—II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

H. D. Lewis
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Extract

IN an earlier article I urged that the State presupposes an agreement to be governed on the part of its members. One common objection to this view was discussed at some length. It remains to deal with three further objections. (2) It will perhaps be urged that a particular individual, or a small minority, would not be able to withdraw from the State if they wished to do so. If anyone decided that he did not wish to have anything to do with the State, whether it be the State in general, or some particular State, he could not give effect to his decision. Compulsion, as exercised against such persons, cannot be said to rest in any sense on their own consent. To put the same point in another way, “The claim that government rests on consent would never be listened to by a magistrate.” 1

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Type
Articles
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Philosophy , Volume 15 , Issue 58 , April 1940, pp. 177 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1940

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References

1 Laing, B. M. puts Hume's argument into these words in David Hume, p. 204.Google Scholar

3 Works, vol. iii, p. 505.Google Scholar

1 Second Treatise on Civil Government, sect. 119.

2 Plamenatz, J. P., Consent, Freedom and Political Obligation, p. 7.Google Scholar

1 That Hobbes was well aware of this difficulty will be clear to anyone who reads chap. 30 of the Leviathan. Note especially the words: “For a Civill Law, that shall forbid Rebellion (and such is all resistance to the essential Rights of Sovereignty), is not (as a Civill Law) any obligation, but only by virtue of the Law of Nature that forbiddeth the violation of Faith.

1 Op. cit., p. 23.

1 Leviathan, Everyman ed., p. 92.

1 Locke, for example, has no means of reconciling his inalienable right of property with the right of a youth, on coming of age, to place himself under any government he pleases. On Locke's view, if the youth places himself under the government of France, the British Government would have no jurisdiction over the property he has inherited in England.

1 Works, vol. iv, p. 268; see also vol. iii, p. 510.

1 See my first article, p. 78, Jan. 1940 and above, p. 179.

1 Corporate Personality, p. 12.

2 Op. cit., p. 20.

3 Op. cit., p. 21.

4 Op. cit., p. 126.

5 Theory of the State, English translation, p. 508.

1 Darwin and Hegel, p. 250.

2 Corporate Personality, p. 27.

3 See p. 176 in particular.

4 Op. cit., p. 187.

1 Contrat Social, book ii, chap. 4.

1 See Mind, October 1937 and January 1938.

2 In a former article; see page 75, Jan. 1940.