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On Using the Concept of Hypothetical Consent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Thomas J. Lewis
Thomas J. Lewis
Affiliation:
McMaster University
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Abstract

This article argues that the concept of hypothetical consent advanced by Hanna Pitkin has little force as a basis for political obligation. It reformulates the meaning of hypothetical consent by emphasizing the subjectivity of consent, and it points out how this subjective meaning expresses the right of actual citizens to dissent. It suggests how subjective hypothetical consent can be used from the perspective of a sovereign as a standard that requires the sovereign to treat citizens as if they had consented, although they have not consented. It concludes by arguing that although this standard may appear to corrode political authority, instead it enhances political authority. It drives the sovereign to relinquish the claim that citizens are obligated to obey, and to treat them so they will have reason to obey.

Résumé

Cet article établit que le concept du consentement hypothétique présenté par Hanna Pitkin n'est pas adéquat comme fondement de l'obligation politique. Il refonde la signification du consentement hypothétique en accentuant la subjectivité du consentement et il souligne comment cette signification hypothétique subjective énonce le droit des citoyens d'être dissidents. L'article montre en quoi le consentement hypothétique subjectif peut être employé du point de vue d'un souverain comme une norme. Cette norme exige que le souverain traite les citoyens comme s'ils avaient donné leur consentement bien qu'ils ne le donnent pas. Alors que cette norme semble corrompre l'autorité politique, l'article établit, en terminant, qu'elle met en valeur plutôt l'autorité politique. La norme force le souverain à renoncer à la demande d'obeissance des citoyens et à les traiter de façon à ce qu'ils aient une raison d'obéir.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , December 1989 , pp. 793 - 808
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1989

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References

1 See, for example, Tussman, Joseph, Obligation and the Body Politic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960Google Scholar); and Simmons, A. J., Moral Principles and Political Obligation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979Google Scholar).

2 Pitkin, Hanna, “Obligation and Consent—I,” American Political Science Review 59 (1965), 990–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Hume, David, “Of the Original Contract,” in Barker, Ernest (ed.), Social Contract: Essays by Locke, Hume and Rousseau (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), 145–66.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., 156.

5 Ibid., 161.

6 Pitkin, “Obligation and Consent—I,” 999.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.; emphasis in the original.

10 Hampton, Jean, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 268Google Scholar; emphasis in the original. See also Dworkin, Ronald, “The Original Position,” in Daniels, Norman (ed.), Reading Rawls (New York: Basic Books, 1976), 18.Google Scholar

11 Kavka, Gregory, Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 399Google Scholar; emphasis in the original.

12 Ibid., 404; emphasis in the original.

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid., 405.

15 Ibid., 407–15.

16 Zaitchik, Alan in “Hobbes and Hypothetical Consent,” Political Studies 23 (1975), 475–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues that Hobbes does have a concept of hypothetical consent which approximates the meaning of hypothetical consent formulated by Hanna Pitkin. As Zaitchik points out, Hobbes was indifferent to the question of whether there ever was a time when men lived in a state of nature (480). Zaitchik also notes that Hobbes's concept of consent does not entail an obligation to obey. Indeed, Hobbes relied on the broad and now obsolete concept of consent as a convergence of action, a concept that is applicable to animals and insects as well as to humans. This broad meaning of consent as convergence or harmony was also applicable to inanimate objects, according to Oxford English Dictionary (1933), 851. Zaitchik does not note the narrowing of consent to its present volitional connotation. Martin, Rex, “Hobbes and the Doctrine of Natural Rights: The Place of Consent in his Political Philosophy,” Western Political Quarterly 33 (1980), 380–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, presents a very perceptive treatment of Hobbes's use of consent. Martin offers a form of actual consent as an alternative to hypothetical consent. He separates consent from the establishment of the sovereign, and instead interprets consent as an ongoing and conditional waiving of the citizen's natural right. In this form consent does not confer power, it only allows it: “When such a right is said to be waived it has not been surrendered or renounced; rather, the right is retained but its exercise is forgone” (391–92). For a recent statement that Hobbes does not appeal to a hypothetical contract, see Gauthier, David, “Taming Leviathan,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 16 (1987), 293–94.Google Scholar

17 This distinction between subjective and objective consent corresponds to the distinction between objective and subjective liability in Anglo-American criminal law. For an outline of the shift in emphasis from objective to subjective liability in criminal law and the corresponding change in mens rea see Turner, J. W. C., Kenney's Outlines of Criminal Law (18th ed.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966)Google Scholar; and Gross, Hyman, A Theory of Criminal Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979Google Scholar). For the importance of subjective liability in criminal law as a means to protect citizens from the coercive capacity of the state and for affirming the right of citizens to govern themselves, see Lewis, Thomas J., “Contract Theory and the Right to be Punished,” American Behavioral Scientist 2 (1984), 263–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Oxford English Dictionary (1933), 851.

19 Pitkin, “Obligation and Consent—I,” 999.

20 Rex Martin's treatment of Hobbes's theory of consent as a conditional waiving of natural right also precludes the claim that citizens are obligated to obey. It raises instead the question of how the sovereign must exercise authority so that actual rather than abstract citizens will continue to waive their rights. See note 16 above.

21 Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed. by Laslett, Peter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960Google Scholar).

22 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The First and Second Discourses, ed. by Masters, Roger D. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1964), 164–65.Google Scholar

23 Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed. by Oakeshott, Michael (London: Collier Macmillan, 1962), 158, 237.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., 166.

25 Hampton, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition, 274.

26 Kavka, Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory, 236–44.

27 Hobbes, Leviathan, 132; emphasis added.

28 In the latter part of the Second Treatise, where Locke turns to the causes of the dissolution of government, his emphasis shifts from what reasonable people can be construed as consenting to, to what he believes actual citizens will refuse to obey. He argues that their right to refuse does not lay a foundation for rebellion but that it is “the best fence against rebellion” (Two Treatises, 464). I am employing the same line of thought without Locke's equivocation on the meaning of consent.