Strake Jesuit JH
“Look at the gem and let go of the stone” NC
1/2
For something to be morally permissible, the person acting must have the authority to do
it, otherwise they wouldn't be allowed to take the action. People cannot do something that
is someone’s else’s job. When something is my duty, a task I must perform, someone else
cannot infringe on my task. Task authority is like that of a parent. My parents can’t
discipline someone else’s child, but they can discipline me. The difference is my parents
have authority over me but would otherwise be infringing on another parent. Anscombe:
If someone has a role or function which he ‘must’ perform, or
anything that he ‘has’ to do, then you ‘cannot’ impede him. Where necessity does not imply
actuality, then, “necessity implies possibility” may acquire a rather rich significance. This has been noticed before,
witness the discussions of “ought implies can”. The interesting thing in the switch, as in that case, from one
type of modal for ‘necessity’ to a different type for ‘possibility’. “Ought implies can” is true, if true, however,
There is, however, one path here.
only in as much as physical impossibility lets one off the hook of blame for something. The crossing of modals that we are considering
“necessarily” is equivalent to “not possibly not” within the
same type of modality: hence we may have an interpretation of “must” as “having no right not
to”. But that case is not one to interest us, it gets us no forrader. One interesting case is, e.g. the “must” that is said by someone who
is more interesting. For any modal, of course
threatens someone else with penalties if something is not done. Now if he also does not allow something without which, it is well
understood, what he demands cannot be done, his demands are against reason. That does not mean that they cannot in fact be made;
his aim after all may be to push into an ‘impossible position’, to punish or humiliate. The unreason is not a proof of mistake or
stupidity; it may be quite cynical. But it remains unreason.
Thus, the negative burden is to show the right to inflict violence is a task the government
has an obligation to perform that citizens cannot infringe upon. In order to link to the
framework, arguments must contain warrants about the authority of the state, not its
imposition. The source of the right to authority cannot be law, since the whole question is
what is the source of a right to lay down laws on people at all.
I contend that the use of violence, even in the case of protection or punishment, is the
state’s task. Even in the situation in which the government is not enforcing the laws or
protecting its people, enforcement remains its duty. Individuals cannot usurp government
power.
A. No one else has the right to infringe on the state’s ability to enforce laws and protect
its citizens. Because the state must enforce laws and fails if it doesn’t, it is the state task
and only the state’s task. Individuals cannot gain civil authority. Anscombe 2:
Anyone, it may be said, may justly intervene with violence to resist violence committed without right. That is: it can be no
infringement of the right of one so resisted. Were it counted one, that would be conceding a right in his violence. (Except on the
assumption that any violence against anyone is eo ipso an infringement of a right of his.) So, it may be said, anyone may protect the
top decision making authority, and it may protect itself with a regular force. Such a
force may also ward off attack on other people and activities. Even in respect of
protection against violence, the state foes far beyond this. We have pictured something like a
business’s employing guards for its own direct protection, and extending their services to the
direct protection of others. But the civil authority investigates past actions; tries and
punishes people, and forces rules on them. This would be an insolent claim on the part of any ‘private’
corporation. When these things are done with the authority of government, it seems we have
Strake Jesuit JH
“Look at the gem and let go of the stone” NC
2/2
a transition to a new kind of thing. In fact we went absurdly far with the right to protect oneself
and others against violence, though even it got us [gets] nowhere near civil authority. The
regular force for protecting the offices, etc. of the authority – how are we to picture it intervening ad hoc to protect the unjustly
The role of the civil power in using standing force
cannot be assimilated to that of a passer-by who sees someone set on by a thug. This is one of the
attacked? On whose side do they intervene?
fundamental questions of political theory: are we to understand civil authority as arising by a transfer of rights already possessed by
[we deny] a private right of punishment in a
state of nature. We deny this and take the alternative view: civil society is the bearer of rights of
coercion not possibly existent among men without government.
men without a state? Those who maintain this always assume
Thus, only the state has coercive authority, and the victim cannot infringe on it.
B. Only the institution can be justified in the use of violence. The resolution of disputes at
a personal level lacks the authority to make claims upon each other and becomes
unjustified mutual violence. Anscombe 3:
A parallel argument for the right of punishment could not supply the defects in e.g., Locke’s argument and so show that men
in a
state of nature may – nay it is needful that they should – severally punish those who unjustly attack them and their
neighbours. For action on such a principle [punishment] will perforce be action against those whom a
man believes so to deserve punishment. His formation of opinion then takes the place
of trial in our account. In consequence of such formation of opinion he is going to do
some attacking himself. But on the same principle those who think otherwise than he
will then equally attack him. And so instead of procuring a peaceful normality, such a
principle would promote a general warfare within which even the quietest (namely, those who failed in that
duty of punishing unjust attackers) could hardly hope to go safely. Hence I denied that right of punishment. Nor is the ground of
necessity an unsafe one in that there are no limits to what can be ‘justified’ by necessity, if anything can. For the necessity of the
the wronger of others suffered a condign punishment. In the
is
wronged in the secondary way because the
primary way, then, he is not wronged, but, if he is wronged he
inflictor of desert had no right to inflict it. It is only at this point that necessity is invoked as a justification.
Nor is necessity the justification in the particular case. There the justification is the particular law, the
citation of which in justification is an aspect of the institution of law with its enforcement.
So the institution is what is justified – and only at this point of the argument – by necessity. The
institution creates the character of an act as one of doing justice on the wronger of
others, which character was not guaranteed by an act’s being an act of afflicting the wrongdoer not contrary to desert. In this way
arrangement was not the whole justification. It was assumed that
we have the genesis of a quite new kind of right, something new has emerged. If we have this institution, we have civil society with
civil government and its authority, and if not, not.
Thus, it is illegitimate to usurp the state’s authority to enforce the law or use force. The
abuser, even if deserving of the attack, is wronged by the agent making the assault.
Moreover, the authority of the state does not dissolve with disobedience. The authority
still remains to call upon citizens to respect its authority in the future. The function of the
state is in righting those wrongs, so it makes no sense to say a wrong destroys the state.
Also, the task to enforce will remain even if people disrespect the state. A baby might
disrespect its parents, but we still recognize the parent’s authority over its baby.