Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Political Science

PDF

Karl Widerquist

Selected Works

2015

Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Chapter 4 (Draft): John Locke And The Hobbesian Hypothesis: How A Very Similar Colonial Prejudice Found Its Way Into The Natural Rights Justification Of Private Property, Karl Widerquist, Grant Mccall Oct 2015

Chapter 4 (Draft): John Locke And The Hobbesian Hypothesis: How A Very Similar Colonial Prejudice Found Its Way Into The Natural Rights Justification Of Private Property, Karl Widerquist, Grant Mccall

Karl Widerquist

This chapter is a preliminary draft of Chapter 4 of the book, "Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy." The role of this chapter is to show that what we call "the Hobbesian Hypothesis" is an essential premise in John Locke's justification of private property. The Hobbesian hypothesis, in this context, is the claim that everyone is better off in a society with private land and resource ownership (even if they own no land or resources) than they could reasonably except to be in a society in which these resources remained unowned and people lived as hunter-gatherers. This chapter does not …

Go to article

Chapter 3 (Draft) The Hobbesian Hypothesis: How A Colonial Prejudice Became An Essential Premise In The Most Popular Justification Of Government, Karl Widerquist, Grant Mccall Aug 2015

Chapter 3 (Draft) The Hobbesian Hypothesis: How A Colonial Prejudice Became An Essential Premise In The Most Popular Justification Of Government, Karl Widerquist, Grant Mccall

Karl Widerquist

This chapter is a draft of Chapter Three of the book that Grant McCall and I are writing. The book is called, "Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy." This chapter shows now Hobbes introduce an empirical claim into his most influential justification of the state. We call this claim the Hobbesian hypothesis: everyone is better off under the authority of a sovereign government than everyone would be outside of that authority. The chapter argue that this hypothesis is a strong, counterfactual, empirical claim about people in small-scale stateless societies that has not been well-established by empirical evidence.

Go to article

Chapters 1-2 (Drafts) Of Prehistoric Myths In Modern Political Philosophy: Chapter 1-2, Karl Widerquist, Grant Mccall Jan 2015

Chapters 1-2 (Drafts) Of Prehistoric Myths In Modern Political Philosophy: Chapter 1-2, Karl Widerquist, Grant Mccall

Karl Widerquist

These two chapters are early and very preliminary drafts of the first to chapters of the book, "Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy." The first chapter sets up what we are trying to do with this research project and previews our findings. The basic argument of the book is that political philosophers make dubious claims about prehistory in theor theories. These claims are poorly (if at all) research even though they are essential premises in many important political theories. The role of the book is both to show that these claims are necessary to support the arguments in influential political …

Go to article

The People’S Endowment, Karl Widerquist Dec 2014

The People’S Endowment, Karl Widerquist

Karl Widerquist

Many private institutions, such as universities and museums, have large and growing endowments. Why doesn’t the government have one? Simply, we have failed to take advantage of enormous opportunities to create one. This paper argues that governments should start to build up a permanent endowment of publicly held assets, both financial and physical, lease at least some of them out to private industry, and use the revenue for two purposes: half for government spending and the other half for a dividend in the form of an unconditional basic income for all people—in recognition of their shared ownership of their common …

Go to article

Myths About The State Of Nature And The Reality Of Stateless Societies, Karl Widerquist, Grant Mccall Dec 2014

Myths About The State Of Nature And The Reality Of Stateless Societies, Karl Widerquist, Grant Mccall

Karl Widerquist

This article is a spin-off of my book project (with Grant McCall), "Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy." This article makes the following points. Most justifications of government using social contact theory (contractarianism) require a claim we call, “the Hobbesian hypothesis,” which we define as the claim that all people are better off under state authority than they would be outside of it. The Hobbesian hypothesis is an empirical claim about all stateless societies. Many small-scale societies are stateless. Anthropological evidence from the smallest-scale human societies provides sufficient reason to doubt the truth of the hypothesis, if not to reject …

Go to article