![]() ![]() Against the State provides a rigorous and provocative foil to the classic texts, and also serves as a concise statement of the anarchist challenge. He concludes by articulating a positive vision of an anarchist future, based on the "individualism" of such figures as Emerson and Thoreau. By Crispin Sartwell The Atlantic The French Estates-General in 1789 (Isidore- Stanislaus Helman via Wikimedia Commons) Americans are more divided than ever by political ideology, as a recent Pew Research Center study makes clear. Sartwell argues that the state rests on nothing but deadly force and its accompanying coercion, and that no one is under any obligation to obey the law merely because it is the law. He separates the traditional pro-state arguments into three classes: social contract theories, utilitarian justifications, and justicial views, all while attacking both general strategies and particular formulations. Sartwell considers the classics of Western political philosophy-Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, Hume, Bentham, Rawls, and Habermas, among others-and argues that their positions are not only wrong but also embarrassingly bad. In Against the State, Crispin Sartwell unleashes a quick and brutal rejection of the traditional arguments for state legitimacy. Author: Sartwell, Crispin, 1958- Format: Book xi, 124 p. ![]()
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