Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

(Leviathan) to avoid this situation of being perpetually vulnerable to physical attack. Max Weber, in turn, suggested that the state is the only legitimate monopoly on the use of violence (that is, at least in theory, for the protection of its citizens). Robert Nozick, examining this, concluded that there is sufficient justification for at least this minimal role of the state.

It has to be said that this is about as far as any agreement goes when the attempt is made to construct a government or state from first principles! But let’s continue.

When it comes to property (and theft) for example, things are a bit more complex. Is it, for instance, a case of natural justice to say that we are entitled to things that we have found? Or how about things that we have made? And how about our relationship to land? (Locke, with certain provisos, suggested that we own land on the basis of having worked on it — for instance, through planting crops, mining, or building homes.) Does someone have a right to take any of this from us by force? Does the state have a right to do so? The question slides into one about distribution.

We might claim that there is a natural distribution. Such things as our own bodies, our good health, intelligence, good looks and charm are things that we would surely claim to own outright — as ‘natural assets’, it might be said. There may be a lack of equality in the distribution of these ‘goods’. Jacques Rousseau (The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality) recognised two types of inequality — natural, because of physical differences — and moral, or

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