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This research project will examine the concept of sovereignty in Vermont for the years 1750-1791. As with most conceptual studies, it is necessary to first examine the history of the concept. I begin with René Descartes (1596-1650), and his re-conceptualization of Man in a natural state. It is my contention that his metaphysical and ontological findings in Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) were then adopted by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) in Leviathan (1651), and John Locke (1632-1704) in Two Treatises of Government (1689). Basing their philosophies on Descartes's "revised" depiction of Man in nature, both Hobbes and Locke envisioned a Man who naturally made both rational and passionate decisions, as communities transitioned, via the process of government formation, from the state of nature into the state of "civil society," as they termed it. Contemporaneous with this theoretical evolution was the inclusion of "the people" in British governance through the rise of Parliament at the turn of the seventeenth century. Juxtaposed with real events, the philosophers' reconceptualization demonstrates an evolving concept of sovereignty in the British state. By the time of the American Revolution, the concept of popular sovereignty was born, and "the people" ascended in both political theory and political reality. Because the eighteenth-century concept of sovereignty was based heavily on the metaphor of the state of nature, I chose the inhabitants of the New Hampshire Grants as a case study. These residents believed they resided in something close to a literal state of nature from 1760-1777, and that they had lived the theoretical philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, and other contemporary theorists. Once the theoretical description of a natural state is juxtaposed with the socio-political history of the Grants region, it is clear that inhabitants believed the Colony of New York, the appendage of the British state which claimed authority in the region, did not provide efficient governance for the residents. After the American Revolution broke out, Grants residents claimed it was their natural right to erect a state and systematically replace New York. Once Vermont's constitution went into effect in 1778, the concept of sovereignty was expressed in response to two simultaneous processes: the first, the geo-political stabilization of the state in the midst of both war and constant challenges to the state's existence; the second, the Vermont people transforming from a blend of "Yorkers" and "Yankees" into Vermonters. Both of these processes were complete by the mid-1780s as surrounding states and former Yorkers grew to accept the legitimacy of Vermont. By the late 1780s, as the United States Constitutional Convention was underway, Vermont was no longer considered a "pretended state," and was able to face the convention on its own terms, representing its own sovereign people.

Tesis para optar al grado de Licenciado en Filosofía / La teoría política del autor inglés es un capítulo de la filosofía que sigue abriendo debates y profundizaciones. Los conceptos de contrato social, Estado de naturaleza y formación del Estado Civil, se han estandarizado en el ámbito de la filosofía política como pilares para su reflexión tanto clásica como posterior. Para volver a analizar estos conceptos, con miras a una mejor comprensión y profundización, se indagará en las raíces del contractualismo hobbesiano, especialmente con su par griego Protágoras, quien dentro de un contexto sofista, dio el inicio a este modo de pensar político que vio en el filósofo inglés su más importante desarrollo. Bastante se ha hablado de Thomas Hobbes sobre lo anteriormente dicho, pero poco se ha rescatado acerca de sus consideraciones sobre el proceso educativo, y la importancia que tiene sobre sus ciudadanos. Pilar fundamental y eje en su proyecto social, es imposible no revisar y criticar estas aristas de su pensamiento.Las conclusiones que esperan ser fruto de esta tesis esperan ser las más acertadas, a modo de una nueva contribución al pensamiento de la filosofía moderna, enlazada a nuestros días, para una mejor comprensión de los hechos educativos actuales.

Thesis advisor: Susan M. Shell / One does not typically join the name of Thomas Hobbes with God or theology. Yet, much of what Hobbes says within his magnum opus, Leviathan, contains many thoughts and ideas on theology, especially God. By employing close textual analysis of Leviathan, I seek to uncover what Hobbes intends regarding his thoughts on God, and what role God plays, if any, in Hobbes’s political commonwealth. Understanding Hobbes’s thoughts on God contributes to a greater comprehension of what Hobbes intends with his political philosophy as well as his political theology. This thesis contributes to the growing literature of Hobbes’s thoughts on religion and political theology. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

The following work is an effort to better understand commonwealths by exploring the circumstances, rights, and desires of those who found them or recognize their authority. While it is apparent that mankind’s affairs are governed largely by commonwealths or similar bodies, the reasons that men have for establishing them and the rights upon which their authority is established can be more difficult to grasp. In this work, differing perspectives on the condition of men in nature, the rights they naturally possess, and the primary desires that motivate them are considered in hopes of determining a commonwealth’s purpose. Visions and definitions of commonwealths given by the same philosophers are then reviewed and compared with one another to determine the ways that their respective views on man and his condition mold the arrangements they put forth. Better understanding the relationship between men, their circumstances, and the governments they create could be of great value to those trying to determine why existing commonwealths have taken their present forms. Such insight would also clarify which attributes of a commonwealth are most essential to ensuring that it accomplishes the purposes for which it was established.

This thesis analyzes and evaluates the scheme for civil education discussed in Thomas Hobbes’ political works. Hobbes argues in The Elements of Law, De Cive, and Leviathan that the preservation of political order requires that all subjects learn the rationally grounded principles of political theory. Some contemporary scholarship on this aspect of Hobbes’ political philosophy has confined its understanding of “Hobbesian education” to this: the sovereign’s system of true civil doctrines and the means for their dissemination. I argue that for the system of Hobbesian civil doctrines to function as it is intended, a public must also receive instruction in formal argumentation, a skill Hobbes calls “acquired wit” (L viii.13). I will show that the subjects’ cultivation of their individual reasoning abilities is required so the subjects are able to (1) understand the philosophical foundations of the sovereign’s power, (2) sufficiently resist the allure of obfuscating eloquence and other falsehoods, and (3) conduct themselves in accordance with Hobbes’ natural laws. Civil peace in a Hobbesian system requires that the public be able to tell the difference between sound and unsound inferences. If Hobbes did intend for the sovereign to instruct the public in “acquired wit,” contemporary scholars who have offered sympathetic appraisals of Hobbesian education are further vindicated.

In this dissertation, I argue for a set of interpretations regarding the relationship between moral obligation and reasons for acting in the theories of Hobbes, Hutcheson, and Hume. Several commentators have noted affinities between these naturalist moral theories and contemporary ethical internalism. I argue that attempts to locate internalist theses in these figures are not entirely successful in any clear way. I follow Stephen Darwall's suggestion that addressing the question “why be moral?” is one of the fundamental problems of modern moral philosophy. Since, as some have argued, there is a tension between accepting internalism and providing an adequate response to the “why be moral” question, I argue that each figure maintains a distinctive response to this question given the sort of internalism, if any, he would accept. In the introduction, I provide the key distinctions that arise from contemporary discussions of ethical internalism, and I motivate my project of looking for insight into the relationship between internalism and amoralism in the British Moralists. Chapters 1 and 2 focus on the moral theory Hobbes who, I argue, would accept a version of constitutive existence internalism because he holds that there is a necessary connection between one's being contractually obligated and one's being in certain rationally motivating states. I then present the fool's objection as an objection to the assumption of a relevant similarity between divine obligation and contractual obligation. I argue that, irrespective of this dissimilarity, the fool has some rational motive to keep his covenants in virtue of the fact that making covenants changes one's decision situation in such a way that it becomes reasonable to treat covenants as if they imposed categorical constraints on behavior. I claim that Hobbes's response to the fool is, at least in part, that the fool fails to understand what moral obligation consists in. In the remainder of the dissertation I turn my attention to two classical sentimentalist moral theories. I examine the theories of Hutcheson and Hume because it is not clear what resources moral sentimentalism has available to it in order to address questions about the reasonableness of moral action. In chapters 3 and 4, I develop an interpretation of Hutcheson who, because he distinguishes between exciting and justifying reasons, is able to say there is some non-derivative sense in which moral actions are reasonable. I argue that he develops a theory whereby moral obligation is to be understood in terms of the non-motivating states of approval of moral spectators, and I do not think, contrary to Darwall, that there is anything puzzling about his doing so. I argue that Hutcheson does not accept a version of motive internalism, but that he shares much in common with internalist views: he claims that there is a very strong, if contingent, connection between our states of approval and our motivational states. I offer an explanation of how Hutcheson could respond to the amoalist, which holds that we ought to be moral because, in part, we all already have the motives for and the interests in doing the sorts of things of which moral spectators approve. In chapters 5 and 6, I turn my attention to Hume who, because he makes no distinction between motivating and justifying reasons, does not seem to have anything to say about the non-derivative reasonableness of moral action. I argue that a textually grounded interpretation of Hume's theory of the passions provides us with more reason to favor an (appraiser motive) internalist reading over an externalist reading of his moral theory. Much of my argument depends on an interpretation of Hume's claim that it is possible for agents to be moved to act from a sense of duty alone. When we ask what Hume can say to the question “why be moral,” some of the options that Hutcheson pursues are initially open to him. However, I argue that Hume thinks philosophical theorizing must give way to the operations of psychological mechanisms that are causally responsible for inspiring agents to act morally by giving rise in them to particular kinds of affections. I conclude with some general remarks about the problems surrounding Darwall's interpretation of Hume's theory of justice, and use this discussion to lend further support to the claim that the actual theories of Hobbes, Hutcheson, and Hume do not neatly fit into the taxonomies that Darwall seems to think they do.