Critique of Rights. Christoph Menke

“The determination of right is therefore only a permission or warrant,” and Savigny, System of the Modern Roman Law, trans. by William Holloway (Madras: J. Higginbotham, 1867) (right in “a subjective sense” is “synonymous with privilege” [7]).

      51 51. See p. 53 in this volume.

      52 52. Hobbes, Leviathan, 436–7 (ch. 37) [C.M. – my italics].

      53 53. Hobbes, Leviathan, 253 (ch. 26). Cf. 147 (ch. 15). See p. 39 in this volume.

      54 54. Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, 195 (ch. 16). For this radicalization of Hobbes by Spinoza, see Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), 169f.

      55 55. [Tr. –Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, 196 (ch. 16).]

      56 56. Benedict de Spinoza, Political Treatise, in: The Complete Works, trans. by Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), 676–754, here 683 (ch. 2).

      57 57. “For right is freedom, namely that liberty which the civil law leaves us” (Hobbes, Leviathan, 276 [ch. 26]).

      58 58. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 46.

      59 59. Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, 47.

      60 60. Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, 56.

      61 61. Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, 42.

      62 62. Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, 56.

      63 63. Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, 56.

      64 64. Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, 56.

      65 65. Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, 63.

      66 66. Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, 63. This enabling sense is definitive for the type of right known as liberties: they establish that the bearer of a right does not stand under an obligation. Cf. H.L.A. Hart, “Are There Any Natural Rights?” in: Jeremy Waldron (ed.), Theories of Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 77–90, here 80f.

      67 67. In addition, the right to do something wrong belongs to law; Jeremy Waldron, “A Right To Do Wrong,” in: Liberal Rights: Collected Papers 1981–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 63–87.

      68 68. Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, 56. See p. 52 in this volume. Also, see a more explicit treatment of this issue in chapter 14, “Excursus: Causal and Legal Relation.”

      69 69. Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, 64.

      70 70. Once again, the reflections from part II of this volume are relevant here.

      71 71. See chapter 4 in this volume.

      72 72. See p. 39 in this volume. On the redefinition of the human being as the other side of the citizen, see Koselleck, Critique and Crisis, 36f.

      73 73. In the precise sense of the term, as elaborated by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. by Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1977), 170–94. The replacement of paideia with discipline means that the resistance of the natural remains impossible to resolve. Dieter Thomä has shown this pertinence of what lies outside of the law in Hobbes’ figure of the puer robustus and outlined its modern history; see Dieter Thomä, “Der kräftige Knabe,” Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte, VI.2 (2012), 73–90. See also Christoph Menke, “Die Disziplin der Ästhetik ist die Ästhetik der Disziplin: Baumgarten in der Perspektive Foucaults,” in: Rüdiger Campe, Anselm Haverkamp, and Christoph Menke, Baumgarten-Studien: Zur Genealogie der Ästhetik (Berlin: August Verlag, 2014), 233–47. For Foucault’s analysis of juridical subjectivity, see chapter 11, “Foucault’s Diagnosis: The Regression of the Juridical,” in this volume.