IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/ecnphi/v36y2020i3p334-354_2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Punishment and disagreement in the state of nature

Author

Listed:
  • Barrett, Jacob

Abstract

Hobbes believed that the state of nature would be a war of all against all. Locke denied this, but acknowledged that in the absence of government, peace is insecure. In this paper, I analyse both accounts of the state of nature through the lens of classical and experimental game theory, drawing especially on evidence concerning the effects of punishment in public goods games. My analysis suggests that we need government not to keep wicked or relentlessly self-interested individuals in line, but rather to maintain peace among those who disagree about morality.

Suggested Citation

  • Barrett, Jacob, 2020. "Punishment and disagreement in the state of nature," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 36(3), pages 334-354, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:ecnphi:v:36:y:2020:i:3:p:334-354_2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0266267119000233/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Brian Kogelmann, 2021. "Lockeans against labor mixing," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 20(3), pages 251-272, August.
    2. Noblit, Graham Alexander & Hadfield, Gillian, 2023. "Normative Conflict and Normative Change," SocArXiv tvg7b, Center for Open Science.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:ecnphi:v:36:y:2020:i:3:p:334-354_2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/eap .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.