Actually, no, for Locke “vengeance” is prohibited in the state of nature, as it is in civil society, because it is always wrong. One of the reasons Locke argues that you need civil government is to restrain the immoral passion for vengeance in order to create space for dispassionate administration of justice.

I would not characterize Locke as holding that the state only has rights delegated to it by consenting individuals. This is part of that larger, more robustly social anthropology that Locke scholarship is recovering. There is a world of difference between Locke and von Mises.

Your earlier comments implied that all forms of authority reduce to patriarchal (“what else is there?”). If you now want to retrench to a merely historical position, arguing only that in early, primitive societies it happened to be the case that patriarchal and political authority were exercised by the same person and only came to be separated later, you may be shocked to discover that you are now Lockean. (Read chapter 8 of the Second Treatise.)

In a state of nature, doesn’t each individual possess right to exact vengeance ?

If one holds, with Locke, that the State only holds rights that are delegated to it by consenting individuals then with Miseans, you are left with a night-watchman state.

I do not think that all forms of authority are simply reduced to patriarchal. My only claim is that the State is a development of ancient patriarchy.

Now, I don’t want to sound too dismissive of the cottage industry quality of Rawls scholarship…after all much the same could be said of Vogelin schloarship. This may be a “too each his own” situation…though I cannot help thinking it seem more likely there will be serious discussion on Vogelin in 100 years than Rawls.

Gian: That’s circular reasoning. I ask you why you believe all forms of authority are patriarchal and you reply with “what else is there?” Well, there’s political authority, economic authority, spiritual authority, etc. The authority of a ruler involves a different sort of power than the authority of a father – the father may not kill his children even when they commit crimes, but it is a core function of the ruler to kill criminals. Whereas the ruler may not exercise authoritative control over the general formation of his subjects’ opinions, even if those opinions are wrong. In both cases there may be exceptions – the father can kill his criminal son in self-defense, for example, or the ruler may forbid systems of opinion formation that are manifestly hostile to the civil community (such as teaching children to disobey the law). But these exceptional cases don’t undermine the general point – indeed, they seem to me to emphasize it. So it seems pretty cut and dried to me that these are different kinds of authority. And the same could be said of economic authority (the authority of property owners and employers, for example) or spiritual authority (the authority of the church to preach the gospel and maintain church discipline).

And the content of the Bible seems to me to reinforce all of the above. I see no scriputral basis for conceptualizing rulers generally in terms of fatherhood, and much basis for resisting that framework.

All authority involves heirarchy, yes, but different kinds of heirarchy. The heriarchy of ruler over subject is radically different from the heirarchy of father over child – as the examples above seem to me to indicate clearly. I’m not saying any of these forms of authority isn’t heirarchical; I’m saying that there are multiple forms of heirarchy.

Even within the family, I would distinguish (as the Bible distinguishes) the authority structure within marriage from the authority structure between parents and children. I believe in the spiritual headship of husbands, but that is a radically different thing from the authority of parent over child. Just as a starting point, it is noteworthy that every single time the Bible admonishes respect and obedience to parents, it includes fathers and mothers equally. There is no point in the Bible that directs the obedience of children only to fathers; parental authority is shared and exercised jointly. That point alone seems to me to undermine the theory that all forms of power reduce to patriarchy.

To impose one’s morality, does it not require a hierarchy?. And isn’t patriarchy an authority that is most natural and even scriptural?
(Since children must honor father and wives must obey husbands).

I mean what else is there?. It is either this or contract between parties of equal standing or brute force of conquest or divine anointment or personal merit.

The fact is you’re being evasive. You’d never make such a claim in print. In fact, in print you’re much more measured (as we all are). C’mon, you really ought to retract the comment.

This seems to me to be the same as saying that all authority is paternal authority, a position that I think is simultaneously at odds with scripture, tradition (including Roman tradition) and human reason. Do fathers have authority to kill their children for just cause? Do governments have authority to control what their subjects will be taught to believe about all topics? If not, doesn’t that necessariliy imply these are two different kinds of authority?

Another way of asking this question: if all authority is paternal authority and the state has paternal authority, doesn’t that give the state total authority over everything? How can you justify the authority of, say, fathers – or the church?