KJuris: Gopal Sreenivasan, Duke University

KJuris seminar with Gopal Sreenivasan (Duke)

Abstract

Despite occasional inconsistency, Locke’s considered position on the right to revolution is that individuals in political society have no liberty to revolt against a tyrannical government unless a majority of their fellow citizens concurs in their judgement of tyranny. In a recent paper, Massimo Renzo (2020) takes an equivalent position, on which a revolutionary vanguard requires the consent of the domestic majority before being permitted to revolt. Against Locke and Renzo, I shall argue that even a solitary individual can have a liberty to revolt, whatever the domestic majority may hold.

The speaker

Gopal Sreenivasan is the Lester Crown University Distinguished Professor of Ethics at Duke University. He is the author of two books, most recently Emotion and Virtue (Princeton, 2020). His current work focuses on rights and human rights, although he has also written a number of pieces on political legitimacy.

This is a virtual event.