Contemporary political theorists have tended to ignore the question of parental authority in their exploration of the nature and origins of political authority. Nevertheless, seminal thinkers in the social contract tradition such as Hobbes and Locke dedicated significant attention to the relationship between parental and political authority. My dissertation aims to revive the idea that the question of parental authority is philosophically relevant to the question of political authority, and vice versa. Thinking about parental authority in the light of political authority, I argue that we discover that the duration and scope of parental authority is surprisingly more limited than we may have thought. And in thinking about political authority in the light of parental authority, I argue that we discover ways to solve problems that arise from the contemporary emphasis on consent as the moral foundation of political authority.
Silverstein, Jed Daniel,
"'Not the Boss of Me': Reviving the Relationship Between Political and Parental Authority"
(2012).
Philosophy Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0RB72XX
