Books

Do Christians owe special respect to state authority?

Government enjoys no special immunity from moral judgment, argues Jason Brennan.

Jason Brennan is a professor of stra­tegy, economics, ethics, and public policy at Georgetown University’s Mc­Donough School of Bus­iness. That sprawling title does not clearly indicate a professional field or method. Brennan’s methodology, at least in this book, falls within the field of philosophy—not just any kind of philosophy, but a sometimes tedious and even irritating kind currently popular, in which philosophers develop endless thought experiments to clarify reasoning about propositions, questions, or cases.

The proposition that Brennan wants to explore in this volume is this:

You possess the same right of self-defense, and the same right to defend others, against government agents as you do against civilians. The moral principles governing self-defense against civilians and government agents, even agents who act by virtue of their appointed status and within the law, are the same.