Sartwell worked as a freelance rock critic for publications, including Record and Melody Maker. His great-grandfather, Herman Bernstein broke the story of a secret correspondence between Kaiser Wilhelm and Nicholas II of Russia during World War I in The New York Times. His grandfather, also Franklin Gallagher Sartwell, was a columnist and editorial page editor at the Washington Times-Herald. Early life and education īorn in Washington, D.C., Sartwell is the son of Franklin Gallagher Sartwell, a reporter, editor, and photographer. He has taught philosophy, communication, and political science at a number of schools, including Vanderbilt University, University of Alabama, Millersville University of Pennsylvania, the Maryland Institute College of Art, and Dickinson College. Against the State provides a rigorous and provocative foil to the classic texts, and also serves as a concise statement of the anarchist challenge.' -Book Jacket.University of Maryland, College Park ( BA)Ĭrispin Gallagher Sartwell (born 1958) is an American academic, philosopher, and journalist who is a faculty member of the philosophy department at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He concludes by articulating a positive vision of an anarchist future, based on the 'individualism' of such figures as Emerson and Thoreau. Sartwell argues that the state rests on nothing but deadly force and its accompanying coercion, and that no one is under any obligation to obey the law merely because it is the law. He separates the traditional pro-state arguments into three classes: social contract theories, utilitarian justifications, and justicial views, all while attacking both general strategies and particular formulations. Sartwell considers the classics of Western political philosophy - Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, Hume, Bentham, Rawls, and Habermas, among others - and argues that their positions are not only wrong but also embarrassingly bad. |a 'In Against the State, Crispin Sartwell unleashes a quick and brutal rejection of the traditional arguments for state legitimacy. |a Electronic access restricted to Villanova University patrons. |a Some definitions - Social contract - Utilitarian justifications of state power - Justicial justifications of state power - Silhouette of an anarchism. |a Includes bibliographical references (pages 117-120) and index.

|b an introduction to anarchist political theory /

Against the State by Crispin Sartwell