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Freedom, power and resistence - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Introduction
        
        Frederick Douglass is a promient abolonitionist who was a former slave that managed to escape slavery and who would go onto challange the instiution; fighting to see it ended.
        
        A key part of the life and story of Douglass is his fight with a slave breaker called Mr Covey.
        
        This fight, and the impact it has on Douglass, provides an incite into the ideology of resistence in the mind of Douglass and the legitmacy of using violent force to resist oppression.
        
        Although important to the anti-slavery movement the ideasnthat Douglass provides us in this fight have been challanged (mostly indirectly) through history by the civil disobience movement.
      - Douglass and the resistence of oppression
        
        Douglass, throughout his works, provides a compelling argument for the need for the use of violent struggle to resist oppression.
        
        In the narrative Douglass describes how the fight with Covey and the use of force to prove himself reignites within in the desire for freedom and it becomes the seccond major step in the path to freedom (Douglass, 1995, p43), after his learning to read.
        
        We see in Douglass a mental emancipation from freedom once he wins the fight, he says so when he says “i might remain a slave in form, but the day had passed forever when i could be a slave in fact” (Douglass, 1995, p43).
        
        In the narrative Douglass offers the value of resistence on a personal level, as a means of ingiting within you na desire for freedom, but he develops his arguements further.
        
        To Douglass people never win their freedom without fight for it first "if there is no struggle, there is no progress" (citation his speech) to Douglass political resistence and the practice of violent resistence must always be on the table as a form of resistence. He says that people must be willing to put their lives on the line for freedom and praises the rebellions in the East Indies against slavery (citation his speech).
        
        Douglass also equate the ability to resist oppression to the basics of what makes us human, he argues that without force we lack dignity (Sokoloff, 2014, p340). If, therefore, asserting our freedoms is part of what makes us human then it is hard not to justify its legitmacy.
        
        Douglass deos not simply offer a moral arguement for the use of violent struggle, but he also offers a pragmatic arguement that slavery was abolsihed, at least in part because of rebellion, and if this is what is needed to end the institution then it is justfied through its' ends.
        
        Douglass is shown to put his support for the legitmacy of rebllion into practice when he offers funds for John Browns attack on Harpers Ferry (Ballard, 2006, p64).
        
        However, the value of Douglass' arguements today may appear weaker, then they did 200 years ago. Unlike the 1800s people across the US are not the property of others.
        
        In the western world the use of violent struggle is no longer necessary, even when we encouter racism there are legal, democractic means of redress. Even Douglass seems to accept this following the civil war he enagaged and supported more peaceful methods calling Black Americans to protest and even taking a position in the US govement (as the US Marshal of Washington DC) (Ballard, 2006, pp51-53).
        
        At least in the west a strong arguement that within his life time the arguements of Douglass became obselete and he aboneded the more radical elements of his ideas.
        
        Douglass' ideas have more value and retain their relanvence in other parts of the world. In Afghanistan, where women have lost almost all their most basic freedoms (https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/03/afghanistan-un-experts-say-20-years-progress-women-and-girls-rights-erased#:~:text=Today%2C%20Afghanistan's%20women%20and%20girls,living%20in%20prison%20like%20conditions.) Douglass' arguement remains true.
        
        Douglass supports the killing of US Marshalls who enforced the fugative slave law (Sokoloff, 2014, p334) for it infrigned on people's right to be free, in a more modern sense it is not hard to imigane Douglass supporting an Afghan women killing a Taliban fighter who stops her from leaving her home.
      - Conclusion
        
        Douglass, throughout his work, provides justification for the use of resistence to oppression and although some of this may be in more peaceful means (Ballard, 2006, pp51-53) much of it comes in more violent tones (if there is no struggle speech).
        
        The fight with Covey deos offer some justfication for resistence and the means through which that should be performed, but the validity of these arguements has a degree of spatial variation.
        
        Douglass engages in violent resistence in a country where he is not seen as fully human and lacks any of the basic rights, in many countries around the world this state of existence is no longer true. As much as, for example, Catholics in Northern Ireland may still subjects/oppressed they have means of redress outside violence that Douglass himself would adopt after the civil war (Ballard, 2006, pp51-53). Therefore in countries where the basic rights of citizens are upheld the ideas that were created in Douglass' mind through the fight with Covey has mostly lost their legitmacy.
        
        But, in parts of the world where these basic rights are still repressed we may still see the value in Douglass' argument for that to obtain these rights we must struggle and fight (his speech)
- - - - To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can beUnjust. The notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice have there no place. Wherethere is no common Power, there is no Law: where no Law, no Injustice. Force, and Fraud,are in war the two Cardinal virtues. Justice, and Injustice are none of the Faculties neither ofthe Body, nor Mind. If they were, they might be in a man that were alone in the world, aswell as his Senses, and Passions. They are Qualities, that relate to men in Society, not inSolitude. It is consequent also to the same condition, that there be no Propriety [acceptedstandards of behaviour or morals], no Dominion, no Mine and Thine distinct; but only thatto be every mans that he can get; and for so long, as he can keep it. And thus much for theill condition, which man by mere Nature is actually placed in; though with a possibility tocome out of it, consisting partly in the Passions, partly in his Reason.Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter 13.
  - - - A Covenant not to defend my self from force, by force, is always void. For (as I have [shown]before) no man can transfer, or lay down his Right to save himself from Death, Wounds, andImprisonment, (the avoiding whereof is the only End of laying down any Right,) andtherefore the promise of not resisting force, in no Covenant transferred any right; nor isobliging. For though a man may Covenant thus, “Unless I do so, or so, kill me;” he cannotCovenant thus “Unless I do so, or so, I will not resist you, when you come to kill me.” Forman by nature chooses the lesser evil, which is danger of death in resisting; rather than thegreater, which is certain and present death in not resisting. And this is granted to be true byall men, in that they lead Criminals to Execution, and Prison, with armed men,notwithstanding that such Criminals have consented to the Law, by which they arecondemned.Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter 16
    - - Intro
        
        Hobbes establishes the soveeign and the commonwealth on the idea of the social contract --explain contact--. Within this contract we convent away certian rights/liberties, however, in this essay I will argue that although this social contract gives away a great deal of our natural rights there are a few inealiable rights that Hobbes says can't be given away.
      - What can't be convented away
        
        Right to self defence
        
        Pleading guilty without recieving pardon.
        
        In effect we may not covenant to do anything directly harmful o our lives (i.e. we may not convenat death) or anything that would substianally harm our wellbeing.
        
        “A covenant not to defend myself from force, by force, is always void” -- p93
        
        “A covenant to accuse oneself, without assurance of pardon, is likewise invalid” --p93
        
        “Hobbes also affords them the right to protect theselves from certian sorts of nondeadly harms” --p10 (BOOK CHAPTER The true liberties of subjects)
      - Why
        
        Hobbes directly makes his case for the justification of this right to self defence through his laws of nature, primarily his first law of nature.
        
        Other scholars have found further justification for Hobbes rights through three extra principles.
        
        Reason, fidelity and necessity.
      - Conclusion
        
        Hobbes deos create an all powerful soverign, because the right to self defence deos not remove the soverign's ability to use force to make you comply. However, Hobbes deos clearly establish that we can't covenant to let our selves have harm or anything that would contradict the first law of nature.