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Compelled to Choose

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Jean-Paul Brodeur
Jean-Paul Brodeur
Affiliation:
University of Montreal
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Extract

The disagreement between André Gombay and Storrs McCall can be summed up in terms of the distinction between liberty of spontaneity and liberty of indifference. This distinction is actually used by Professor McCall in his paper. Thus, it would seem that both speakers agree that a person acting under duress cannot exercise liberty of spontaneity—he (or she) does not act according to his (or her) wishes. However, Gombay also claims, at least according to McCall, that liberty of indifference is also lacking in cases of duress—persons under duress have no other choice than to obey when threatened. McCall takes an opposite view. He thinks that the only genuine cases of compulsion belong either to various types of physical coercion or to a certain number of pathologies of the mind.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , Winter 1985 , pp. 597 - 604
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1985

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References

1 See Williams, Glanville, Criminal Law: The General Part (2nd ed.; London: Stevens & Sons, 1961), 12Google Scholar.

2 I am aware that there are law violations falling under the legal category of strict liability (no intentional element is required to be convicted of such an offence). A discussion of strict liability is bound to be both technical and controversial; furthermore, it is not assured that it will prove relevant to our topic. I shall, therefore, let this matter drop.

3 See Hale, Sir M., The History of the Pleas of the Crown (London: Wilson, 1775), i 49–50, 56–58Google Scholar.

4 Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan (reprod. of the 1651 edition; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958). chap. 27. 157Google Scholar.

5 Quoted in Williams, Criminal Law, 726Google Scholar.

6 McCall, Storrs, “Incline Without Necessitating”, Dialogue (this issue), 589–596Google Scholar.

7 See Thorp, John. Five Will (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1980), 5Google Scholar.