scholarly journals The Dissolution of the Social Contract in to the Unfathomable Perpetuity of Caste

Symposion ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-217
Author(s):  
Rajesh Sampath ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Critical View ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
Democratic Norms

This paper examines Ambedkar’s critical view of certain distortions, contradictions, and instabilities in democratic norms, constitutional validity, and citizens’ rights in India’s secular, constitutional, legal, pluralistic democracy. Through a strident deconstruction utilizing Hegelian resources, the paper exposes the contortions and contradictions underpinning Hindu metaphysics in some of its most abstract texts, namely the ancient Upanishads. Through this deconstructive lens we unpack various aporias embedded in concepts of selfhood that render a truly liberal democratic political notion of citizenship impossible. The paper concludes with the necessity of further research on comparative philosophies of religion and political philosophy to better understand the limits of secular democracy, particularly for minority rights, in different metaphysical and civilizational traditions.

Another Voluntarism

Legitimacy ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 43-66
Author(s):  
Paul Weithman
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Social Contract Theory ◽  
The Public ◽  
Corporate Body ◽  
The Social ◽  
Real Work ◽  
Moral Claims ◽  
Philosophical Questions

John Rawls’s presentation of his famous principle of legitimacy raises a number of exegetical and philosophical questions which his texts leave unresolved. The key to their solution lies in a claim Rawls makes about the character of political power. Rawls uses language familiar from social contract theory to describe that power, saying that it is the power of the public as a corporate body. This chapter considers but ultimately rejects the suggestion that Rawls’s treatment of legitimacy is Lockean. Rather, Rawls follows Kant in thinking that talk of a contractual incorporation is best understood as a way of expressing fundamental moral claims about the object of a constitution, about citizens’ standing, and about legislators’ duties. These are the claims that do the real work in Rawls’s account of legitimacy. To show this, the chapter lays out Kant’s conception of the social contract and argues that we can draw on that conception to understand Rawls’s account of political legitimacy. It then spells out the philosophical pay-offs of the reading offered here by showing how it solves some textual puzzles and how Rawls’s account differs from others that have recently been defended in political philosophy. The chapter concludes by mentioning some lingering questions about Rawlsian legitimacy.

scholarly journals A Postmodern Defence of Universal Liberal Legal Norms

2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Austin
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Legal Responsibility ◽  
Ethical Responsibility ◽  
Community Practice ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
Universal Human Rights ◽  
Strong Resemblance ◽  
Democratic Norms

The idea of universal liberal legal norms has long been under attack from a variety of sources. One of the most sustained and sophisticated philosophical versions of such an attack is found in the work of Martin Heidegger. His argument from the social embeddedness of the self to the ultimate contingency and groundlessness of any claims of normativity has been highly influential across a number of fields. This paper argues that legal theorists who wish to contest such a view should look to the work of philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. In his critique of Heidegger, Levinas affirms the significance of the human beyond the particular context in which we find ourselves embedded. Levinas wrote very little about law; his main focus was on ethical responsibility and the claim that an “other” makes on me. I argue that legal responsibility is fundamentally different, concerned instead with the claims that a self can make on others. Drawing upon Levinas’ understanding of the self as constituted through ethical responsibility, I argue that a Levinasian account of justice can support liberal-democratic norms such as freedom, equality and dignity. Indeed, Levinas himself endorsed universal human rights and even indicated a strong affinity with Kant’s idea of justice. What he denied, however, was that justice is a fully rational and coherent concept. I argue that this does not render justice incoherent or call into question the basic status of the norms of justice. Rather, a Levinasian account of justice shifts the emphasis to the community practice of reasoning about universal norms, a practice that is never complete. I further suggest that such a practice of reasoning should be familiar to lawyers as it bears a strong resemblance to common law reasoning.

scholarly journals Animal Ethics and Politics Beyond the Social Contract

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 208-222
Author(s):  
Alan Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Animal Ethics ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Reasonable Pluralism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Problem ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
Political Actions

This paper is divided into three sections. First, I describe the wide plurality of views on issues of animal ethics, showing that our disagreements here are deep and profound. This fact of reasonable pluralism about animal ethics presents a political problem. According to the dominant liberal tradition of political philosophy, it is impermissible for one faction of people to impose its values upon another faction of people who reasonably reject those values. Instead, we are obligated to justify our political actions to each other using reasons that everyone can accept. Thus, in the second section I suggest that our condition of reasonable pluralism inspires us to turn toward some form of contractarianism. The social contract tradition emerged precisely as an attempt to think about how a society characterized by deep moral disagreement could nonetheless agree about the basic principles of justice. I will show, in this section, that although the social contract tradition would seem to contain the best tools for thinking about how to deal with moral disagreement, it fails to help us think through the important issues of animal ethics. In the concluding section, I suggest some ways in which political philosophy might move beyond contractarianism when thinking about this issue, including embracing an agonistic style of politics.

scholarly journals Sovereignty and Democracy in Global Times: acutality of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Political Philosophy and the limits of the social contract

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 108
Author(s):  
Marcus Baccega
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
The Political ◽  
Global Capital ◽  
Political Sovereignty ◽  
Jean Bodin ◽  
The Social ◽  
Isidore Of Seville ◽  
The Republic

SOBERANIA E DEMOCRACIA EM TEMPOS MUNDIALIZADOS: ATUALIDADE DA FILOSOFIA POLÍTICA DE JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU E OS LIMITES DO CONTRATO SOCIAL Resumo: este artigo visa a problematizar os (des)caminhos dos conceitos políticos e das práticas sociais e jurídicas em torno da soberania política do Estado Nacional e da democracia nos tempos de mundialização do Capital. Portanto, revisita e percorre uma breve arqueologia conceitual da Soberania, desde Isidoro de Sevilha até a clássica definição de Jean Bodin nos Seis Livros sobre a República (1576). O propósito é problematizar a filosofia política de Rousseau para, então, perceber e discutir seus limites suas virtualidades, bem como a atualidade de sua noção de Contrato Social e o papel da Filosofia Política na Era do Capital Global. Palavras-chave: Rousseau. Soberania. Mundialização do Capital. Abstract: this paper casts doubt on the ways and shunts of political concepts and social and legal practices concerning political sovereignty of the Nation State and democracy at the time of Capital’s globalization. It revisits a brief conceptual archeology of Sovereignty, since Isidore of Seville to the classical definition by Jean Bodin in The Six Books on the Republic (1576). The purpose is casting doubt on the political philosophy of Rousseau, in order to discuss its limits and virtualities, and the topicality of his notion of social contract and the role of Political Philosophy at the Age of Global Capital. Keywords: Rousseau. Sovereignty. Globalization of Capital.

Flow, Code and Stock: A Note on Deleuze's Political Philosophy

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (supplement) ◽  
pp. 36-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel W. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Philosophy ◽  
General Theory ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
John Maynard Keynes ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Marxist Analysis

In Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari claim that a general theory of society must be a generalised theory of flows. This is hardly a straightforward claim, and this paper attempts to examine the grounds for it. Why should socio-political theory be based on a theory of flows rather than, say, a theory of the social contract, or a theory of the State, or the questions of legitimation or revolution, or numerous other possible candidates? The concept of flow (and the related notions of code and stock), I argue, is derived from contemporary economic theory, and most notably John Maynard Keynes. Deleuze and Guattari remained Marxists, not only because they held that contemporary political philosophy must inevitably be centred on the analysis of capitalism, but also because they held, following Marx himself, that the Marxist analysis of capital must constantly be transformed and adapted to new conditions. Thus, while certain aspects of Marx's analysis disappear from Capitalism and Schizophrenia, they are supplemented by the addition of new concepts adequate to the contemporary state of capitalism. The paper concludes, then, with an analysis of the role played by the concepts of flow, code and stock in Deleuze and Guattari's political philosophy.

Natural Law and Public Reason in Kant's Political Philosophy

1996 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel M. Weinstock
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
The State ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Natural Law Theory

My intention in this essay will be to explore the role that consent-based arguments perform in Kant's political and legal philosophy. I want to uncover the extent to which Kant considered that the legitimacy of the State and of its laws depends upon the outcome of intersubjective deliberation. Commentators have divided over the following question: Is Kant best viewed as a member of the social contract tradition, according to which the legitimacy of the state and of the laws it promulgates derives from the consent of those people over whom it claims authority, or should he be read as having put forward a secularized version of natural law theory, according to which the state and its laws are legitimate to the extent that they are attained by standards of sound reason and supported by an objective account of the human good?

scholarly journals The Theory of Social Contract and Legitimacy Today

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 19-28
Author(s):  
Neophitos Economides
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The Political ◽  
Renaissance Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Era

Abstract The theory of social contract has played - and still plays - an important role in the central stage of political philosophy. The social contract answers the question of the origin of the society. The history of the theory originates in the ancient Greece political philosophy and extends to the recent years. However, the foundation of the theory resulted in the Renaissance period through the treatises of classical contractarians Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. The manuscript describes the main arguments regarding the theory of social contract and suggests the main similarities and differences among them. Finally, the manuscript, according to the main description of the theories, suggests the main categorization of their results in legitimizing the political authority. In the final section, the article proposes the contribution of the theory of the social contract to the modern era and summarizes the positive aspects of its arguments to the legitimization of the political authority of modern states.

The Ideal of Objectivity in Political Dialogue

1998 ◽  
pp. 92-97
Author(s):  
Kevin M. Graham
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
Political Dialogue ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Ideal

If political dialogue is to identify and redress existing forms of injustice, participants in the dialogue must be able to appeal to the concept of objectivity in order to exchange claims, attitudes, and background beliefs which distort or conceal various forms of injustice. The conceptions of objectivity traditionally employed in liberal democratic political philosophy are not well-suited to play this role because they are insufficiently sensitive to the social and ideological pluralism of modern societies. Some liberal political philosophers have recently offered more context-sensitive and pluralistic conceptions of objectivity, requiring participants in political dialogue to frame their demands for justice in terms of a conception of justice acceptable to all participants in the dialogue. I argue that this conception of objectivity constitutes an improvement over traditional liberal conceptions. However, it is ultimately unacceptable because it does not take adequate account of the limited and distorted knowledge that members of dominant social groups tend to possess about the oppression experienced by members of subordinate and marginalized groups. As a result, this conception of objectivity wrongly deems the demands for justice voiced by members of subordinate and marginalized groups to be subjective simply because they seem unreasonable from the limited and distorting standpoint of dominant social groups.

scholarly journals Rousseau's Conception of Government in the work Discourse on Political Economy

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-61
Author(s):  
Petar Jakopec
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
General Will ◽  
Major Work ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Government ◽  
Political Right

In this article the author problematizes Rousseau’s Discourse on Political Economy and his conception of government in the political community. Rousseau’s Discourse on Political Economy was chronologically written seven years before his major work The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right. Regardless of the fact that the Discourse on Political Economy was published earlier, it left a remarkable trace in Rousseau‘s philosophical opus. In this work, which was published as part of the fifth volume of Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, Rousseau indicated his direction in political philosophy. This philosophical and political direction began with the Discourse on Political Economy and culminated in the philosophical and political conception of republicanism, elaborated in detail in The Social Contract. In this article the author uses critical analysis and reconstruction to establish Rousseau‘s fundamental ideas about his political philosophy present in the Discourse on Political Economy, with a focus on observing and studying the role of a sovereign and the public economy in the function of the government by general will within the political community.

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