Book contents
I - The Fundamental Problem
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011
Summary
The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before. This is the fundamental problem of which the Social Contract provides the solution.
Rousseau, The Social ContractIn this chapter I provide an overview of the main ideas and problems that I shall address in this work and sketch some approaches to their solutions. Section 1 introduces the idea of a “social morality.” Social morality, I argue in Part One, constitutes the basic framework for a cooperative and mutually beneficial social life. Social morality provides rules that we are required to act upon and which provide the basis for authoritative demands of one person addressed to another. Section 2 analyzes this authority relation, and its apparent tension with understanding others as free and equal moral persons. How can free and equal moral persons claim authority to prescribe to other free and equal moral persons? A general solution to this problem, advanced by Rousseau and Kant, is that authority and freedom can be reconciled if each freely endorses the authority of morality. As I argue, a publicly justified morality – one that the reason of each endorses – allows each to remain free while subject to moral authority.
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- Information
- The Order of Public ReasonA Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse and Bounded World, pp. 1 - 50Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010