Had things worked out a little better for him on Tuesday, Bernie Sanders would be in a position to regret his participation in the last round of Democratic Party rule making. There is a paradoxical tone to the situation that I have not seen anyone in print pick up on yet. So I guess I'll have to do it. Sanders is the most Rawlsian candidate in the race. Yet though the Rawlsian notion of justice works for him, the Rawlsian notion of a social contract that depends on a veil of ignorance works at the expense of a procedural position he has taken. To get this, we have to distinguish those two parts of Rawlsian social theory: the idea of the social contract, with of course traditional Lockean roots but filtered through game theory; and the suggested content of the contract, which the contractors supposedly agree to in the Rawlsian model. [That's a portrait of John Locke you're looking at, BTW. ] As to the contract: Rawls said that justice should be understood as the set...
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I'd like to present today, without further ado, something David Hume wrote about the Tories and the Whigs of his day. As no party, in the present age can well support itself without a philosophical or speculative system of principles annexed to its political or practical one; we accordingly find that each of the factions into which this nation is divided has reared up a fabric of the former kind, in order to protect and cover that scheme of actions which it pursues. ... The one party [defenders of the absolute and divine right of kings, or Tories], by tracing up government to the DEITY, endeavor to render it so sacred and inviolate that it must be little less than sacrilege, however tyrannical it may become, to touch or invade it in the smallest article. The other party [the Whigs, or believers in constitutional monarchy], by founding government altogether on the consent of the PEOPLE suppose that there is a kind of original contract by which the subjects have tacitly reserv...
"Why should I obey the laws?" "Because you'll be punished if you don't." "Assume for the moment that I expect to get away with a particular violation. Or that the odds are fairly good and I am willing to run the risk of capture. Should I obey the law anyway? And, if so, why?" "You should obey the law, because in doing so you abide by the social contract." "Show me that contract and my signature thereon." "If your signature were on it, it would be a contract without adjective. The social contract is only implicit." "From what is it implied?" "From the fact that you use the roads." "Roads could be privately constructed and run." "Yes, but they usually aren't, and you use them." "So a government deserves my allegiance because it can create and in fact monopolize certain necessary avenues of transportation and because I am so unfortunate as to use t...
Are there loose threads in the fabric of the thought of Thomas Hobbes? If you pull hard at one of these threads, does the whole thing (and especially the goal of delegitimizing the Cromwellian revolution and revolutions in general) unravel? Hobbes was a much more fascinating guy than the cartoon versions of him suggest. and these loose threads make him more so. Hobbes was sufficiently logical that he had to admit there was such a thing as a right to rebel. Or something quite analogous, anyway. Logic compels Hobbes to write things like this: "If the sovereign command a man, though justly condemned, to kill, wound, or maim himself; or not to resist those that assault him; or to abstain from the use of food, air, medicine, or any other thing without which he cannot live; yet hath that man the liberty to disobey." I take this to mean: if you are on death row, no contract or duty rationally deters you from resisting your executioner or seeking escape. Further, the resistanc...