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    A social contract cannot serve as a legitimate source of ... — Carmelics
    Home/Democracy & Governance
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    A social contract cannot serve as a legitimate source of political authority in Spinoza's framework

    Democracy & GovernanceSocial Contract
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.For Spinoza, political authority derives solely from actual power (potentia), not normative agreements or hypothetical consent.
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    • 2.A contract presupposes that obligations can bind parties beyond their present conatus, which Spinoza's metaphysics explicitly denies.
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    • 3.Spinoza argues in the Tractatus Politicus that states founded on contractual promises are inherently unstable and therefore illegitimate as governing structures.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Spinoza's naturalism entails that right (jus) just is power, making the normative surplus that contracts require metaphysically unintelligible.
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    • 2.Hobbes's contractarian framework, which Spinoza directly engages and rejects, treats sovereignty as transferable, whereas Spinoza holds that natural right cannot be permanently alienated.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.The legitimating strength of a social contract depends on farsighted rationality among the contracting parties
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    • 2.Spinoza holds that most people lack farsighted rationality
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    Topics

    Democracy & GovernanceSocial Contract

    Connections

    1 topic

    Moral Responsibility2 linked

    Related

    A contract presupposes that obligations can bind parties beyond their present co...For Spinoza, political authority derives solely from actual power (potentia), no...Hobbes's contractarian framework, which Spinoza directly engages and rejects, tr...Spinoza argues in the Tractatus Politicus that states founded on contractual pro...
    +3 moreShow less
    Spinoza holds that most people lack farsighted rationalitySpinoza's naturalism entails that right (jus) just is power, making the normativ...The legitimating strength of a social contract depends on farsighted rationality...

    Similar

    The legitimating strength of a social contract depends on farsighted r...77%Justice obligations cannot extend beyond the scope of legitimate polit...76%Contractarian theories require that parties to the contract be able to...75%Therefore, legitimate political authority creates a liability for thos...74%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: spinoza-political
    View source passageHide passage
    However, if Spinoza really relies upon the social contract as a source of legitimacy, several problems arise. First of all, it seems unlikely that such a contract could ever have been formed, since the legitimating strength of a social contract depends on farsighted rationality that Spinoza clearly thinks most people lack (see Den Uyl 1983).
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit