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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
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    Mere contemplation of self-interest is inadequate to gene... — Carmelics
    Home/Social Contract
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Mere contemplation of self-interest is inadequate to generate a general will.

    Social Contract
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Selfish citizens who can will the general will might still not be moved to obey it (a compliance problem).
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    • 2.Citizen virtue is a necessary condition for the emergence of the general will in the first place.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Mandeville and Smith demonstrate that aggregated self-interest can produce outcomes that track collective welfare without requiring virtuous motivation.
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    • 2.If market mechanisms or institutional design can align private interest with public good, virtue is instrumentally dispensable for generating general-will-like outcomes.
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    • 3.Rousseau conflates the psychological source of willing with the structural conditions sufficient for convergent general willing.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Rawls's veil of ignorance shows that rational self-interest under appropriate epistemic constraints logically entails principles of general welfare.
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    • 2.If constrained self-interest is sufficient to derive principles of justice, then virtue is not a necessary condition but merely one sufficient path among several.
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    Topics

    Social Contract

    Connections

    2 topics

    Virtue Ethics1 linkedMoral Responsibility1 linked

    Related

    Citizen virtue is a necessary condition for the emergence of the general will in...If constrained self-interest is sufficient to derive principles of justice, then...If market mechanisms or institutional design can align private interest with pub...Mandeville and Smith demonstrate that aggregated self-interest can produce outco...
    +3 moreShow less
    Rawls's veil of ignorance shows that rational self-interest under appropriate ep...Rousseau conflates the psychological source of willing with the structural condi...Selfish citizens who can will the general will might still not be moved to obey ...

    Similar

    Another account holds that mere contemplation of self-interest is inad...86%One account holds that the general will emerges procedurally from indi...80%When not guided by reason, individuals pursue self-interest without re...75%Excessive self-interest insensibly diminishes affections towards publi...73%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: rousseau
    View source passageHide passage
    The Social Contract harbors a further tension between two accounts of how the general will emerges and its relation to the private wills of citizens. Sometimes Rousseau favors a procedural story according to which the individual contemplation of self interest (subject to the constraints of generality and universality and under propitious sociological background conditions such as rough equality and cultural similarity) will result in the emergence of the general will from the assembly of citizen
    Extraction notes

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

    Details

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