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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
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    42
    Rousseau faces a problem about how a new state can come t... — Carmelics
    Home/Social Contract
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Rousseau faces a problem about how a new state can come to have good laws.

    Social Contract
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Good laws can only be willed by good citizens.
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    • 2.To be legitimate, laws must be agreed upon by the assembly.
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    • 3.Citizens forming a new state are unlikely to possess the moral qualities required to will good laws, having been shaped by unjust institutions.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Rousseau's own Legislator figure resolves the bootstrapping problem by operating outside the social contract as an external constitutional architect.
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    • 2.The Legislator does not will laws but merely proposes them, preserving popular sovereignty while providing the moral scaffolding citizens initially lack.
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    • 3.Historical examples like Lycurgus in Sparta and Calvin in Geneva demonstrate that foundational legislation can precede and cultivate civic virtue rather than require it.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Kant's constructivist account shows that rational agents can legislate valid moral laws prior to any particular social formation, grounding legitimacy in reason alone.
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    • 2.If citizens possess the capacity for rational autonomy independent of prior institutions, the corruption argument in P3 does not preclude their ability to will genuinely good laws.
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    Topics

    Social Contract

    Connections

    1 topic

    Virtue Ethics2 linked

    Related

    Citizens forming a new state are unlikely to possess the moral qualities require...Good laws can only be willed by good citizens.Historical examples like Lycurgus in Sparta and Calvin in Geneva demonstrate tha...If citizens possess the capacity for rational autonomy independent of prior inst...
    +4 moreShow less
    Kant's constructivist account shows that rational agents can legislate valid mor...Rousseau's own Legislator figure resolves the bootstrapping problem by operating...The Legislator does not will laws but merely proposes them, preserving popular s...To be legitimate, laws must be agreed upon by the assembly.

    Similar

    Citizens forming a new state are unlikely to possess the moral qualiti...81%The legislator is Rousseau's attempted solution to the problem of foun...76%The state might enforce any of a wide range of conceptions of property...71%In such states, the impact of laws will not generally be the same for ...71%

    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