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    Rousseau's claim that citizens obey only themselves when ... — Carmelics
    Home/Democracy & Governance
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Rousseau's claim that citizens obey only themselves when obeying the general will is difficult to reconcile with democratic reality.

    Democracy & GovernanceSocial Contract
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

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    • 1.Rousseau's general will refers to the common good as a structural feature of the polity, not the aggregated preferences of individual voters.
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    • 2.When outvoted citizens obey majority decisions, they are constrained by empirical error about the common good, not by alien wills imposing foreign values.
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    • 3.Isaiah Berlin and Benjamin Constant both noted that Rousseau's positive liberty framework redefines autonomy as rational self-governance toward collective ends, making dissent a form of self-contradiction.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Deliberative democrats like Habermas argue legitimate outcomes require procedural conditions under which all voices are heard before decision, not unanimous agreement after.
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    • 2.A citizen who participates fully in Rousseau's legitimate legislative process has exercised self-governance regardless of whether their preferred outcome prevails.
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    • 3.The persistent minority problem in actual democracies reflects failures of legitimacy in real institutions, not a refutation of Rousseau's idealized normative framework.
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    Reasons Against

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    • 1.Democratic states involve majorities and minorities.
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    • 2.Citizens who are outvoted are constrained by a decision with which they disagree.
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    Topics

    Democracy & GovernanceSocial Contract

    Related

    A citizen who participates fully in Rousseau's legitimate legislative process ha...Citizens who are outvoted are constrained by a decision with which they disagree...Deliberative democrats like Habermas argue legitimate outcomes require procedura...Democratic states involve majorities and minorities.
    +4 moreShow less
    Isaiah Berlin and Benjamin Constant both noted that Rousseau's positive liberty ...Rousseau's general will refers to the common good as a structural feature of the...The persistent minority problem in actual democracies reflects failures of legit...When outvoted citizens obey majority decisions, they are constrained by empirica...

    Similar

    Selfish citizens who can will the general will might still not be move...82%In civil society, citizens obey laws they have prescribed to themselve...79%Even unanimous collective decisions in a direct democracy do not bind ...75%Despite this contradiction, democracy also requires force, freedom, an...73%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: rousseau
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    Rousseau makes a further claim in the same chapter of The Social Contract, namely that in conditions of civil society the citizen achieves “moral freedom,” by which he means obedience to a law that one has prescribed to oneself (for discussion see especially Neuhouser 1993). Although this latter claim is presented almost as an afterthought, it is the form of freedom most directly responsive to the challenge Rousseau had set for himself two chapters earlier, which involved finding “a form of asso
    Extraction notes

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

    Details

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