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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    The sovereign lacks the right to fully control individual... — Carmelics
    Home/Rights & Liberty
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    The sovereign lacks the right to fully control individuals' beliefs

    Rights & LibertySocial Contract
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.It is strictly impossible to completely control another person's beliefs
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    • 2.Right is coextensive with power — one only has a right to do what one has the power to do
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    • 3.Lacking the power to completely control beliefs entails lacking the right to do so
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Sovereignty derives from the rational consent of individuals to establish order, not merely from the raw capacity to coerce (Rousseau, Social Contract).
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    • 2.A legitimate sovereign may rightfully shape the epistemic environment—education, public discourse, civic religion—to cultivate beliefs necessary for social cohesion.
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    • 3.Controlling the conditions that form beliefs is functionally equivalent to controlling beliefs, granting the sovereign effective right over the domain of opinion.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Hobbes argues that in the state of nature, unrestricted private judgment over good and evil is itself a primary cause of conflict and insecurity.
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    • 2.By contracting into civil society, individuals surrender private judgment—including on matters of doctrine—to the sovereign as the price of peace.
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    • 3.Therefore, the sovereign's right to regulate public belief-expression is not contingent on the impossible task of inner compulsion but on the legitimate suppression of destabilizing public opinion.
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    Topics

    Rights & LibertySocial Contract

    Connections

    1 topic

    Consciousness & Mind1 linked

    Related

    A legitimate sovereign may rightfully shape the epistemic environment—education,...By contracting into civil society, individuals surrender private judgment—includ...Controlling the conditions that form beliefs is functionally equivalent to contr...Hobbes argues that in the state of nature, unrestricted private judgment over go...
    +5 moreShow less
    It is strictly impossible to completely control another person's beliefsLacking the power to completely control beliefs entails lacking the right to do ...Right is coextensive with power — one only has a right to do what one has the po...Sovereignty derives from the rational consent of individuals to establish order,...Therefore, the sovereign's right to regulate public belief-expression is not con...

    Similar

    Lacking the power to completely control beliefs entails lacking the ri...86%For Spinoza, sovereign right is conditioned on and limited by the coll...85%The sovereign is the sole civil and religious authority83%Yet the sovereign alone has rightful authority over those religious ma...82%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: spinoza-political
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    What are Spinoza’s arguments for his, albeit limited, defense freedoms of thought and speech? The first argument is that it is strictly impossible to control another’s beliefs completely (20, 250–51). Since right is coextensive with power, lacking the power to control beliefs entails lacking the right to do so. However, since Spinoza admits that beliefs can be influenced in myriad ways, even if not fully controlled, this argument amounts to a rather restricted defense of freedom of conscience.
    Extraction notes

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

    Details

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