Introduction -- "Every Legitimate Government is Republican": Rousseau's Debt to and Departure from Montesquieu on Republicanism -- What if There is no Legislator? Rousseau's History of the Government of Geneva -- Rousseau's Republican Citizenship: The Moral Psychology of The Social Contract -- Rousseau's negative liberty: Themes of domination and skepticism in The Social Contract -- Rousseau's Ancient Ends of Legislation: Liberty, Equality (& Fraternity) -- Property and Possession in Rousseau's Social Contract -- Political Equality Among Unequals -- On the (...) Primacy of Peoplehood: Nations and Nationalism in Rousseau's Social Contract -- Rousseau on Voting and Electoral Laws -- Rousseau and the puzzle of the Roman Republic -- Rousseau's Case against Democracy -- Rousseau's Dilemma or "Of Civil Religion" -- Entreating the Political: Politics and Theology in Rousseau's Social Contract -- Civil Religion and Political Unity: Social Contract 4.8. (shrink)

롤즈는 『정치철학사 강의』의 ‘흄에 대한 강의’에서 흄의 「원초적 계약에 관하여」가 ‘로크’의 사회계약론을 비판하고 있다며 이를 재비판하고 있다. 롤즈가 강조하는 흄이 간과하는 측면은 “그[로크]의 사회 계약 기준이 언제 현존하고 합법적인 정체가 개별적으로 개인들을 구속하는가, 그렇다면 누가 체제의 완전한 시민이자 신민인가의 문제를 상정한다”는 것이다. 롤즈는 로크의 입장을 우선 다음과 같이 정식화한다: 정치적 체제는 그것이 만약 역사적 변화의 옳게-행해진 과정, 완전한 자유와 평등 상태와 함께 시작한 과정 동안 가입 계약될 수 있었을(could have been contracted into) 것과 같은 것일 경우에, 그리고 이 경우에 한해 (...) 합법적이다. 그리고, 개인들은 합법적 체제를 이것이 진정 현존하고 효과적으로 작동 중일 때 지지해야 할 자연법적 의무가 있다고 롤즈는 로크를 해석한다. 계속 롤즈의 로크 해석에 따르면, 이러한 이념적 역사 과정에서, 모든 사람은 그들의 합법적 ‘이익’들을 증진하기 위해 합리적으로 행동한다. 그렇다면, 롤즈는 주장하길, 로크와 흄 사이의 정말로 본질적인 쟁점은 로크의 사회 계약론이 흄의 ‘효용’개념에 의해 선별될 아주 동일한 무리의 정치 체제 혹은 헌정을 옳고 정의로운 것으로 선별했을 것인가 아닌가이다. 그런데, 로크의 체제는 효용에 부응함이라는 흄의 조건을 만족시키는 바이다. 따라서, 흄의 ‘효용 원리에 근거한’ 로크 사회 계약론 비판은 로크의 기준이 흄의 효용 원리를 포함하고, 일반적 사회 제도들이 공적으로 실제 이 원리를 만족시킴에, ‘결과적으로 새로운 것이 없고 무익한’ 것으로 롤즈에 의해 여겨지는 것이다. 그러나, 논자가 흄의 「원초적 계약에 관하여」를 다시 들여다보면, 통치체가 계약에 기초하지 않으므로, 통치체에의 복종의 의무가 원초적 계약에 기초하지 않고, 통치체에 대한 반란은 보통 ‘정치적 혁신 항쟁’으로 여겨진다. 그리고 이러한 ‘혁신 항쟁’이 “역사나 경험에 의해” 흄에 의해 추사유(追思惟)되길, “정복이나 찬탈, 즉 보통 용어로 힘(force)이 이전 통치체를 해체하며 거의 모든 새로운, 세계에 혹 수립된 통치체의 기원이다.” 결론적으로, 롤즈의 ‘흄의 반(反)계약론’ 비판은 ‘효용’에 주목하여 흄의 로크 비판에서 효용 원리의 무익성을 주장하나, 롤즈의 성급한 초월적 몰역사주의적 흄 독해가 흄의 산종적(disseminative) 역사-철학 하기 스타일을 충분히 소화해내는 어려운 작업을 완수하는 데는 못 미치고 있다고 평가할 수 있겠다. (shrink)

Abstract:Social contracting has a long and important place in the history of political philosophy (Hardin, 1991; Waldron, 1989) and as a theory of justice (Baynes, 1989; Rawls, 1971). More recently, it has been developed into an individual rights-based theory of organizations (Keeley, 1980, 1988), and as a way to integrate ethics and moral legitimacy into corporate strategy and action (Donaldson, 1982; Freeman&Gilbert, 1988). Currently, it is being proposed as an integrative theory of economic ethics (Donaldson&Dunfee, forthcoming). This paper will (...) extend the Donaldson and Dunfee approach by arguing thatsocial contracting can best be understood and applied in organizational settings if it is perceived and treated as a network governance process. This insight can benefit management scholars and practitioners alike, since it calls attention to the processes by which trust is created and sustained in on-going contractual relationships. It also strongly suggests that a new approach to applying managerial discretion, asmoral agency, is needed to realize the full competitive and ethical potential of emerging network forms. (shrink)

Modern Social Contract Theory provides an exposition and evaluation of major work in social contract theory from 1950 to the present. It locates the central themes of that theory in the intellectual legacy of utilitarianism, particularly the problems of defining principles of justice and of showing the grounds of moral obligation. It demonstrates how theorists responded in a novel way to the dilemmas articulated in utilitarianism, developing in their different approaches a constructivist method in ethics, a method that aimed to (...) vindicate a liberal, democratic and just political order. A distinctive feature of the book is its comparative approach. By placing the works of Barry, Buchanan and Tullock, Harsanyi, Gauthier, Grice, Rawls, and Scanlon alongside one another, similarities and differences are brought out, most notably in the way in which principles are derived by each author from the contractual construction as well as the extent to which the obligation to adopt those principles can be rationally grounded. Each theory is placed in its particular intellectual context. Special attention is paid to the contrasting theories of rationality adopted by the different authors, whether that be utility theory or a deliberative conception of rationality, with the intention of assessing how far the principles advanced can be justified by reference to the hypothetical choices of rational contracting agents. The book concludes with a discussion of some principal objections to the enterprise of contract theory, and offers its own programme for the future of that theory taking the form of the empirical method. (shrink)

ABSTRACTOne of the recurrent motifs in political thought is the idea of the social contract, according to which a society, a government, or moral principles depend for their existence on agreements...

Social contract theory enjoys a long history in moral and political philosophy. Since the European Enlightenment, social contract theory has become one of the most important traditions in moral and political philosophy. This chapter provides a brief introduction to central concepts in social contract theory and their development over time. Most importantly, the chapter clarifies some of the distinct features of new approaches to social contract theory (or “new social contract theory” for short) that have evolved in the twenty-first (...) century and are most suitable for capturing the circumstances of contemporary societies, even if new social contract theory does not constitute a unified theoretical position but is best considered as a family of approaches, methods, and topics. The chapter also provides an overview of the contributions to this book and their connections both methodologically and thematically. (shrink)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's ideas about society, culture, and government are pivotal in the history of political thought. His works are as controversial as they are relevant today. This volume brings together three of Rousseau's most important political writings -- The Social Contract and The First Discourse (Discourse on the Sciences and Arts) and The Second Discourse (Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality) -- and presents essays by major scholars that shed light on the dimensions and implications of these (...) texts. Susan Dunn's introductory essay underlines the unity of Rousseau's political thought and explains why his ideas influenced Jacobin revolutionaries in France but repelled American revolutionaries across the ocean. Gita May's essay discusses Rousseau as cultural critic. Robert N. Bellah explores Rousseau's attempt to resolve the tension between the individual's desire for freedom and the obligations that society imposes. David Bromwich analyzes Rousseau as a psychologist of the human self. And Conor Cruise O'Brien takes on the "noxious, " "deranged" Rousseau, excoriated by Edmund Burke but admired by Robespierre and Thomas Jefferson. Written from different, even opposing perspectives, these lucid essays convey a sense of the vital and contentious debate surrounding Rousseau and his legacy. (shrink)

This major study of Hobbes's political philosophy draws on recent developments in game and decision theory to explore whether the thrust of the argument in Leviathan, that it is in the interests of the people to create a ruler with absolute power, can be shown to be cogent. Professor Hampton has written a book of vital importance to political philosophers, political and social scientists, and intellectual historians.

In this paper I want to posit and defend the idea of a moral contract that one makes with oneself. Such an idea is not as absurd as it would at first appear to be. On the contrary, moral reasoning in practice can be sensibly interpreted in terms of contracting oneself to behave in a certain way. Indeed, the idea of the moral self can be seen as a fundamental element in any moral system.

This major study of Hobbes' political philosophy draws on recent developments in game and decision theory to explore whether the thrust of the argument in Leviathan, that it is in the interests of the people to create a ruler with absolute power, can be shown to be cogent. Professor Hampton has written a book of vital importance to political philosophers, political and social scientists, and intellectual historians.

Social contract theory has a rich history. It originated among the ancients with recognition that social arrangements were not products of nature but convention. It developed through the centuries as theorists sought ethical criteria for distinguishing good conventions from bad. The search for such ethical criteria continues in recent attempts to apply social contract theory to organizations. In this paper, I question the concept ofconsent as a viable ethical criterion, and I argue for an alternate principle of impartiality as (...) a more appropriate moral norm in a social contracttheory of organizations. (shrink)

This paper argues that the general practice of punishment cannot be successfully defended by appeals to social contract arguments based upon the work of John Rawls. Several attempts to present such justifications are discussed, including those by Murphy, Morris, Sterba, and Hoekema. It is argued that social contractors would not choose a practice of punishment because such a practice is a symbolic expression of society’s disapproval of offenses against the law. Social contractors would instead choose a practice which might have (...) some deterrent effect upon crime but would lack the feature of social contract theory. (shrink)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s ideas about society, culture, and government are pivotal in the history of political thought. His works are as controversial as they are relevant today. This volume brings together three of Rousseau’s most important political writings—_The Social Contract and The First Discourse _and_ The Second Discourse _—and_ _presents essays by major scholars that shed light on the dimensions and implications of these texts. Susan Dunn’s introductory essay underlines the unity of Rousseau’s political thought and explains why his ideas (...) influenced Jacobin revolutionaries in France but repelled American revolutionaries across the ocean. Gita May’s essay discusses Rousseau as cultural critic. Robert N. Bellah explores Rousseau’s attempt to resolve the tension between the individual’s desire for freedom and the obligations that society imposes. David Bromwich analyzes Rousseau as a psychologist of the human self. And Conor Cruise O’Brien takes on the “noxious,” “deranged” Rousseau, excoriated by Edmund Burke but admired by Robespierre and Thomas Jefferson. Written from different, even opposing perspectives, these lucid essays convey a sense of the vital and contentious debate surrounding Rousseau and his legacy. For this edition Susan Dunn has provided a new translation of the _Discourse on the Sciences and Arts _and_ _has revised a previously published translation of _The Social Contract._. (shrink)

This book develops a novel multilevel social contract theory that, in contrast to existing theories in the liberal tradition, does not merely assume a restricted form of reasonable moral pluralism, but is tailored to the conditions of deeply morally pluralistic societies which may be populated by liberal moral agents, nonliberal moral agents, and, according to the traditional understanding of morality, nonmoral agents alike. The book draws on the history of the social contract tradition, especially the work of Hobbes, Hume, (...) Kant, Rawls, and Gauthier, as well as on the work of some of the critics of this tradition, such as Sen and Gaus. The two-level contractarian theory holds that morality in its best contractarian version for the conditions of deeply morally pluralistic societies entails Humean, Hobbesian, and Kantian moral properties. The theory defines the minimal behavioral restrictions that are necessary to ensure, compared to violent conflict resolution, mutually beneficial peaceful long-term cooperation in deeply morally pluralistic societies. The theory minimizes the problem of compliance for morally diverse societies by maximally respecting the interests of all members of society. Despite its ideal nature, the theory is, in principle, applicable to the real world and, for the conditions described, most promising for securing mutually beneficial peaceful long-term cooperation in a world in which a fully just society, due to moral diversity, is unattainable. If Rawls’ intention was to carry the traditional social contract argument to a higher level of abstraction, then the two-level contractarian theory brings it back down to earth. (shrink)

This paper argues that the general practice of punishment cannot be successfully defended by appeals to social contract arguments based upon the work of John Rawls. Several attempts to present such justifications are discussed, including those by Murphy, Morris, Sterba, and Hoekema. It is argued that social contractors would not choose a practice of punishment because such a practice is a symbolic expression of society’s disapproval of offenses against the law. Social contractors would instead choose a practice which might have (...) some deterrent effect upon crime but would lack the feature of social contract theory. (shrink)

The perfect books for the true book lover, Penguin’s Great Ideas series features twelve more groundbreaking works by some of history’s most prodigious thinkers. Each volume is beautifully packaged with a unique type-driven design that highlights the bookmaker’s art. Offering great literature in great packages at great prices, this series is ideal for those readers who want to explore and savor the Great Ideas that have shaped our world.

The idea of the social contract has typically been seen in political theory as legitimating the exercise of governmental power and creating the moral basis for political order. Mark Button wants to draw our attention to an equally crucial, but seldom emphasized, role for the social contract: its educative function in cultivating the habits and virtues that citizens need to fulfill the promises that the social contract represents. In this book, he retells the story of social contract theory as developed (...) by some of its major proponents—Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Rawls—highlighting this constructive feature of the theory in order to show that not only do citizens make the social contract, but the social contract also makes citizens. Button’s interest in recovering this theme from past political theory is not merely historical, however. He means to resurrect our concern for it so that we can better understand the political-institutional and cultural-ethical conditions necessary for balancing individual freedom and common citizenship in our modern world of moral pluralism. Drawing on the history of public reason, Button shows how political justification continues to depend upon an ethics of character formation and why this matters for citizens today. (shrink)

This book examines the most controversial issues concerning the use of pre-drafted clauses in fine print, which are usually included in consumer contracts and presented to consumers on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. By applying a multi-disciplinary approach that combines consumer's psychology and seller's drafting power in the logic of efficiency and good faith, the book provides a fresh and unconventional analysis of the existing literature, both theoretical and empirical. Moving from the unconscionability doctrine, it criticizes (and in some cases refutes) (...) its main conclusions based on criteria which are usually invoked to sustain the need for public intervention to protect consumers, and specifically related to Law (contract complexity), Psychology (consumer lack of sophistication criterion) and Economics (market structure criterion). It also analyzes the effects of different regulations, such as banning vexatious clauses or mandating disclosure clauses, showing that none of them protect consumers, but in fact prove to be harmful when consumers are more vulnerable, that is whenever sellers can exploit some degree of market power. In closing, the book combines these disparate aspects, arguing that the solution (if any) to the problem of consumer exploitation and market inefficiency associated with the use of contracts of adhesion in these contexts cannot be found in removing or prohibiting hidden clauses, but instead has to take into account the effects of these clauses on the contract as a whole. (shrink)

From a pre-publication review by the late Austrian economist, Don Lavoie, of George Mason University: -/- "The book's radical re-interpretation of property and contract is, I think, among the most powerful critiques of mainstream economics ever developed. It undermines the neoclassical way of thinking about property by articulating a theory of inalienable rights, and constructs out of this perspective a "labor theory of property" which is as different from Marx's labor theory of value as it is from neoclassicism. It traces (...) roots of such ideas in some fascinating and largely forgotten strands of the history of economics. It draws attention to the question of "responsibility" which neoclassicism has utterly lost sight of. It is startlingly fresh in its overall approach, and unusually well written in its presentation. ... It constitutes a better case for its economic democracy viewpoint than anything else in the literature." . (shrink)

Originally published in 1979. Adultery is a dominant feature in chivalric literature; it becomes a major concern in Shakespeare's last plays; and it forms the central plot of novels from Anna Karenina to Couples. Tony Tanner proposes that transgressions of the marriage contract take on a special significance in the "bourgeois novels" of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His interpretation begins with the general topic of adultery in literature and then zeroes in on three works—Rousseau's La Nouvelle Héloïse, Goethe's Die (...) Wahlverwandtschaften, and Flaubert's Madame Bovary. His interpretation encompasses the role of women, the structure of the family, social mores, and the history of sexuality. (shrink)

Feminist scholars have long debated on a key contradiction in the political theory of Thomas Hobbes: While he sees women as free and equal to men in the state of nature, he postulates their subjection to male rule in the civil state without any apparent explanation. Focusing on Hobbes’s construction of the mother–child relationship, this article suggests that the subjugation of the mother to the father epitomizes the neutralization of the ancient principle of ‘governance’, which he replaces with a novel (...) concept of ‘power’ as formally authorized command. This scrutiny leads to three main conclusions: a radicalization of Pateman’s concept of ‘sexual contract'; the acknowledgement that patriarchy is inseparable from the logic of political authority constructed by Hobbes; and the claim that criticism of patriarchal rule requires an overall problematization of the mainstream conception of political participation we have inherited from modern political science. (shrink)

White supremacy is the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is today. You will not find this term in introductory, or even advanced, texts in political theory. A standard undergraduate philosophy course will start off with plato and Aristotle, perhaps say something about Augustine, Aquinas, and Machiavelli, move on to Hobbes, Locke, Mill, and Marx, and then wind up with Rawls and Nozick. It will introduce you to notions of aristocracy, democracy, absolutism, liberalism, representative government, (...) socialism, welfare capitalism, andlibertarianism. But though it covers more than two thousand years of Western political thought and runs the ostensible gamut of political systems, there will be no mention of the basic political system that has shaped the world for the past several hundred years. And this omission is not accidental. Rather, it reflects the fact that standard textbooks and courses have for the most part been written and designed by whites, who take their racial privilege so much for granted that they do not even see it as political, as a form of domination. Ironically, the most important political system of recent global history-the system of domination by which white people have historically ruled over and, in certain important ways, continue to rule over nonwhite people-is not seen as a political system at all. It is just taken for granted; it is the background against which other systems, which we are to see as political are highlighted. This book is an attempt to redirect your vision, to make you see what, in a sense, has been there all along. (shrink)

This is not the style an academic should adopt who wants to get a tenured position today. It even took the University of Königsberg fifteen years after Kant had earned his doctoral degree before they appointed him to a chair in philosophy. For those among us who feel already somewhat beyond the time bracket which allows for competition and efficiency, it may be consoling to know that Kant published his Critique of Pure Reason, the Copernican work in philosophy which molded (...) the thought of all centuries to come, at the age of 57. The famous little work which shall provide us with the focal text for this lecture, Kant’s essay On Eternal Peace, appeared in 1795 when he was 71. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I argue that two aims can be detected in Fichte’s theory of punishment: a technical aim that concerns adopting the appropriate means of punishing the criminal with a view to ensuring public security and an aim that suggests respect for the criminal’s humanity, namely reform. There is shown to be a tension between these two aims in that the state’s right to punish presupposes the criminal’s loss of humanity defined in terms of his or her freedom. The source of (...) this tension can be traced back to Fichte’s contractual explanation of the state’s right to punish, rather than to some inconsistency on his part. Fichte argues that the criminal should, if possible, be granted the opportunity to reform him or herself, allowing him or her to re-enact the ‘civil contract’ and thereby become again a rights-bearing legal entity. Ultimately, however, the criminal’s humanity, in so far as it has any legal standing, is something that remains within the state’s power to grant or deny him or her according to whether or not it judges that the technical aim of punishment can be achieved, as I show with reference to the example of a criminal with a ‘formally bad’ will. (shrink)

One of the widespread confusions concerning the history of the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment has to do with the initial explanation of this celebrated null result due independently to FitzGerald and Lorentz. In neither case was a strict, longitudinal length contraction hypothesis invoked, as is commonly supposed. Lorentz postulated, particularly in 1895, any one of a certain family of possible deformation effects for rigid bodies in motion, including purely transverse alteration, and expansion as well as contraction; FitzGerald may well have (...) had the same family in mind. A careful analysis of the Michelson-Morley experiment (which reveals a number of serious inadequacies in many text-book treatments) indeed shows that strict contraction is not required. (shrink)

Holbach's famous materialistic and atheistic philosophy is less known for its political dimension. Yet the author proposed an original theory of the social contract in his works of the 1770s. This article details the main features of his political thought and of his social contract, notably his proposal of an 'Ethocracy' grounded in utility and justice. This Ethocracy paves the way for a pluralist republicanism that has original features in the history of ideas. Holbach was a reader of Hobbes (...) and Locke and an acquaintance of Rousseau, and proposed various critiques of the political writings of these authors. Through five main critiques, this article further shows the value of Holbach's positive theory on key concepts such as the state of nature, sociability, property, the general will and equality. Lastly, Holbach's potential contribution to political theory is highlighted, showing how the largely forgotten author merits our attention today. (shrink)

Austin's ?doctrine of the infelicities?, whereby performative utterances are vulnerable to the risk of failure, has been criticized for treating such a possibility as contingent rather than as necessary (and hence revelatory of the essential nature of speech acts). This paper seeks to trace out what is at stake for one who maintains Austin's position. It examines Austin's curious hypothetical history of the development of speech acts, which is found to resemble forms of social?contract theory, and the problem with (...) this hypothetical history is shown to be that it presupposes as original the very properties that it sets out to explain. The argument is then made that Austin's technicalization of the conditions and context of speech acts displaces our attention from the deeper issue that both speech?act and contract theory are versions of a concern with making social action transparent, and both raise the perennial (and insoluble) problem of trust in human affairs. (shrink)

There are two opposing views on the nature of corporations in contemporary debates on corporate social responsibility. Opponents of corporate personhood hold that a corporation is nothing but a group of individuals coming together to achieve certain goals. On the other hand, the advocates of corporate personhood believe that corporations are persons in their own right existing over and above the individuals who comprise them. They talk of corporate decision-making structures that help translate individual decisions and actions into corporate decisions (...) and actions. Importantly both the advocates and the opponents of corporate personhood rely on a contractual model of corporate–social interaction to explain corporate social responsibilty. However, this contractual model misses crucial aspects of the relationship between corporations and societies. Economic history reveals that the relationship between corporations and societies is essentially dynamic and heterogeneous and so extremely difficult to characterise in terms of a contract. The economic and the political aspects of this relationship are so finely intertwined with each other and it is impossible to extricate the one from the other. We need to be more conscious of the actual nature of corporate–social interaction in order to deal more comprehensively with issues of corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

The fortunes and misfortunes of Shylock and Antonio are pervaded with economic and legal ideas. Both characters tend to overlap and confuse in several dimensions–the most celebrated one is to believe that the Jew is the merchant–and are alternatively victim and victimizer. The analysis of the play focusing in money and contract, economics and the law, market and morality, allows us to delve into the nuances of one of the most engaging characters in the history of literature and to (...) ponder the classical liberal message of justice and charity. (shrink)

In this article, inspired by Whiteness Studies, I propose two concepts that allow us to see the question of ethnicity as well as the history of the Turkish Republic through the lens of privilege: Turkishness and the Turkishness Contract. By Turkishness, I mean a patterned but mostly unrecognized relationship between Turkish individuals’ ethnic position and their ways of seeing, hearing, feeling and knowing – as well as not seeing, not hearing, not feeling and not knowing. These ways and states (...) of Turkishness have been shaped by a set of written/unwritten and spoken/unspoken agreements among the Muslims of Anatolia. However, during the last 40 years, the Kurdish movement, by creating a military and civilian resistance with mass support, has challenged the fundamentals of the contract and therefore caused a dramatic crisis of identity and selfhood for Turkishness. (shrink)

In this article, inspired by Whiteness Studies, I propose two concepts that allow us to see the question of ethnicity as well as the history of the Turkish Republic through the lens of privilege: Turkishness and the Turkishness Contract. By Turkishness, I mean a patterned but mostly unrecognized relationship between Turkish individuals’ ethnic position and their ways of seeing, hearing, feeling and knowing – as well as not seeing, not hearing, not feeling and not knowing. These ways and states (...) of Turkishness have been shaped by a set of written/unwritten and spoken/unspoken agreements among the Muslims of Anatolia. However, during the last 40 years, the Kurdish movement, by creating a military and civilian resistance with mass support, has challenged the fundamentals of the contract and therefore caused a dramatic crisis of identity and selfhood for Turkishness. (shrink)

The conditions of hunting and gathering through which one line of primates evolved into humans form the basis of what I term the wild self, a self marked by developmental needs of prolonged human neoteny and by deep attunement to the profusion of communicative signs of instinctive intelligence in which relatively “unmatured” hominids found themselves immersed. The passionate attunement to, and inquiry into, earth-drama, in tracking, hunting, foraging, rhythming, singing, and other arts/sciences, provided the trail to becoming human, and provide (...) external grammatical structures that became the basis of human language and animate mind. I outline my new philosophy of history as a progress in precision, counteracted by a regressive contraction of mind. The progress associated with history since the beginning of agriculturally-based civilizations can be considered as a regressive contraction from animate mind of our hunter-gatherer evolutionary past, to anthropocentric mind, and finally to the ghost in the machine world-view of mechanico-centric mind. Contemporary consumption culture represents an inversion of the original conditions of the human self, and indeed, targets aspects of developmental neoteny to condition conformity to its rational-mechanical system imperatives. (shrink)

(Early) Modern social contract theories reject the idea that legal and political institutions are grounded in an alleged natural ordering or hierarchy of human beings, and instead argue that only government by a public (and not private) authority can fulfil the idea of justice as freedom and equality for all. To be authoritative and not just powerful, governing institutions must be shared as ours in this irreducible sense. I first outline how Kant’s ideal account of rightful freedom brilliantly transforms this (...) tradition as found in the works of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, before proposing a way to see Kant’s two-layered non-ideal theory—his accounts of human nature (“moral anthropology”) and historical societies (“the principle of politics”)—as complementing his ideal theory of rightful freedom. This enables us to envision a conception not only of rightful external freedom but of rightful human freedom in particular societies—with their histories—on planet Earth. With these arguments at hand, we can also better appreciate the importance of realizing that the four possible political conditions for Kant—anarchy, barbarism, despotism, and republic—are ideas of reason, which means that they are never perfectly realized. Hence, historical societies we are not either in the state of nature or in civil society. In addition, in historical societies founded on principles of freedom, there are pockets of injustice or pockets that are devoid of justice that can only be captured by means of one of the three political ideas that are not constitutive of the republican legal-political framework. Kant’s four ideas therefore give us more tools with which to capture the nature of different political forces and challenges facing us in our historical societies. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) applied to the legal domain is gaining ground. AI is argued to be particularly helpful with labour-intensive activities and repetitive tasks. Amongst the various AI solutions, ChatGPT has gathered momentum and its acclaimed advantages are, amongst others, document generation and contract review. This paper wishes to assess the effectiveness of two chatbots in contract drafting. To this aim, ChatGPT (by OpenAI) and Gemini (by Google) are prompted to write two supply contracts each, the first one written (...) in English according to the laws of England and Wales, and the other one still written in English, but according to the laws of the Republic of Italy. The paper finds that each contract pair generated by the AI solutions is identical, thus disregarding legal-system specificities and language conventions. Therefore, the drafts present a number of fallacies, either because they are incomplete, or because they include clauses that are redundant or inapplicable in a given legal system. The paper claims that human intervention and supervision are necessary to tackle the shortcomings generated by AI, at least as far as contract generation is concerned and with regard to the two chatbots addressed. (shrink)

Originally published in 1987. This book analyses what Englishmen understood by the term contract in political discussions during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It provides evidence for reconsidering conventional accounts of the relationships between political ideas, groups and practices of the period. But also suggests cause for examining the general history of modern European contract theory. It considers contract as a term appearing in a spectrum of works from philosophical treatise to sermons and polemical pamphlets. Looking at (...) the various vocabularies relating to contractualist ideas, the author suggests that standard histories of social contract theory and particular histories of English political thought during this unstable period have misrepresented the meaning of the term contract as a key term in political argument. He shows that there were in fact three different categories of contract theory but allows that the various kinds of contractualism did share certain broad features. This study of a crucial age in the history of appeals to contract in political argument will be of interest to political philosophers and historians. features. This study of a crucial age in the history of appeals to contract in political argument will be of interest to political philosophers and historians. (shrink)

The treaty of Atlantis -- Legitimacy in history -- American encyclope-deism (revolutions and open societies I) -- The well of the Caliph (revolutions and open societies II) -- Paradise won -- Slouching toward Geneva -- Conclusion : academic counter-enlightenment and the recline of the West.

This article explores the link between Winstanley's analysis of the broken promises of the English Revolution and his attempt to mobilize the class- consciousness of the labouring poor. It suggests that his communalist reading of the promises made by Parliament to the people of England, and especially his interpretation of the Solemn League and Covenant, stretched the boundaries of language and logic to breaking point. It argues, however, that Winstanley's peculiar interpretation of the Covenant was significant because it enabled him (...) to incorporate a concrete empirical referent into his otherwise eschatological historical schema, and this he considered essential if the labouring poor were to be persuaded to take the risk of their lives and join the digging venture on George Hill. (shrink)