The principles according to which individuals in the original position, behind the veil of ignorance, would choose to regulate a society at the most elementary level (i.e. before a constitution) are rightly called by Rawls the two principles of justice. These two principles determine the distribution of civil liberties as well as social and economic goods. The first principle is that every person in a society should have as much fundamental freedom as possible, as long as everyone is granted the same freedoms. That is, there must be as much civil liberty as possible as long as these assets are evenly distributed. (This would exclude, for example, a scenario in which there would be a greater totality of civil liberties than in an alternative scenario, but in which these freedoms would not be evenly distributed among citizens.) The second principle states that while social and economic inequalities can be equitable, they must be equally accessible to all (i.e. no one should be denied access to greater economic benefits in principle), and that these inequalities must be for the benefit of all. This means that economic inequality is only justified if the most advantaged member of society is nevertheless better off than would be the case in the case of other arrangements. Only if a rising tide really lifts all boats up can economic inequality be taken into account in a just society. The method of the original position supports this second principle, which is called the principle of difference, because if we stand behind the veil of ignorance and therefore do not know what our situation will be in society, once the veil of ignorance is lifted, we will accept only those principles that are to our advantage, even if we find ourselves in the least favored position of society. Hobbes` political theory is best understood when it consists of two parts: his theory of human motivation, psychological egoism, and his theory of the social contract, which is based on the hypothetical state of nature.
Hobbes mainly has a particular theory of human nature that leads to a particular view of morality and politics as developed in his philosophical masterpiece Leviathan of 1651. The scientific revolution, with its important new discoveries that the universe can be both described and predicted in accordance with the universal laws of nature, greatly influenced Hobbes. He tried to provide a theory of human nature that would match the discoveries in the sciences of the inanimate universe. His psychological theory is thus shaped by the mechanism, the general opinion that everything in the universe is produced only by moving matter. According to Hobbes, this also extends to human behavior. Human macrobehavior can rightly be described as the effect of certain types of microhavior, even if some of these latter behaviors are invisible to us. Behaviors such as walking, talking and others are therefore themselves generated by other actions in us. And these other actions are themselves caused by the interaction of our body with other bodies, human or otherwise, which create in us certain chains of causes and effects and ultimately lead to human behavior that we can clearly observe.
According to this view, we, including all our actions and decisions, can then be explained in relation to the universal laws of nature as well as the movements of celestial bodies. The gradual decay of memory can be explained, for example, by inertia. As we are presented with more and more sensory information, the residue of previous impressions “slows down” over time. From Hobbes` point of view, we are essentially very complicated organic machines that respond mechanically and in accordance with the universal laws of human nature to the stimuli of the world. Exercise on the social groups in your life with your children and list what you get and what you give up. Here are some examples: Mills` central argument is that there is a “racial contract” that is even more fundamental to Western society than the social contract. This racial contract primarily determines who is considered a legal and political person in its own right, and thus defines the parameters of who can “unite” with the freedom and equality promised by the social contract. Some people, especially white men, are individuals in their own right according to the racial contract. As such, they have the right to conclude the statutes and certain legal contracts. They are considered fully human and therefore deserve equality and freedom. Their status as full-fledged persons gives them greater social power.
In particular, it gives them the power to enter into contracts to be the subject of the contract, while other persons are denied such a privilege and are relegated to the status of contractual objects. These views may seem contradictory at first glance in the Krito and in the Republic: in the first dialogue, Socrates uses a social contract argument to show why it is right for him to remain in prison, while in the latter he rejects the social contract as a source of justice. However, these two views are compatible. From Socrates` point of view, a righteous person is one who, among other things, recognizes his obligation to the state by obeying its laws. The state is the most morally and politically fundamental entity and, as such, deserves our utmost loyalty and respect. Only men know this and act accordingly. However, justice is not limited to obeying laws in exchange for others obeying them as well. Justice is the state of a well-regulated soul, and therefore the righteous man will necessarily also be the happy man. Justice is therefore more than just mutual obedience to the law, as Glaucon suggests, but it always includes obedience to the state and the laws that support it. Although Plato may be the first philosopher to offer a representation of the argument at the heart of social contract theory, Socrates ultimately rejects the idea that the social contract is the original source of justice.
The state of nature is therefore not the same as the state of war, as is the case according to Hobbes. However, it can move to a state of war, especially a state of war over property disputes. While the natural state is the state of freedom in which people recognize the law of nature and therefore do not harm each other, the state of war between two or more people begins as soon as one man declares war on another by stealing him or trying to make him his slave. Since in the state of nature there is no civil power to which people can turn, and since natural law allows them to defend their own lives, they can then kill those who would bring violence against them. Since the state of nature lacks civil authority, it is likely that once the war begins, it will continue. And this is one of the strongest reasons why people must abandon the state of nature by joining forces to form a civilian government. Feminist philosophers like Baier and Held theorize from the emerging tradition of nursing ethics, arguing that social contract theory fails as an appropriate representation of our moral or political obligations. The theory of social contracts generally only goes so far as to delimit our rights and obligations. But this may not be enough to adequately reveal the full extent of what it means to be a legal person and how to fully respond to others with whom one interacts through addictive relationships. Baier argues that Gauthier, who understands the emotional bonds between people as immaterial and voluntary, therefore does not represent the fullness of human psychology and motivation.
She argues that this therefore leads to a crucial error in the theory of social contracts. Liberal moral theory is, in fact, parasitic on the relationships between people from which it seeks to free us. While Gauthier argues that the more we can consider affective relationships as voluntary, the freer we are, we must always be in such relationships (for example. B, the mother-child relationship) in order to develop the very skills and qualities praised by liberal theory. In other words, certain types of dependencies are necessary above all if we want to become exactly the kind of people who can enter into contracts and agreements. Similarly, Held argued that the “businessman” model does not capture much of what constitutes meaningful moral relationships between people. The understanding of human relations in purely contractual terms represents, according to their argument, “an impoverished vision of human aspiration” (194). It therefore suggests that we consider other models of human relationships when seeking to better understand morality. In particular, it offers the paradigm of the mother-child relationship to at least complement the model of selfish individual agents negotiating contracts with each other.
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