Philosophy 1020 Lecture 16: Lecture 16
15 Apr 2016
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We can understand the obligations we owe to the state through a social contract. In the feudal past, you were born into a class structure and that status came with certain rights/duties. The social contract rejects that, and states that we are all equal. Consent of some sort is necessary for the social contract to work. Hobbes: life without state is poor, nasty, brutish, short. Hypothetical consent: if given the choice you would have consented to that state anyways. Rawls writes for people who are believed to already live in a well ordered political society. He asks the question what would we choose? . Society is not an arrangement, it is a cooperative venture, and it is in everyone"s interests to involve themselves in its undertaking. Justice as fairness conveys the idea that the principles of justice are agreed to in an initial situation that is fair .
