PHILO-120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 25: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Contract Theory
25 Aug 2020
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Justified the authority of the state based on the state of nature rather than in an appeal to god. Without the controlling forces of the state, humans would be in a constant. In the state of nature, life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Consequently, rational people will submit to a state that restrains this natural state. Because any order is better than the uncivilized state, the state"s authority is absolute. This absolute right of the state to rule is perhaps surprising justified by an appeal to the rational judgment of the governed. Classic liberalism derived the state"s authority from the individual. It emphasized individual rights, limitations on state power, and free market capitalism. The primary western liberal justification for state. After hobbes, it also identified conditions under which the state may forfeit its authority thus providing a potential justification for civil disobedience or even revolution.
