Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Parmenides', 'Killing in War' and 'The Social Contract (tr Cress)'

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5 ideas

25. Social Practice / C. Rights / 1. Basis of Rights

23606	Liberty Rights are permissions, and Claim Rights are freedom from intervention [McMahan]
	Full Idea: There are two types of right. A Liberty right is merely a permission, meaning it is not wrong to do it. But a Claim right is a right against intervention, meaning no one has a liberty right to prevent it.
	From: Jeff McMahan (Killing in War [2009], 2.3)
	A reaction: There must also be a third type of right, which requires other people to perform actions on your behalf. If you pay for a book in a shop, you must then be given the book.

25. Social Practice / C. Rights / 3. Alienating rights

19794	If we all give up all of our rights together to the community, we will always support one another [Rousseau]
	Full Idea: The social compact reduces to a single clause, namely the total alienation of each associate, together with all of his rights, to the entire community. Since this condition is equal for everyone, no one has an interest in making it burdensome for others.
	From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.6)
	A reaction: He speaks elsewhere of basic natural rights which can never be alienated, such as self-defence. It is what small groups do all the time, if they start off as equals. Difficult to manage with large groups. Factions are the problem.

7241	In society man loses natural liberty, but gains a right to civil liberty and property [Rousseau]
	Full Idea: What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and the absolute right to anything that tempts him; what he gains is civil liberty and the legal rights of propery in what he possesses.
	From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.8)
	A reaction: It is an appealing idea that the purpose of society is to increase liberty, not to restrict it. That, on the whole, is my view. American libertarianism opens up the world to gun crime, vigilantes, pornographers and bounty-hunters.

19806	We alienate to society only what society needs - but society judges that, not us [Rousseau]
	Full Idea: Each person alienates, by the social compact, only that portion of his power, his goods, and liberty whose use is of consequence to the community; but we must also grant that only the sovereign is the judge of what is of consequence.
	From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.04)
	A reaction: The weakness here is how society sees its needs. He seems to assume that two societies will arrive at almost identical general wills, but Spartans, Prussians and Serbs may require the lives of your children for the state.

25. Social Practice / C. Rights / 4. Property rights

19799	Private property must always be subordinate to ownership by the whole community [Rousseau]
	Full Idea: Each private individual's right to his very own store is always subordinate to the community's right to all, without which there could be neither solidity in the social fabric nor real force in the exercise of sovereignty.
	From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.9)
	A reaction: This may sound a bit drastic, but every country practices this principle, seen in compulsory purchase orders (e.g. to build a railway line). In liberal democracies you expect good compensation. In communist Roumania you were just moved. Also taxation.