PSIA Seminar: Rousseau, Democracy, and Moral Liberty

About the Event:

In The Social Contract (1762), Rousseau provides a justification for democracy over other forms of government. Democracy is more legitimate, he argues, because when the people are Sovereign and rule through the General Will they achieve moral liberty. Moral liberty is obedience to a law which we have given to ourselves. Having moral liberty makes us masters of ourselves. A problem with this argument is that it is unclear how the losing minority in a democratic vote achieve moral liberty. The majority may have given the law to themselves, but how do the minority achieve moral liberty when they did not vote for the law and disagree with it? In this seminar, I will critically examine some possible solutions to this problem. These solutions all try to show that in a democracy, everyone achieves moral liberty when the people decide the laws, whether they vote for a law or against it. The speaker will argue that most of these proposed solutions fail but that one of them does succeed.

About the Speaker:

Simon Clarke is Associate Professor and Program Chair of Political Science and International Affairs at AUA. He studied at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and received his doctorate from Oxford University. He is the author of Foundations of Freedom: Welfare-Based Arguments Against Paternalism (Routledge, 2012) as well as articles published in the Journal of Political Philosophy, Political Studies, Ethical Perspectives, and Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy

Language: English