Contractarianism, Role Obligations, and Political Morality

157 Pages·2021·2.3 MB·English

by  Benjamin Sachs

Contractarianism, Role Obligations, and
Political Morality
This book argues that contractarianism is well suited as a political morality
and explores the implications of deploying it in this way. It promises to
revive contractarianism as a viable political theory, breaking it free from its
Rawlsian moorings while taking seriously the long-standing objections to it.
It’snaturaltothinkthatthestateowesthingstoitspeople:physicalsecurity,
publichealthandsanitationservices,andafunctioningjudiciary,forexample.
Butisthereatheory—apoliticalmorality—thatcanexplainwhythisissoand
whothestate’speopleare?Thisnewcontractarianismdeploysareversedstate
ofnaturethoughtexperimentasthestartingpointofpoliticaltheorizing.From
this starting point it develops a political morality: a theory of the common
ground of the role moralities attached to the various roles within the state.
Contractarianism,sounderstood,canprovideabasisforalreadypopularideas
in political theory—such as political and legal liberalism—and overturn con-
ventionalwisdom,forexamplethatthestateisobligatedtosecurejusticeand
thatanimalsshouldhavenolegalstanding.
Contractarianism, Role Obligations, and Political Morality will be of
interest to scholars and advanced students working in moral and political
philosophy.
BenjaminSachsisSeniorLecturerinPhilosophyattheUniversityofStAndrews.
Hismaininterestsareincoercionanddistributivejustice,aswellastheoretical
and applied issues in ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of law. His
previous book, Explaining Right and Wrong, was published by Routledge in
2018.
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Contractarianism, Role Obligations, and Political Morality
Benjamin Sachs
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Contractarianism, Role
Obligations, and Political
Morality
Benjamin Sachs
Firstpublished2022
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Names:Sachs,Benjamin,author.
Title:Contractarianism,roleobligations,andpoliticalmorality/
BenjaminSachs.
Description:NewYork,NY:Routledge,2022.|Series:Routledge
studiesincontemporaryphilosophy|Includesbibliographicalreferences
andindex.
Identifiers:LCCN2021032748(print)|LCCN2021032749(ebook)|
ISBN9781032120188(hardback)|ISBN9781003227465(ebook)
Subjects:LCSH:State,The–Moralandethicalaspects.|Politicalethics.|
Contractarianism(Ethics)
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DOI:10.4324/9781003227465
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Contents
List of tables viii
Acknowledgments ix
1 A New Contractarianism 1
2 Arguing for Contractarianism 10
3 Sidestepping Objections to Contractarianism 26
4 Political Liberalism 41
5 Legal Liberalism 71
6 The Political Status of Sentient Animals 96
7 The Legal Status of Sentient Animals 115
8 Conclusion 132
Appendix A: Extant Normative Theories of Legal Personhood 135
Index 140
Tables
3.1 Obligations incumbent on the state’s agents that have
implications for their use of their role agency 31
7.1 The passive incidents of legal personhood 116
7.2 The active incidents of legal personhood 116
7.3 Obligations incumbent on the state’s agents vis à vis
non-members of the polity 126
Acknowledgments
I’ve always found contractarianism attractive. However, while writing my
bookExplainingRightandWrong,IfoundthatthepremisestowhichIwas
committing regarding moral methodology led inexorably to the conclusion
that contractarianism had to be rejected. So, I rejected it. But I couldn’t
shake the feeling that while, admittedly, there was something very wrong
about contractarianism, there was something very right about it as well.
This book is my attempt to explain what, in my view, contractarianism has
going for it. (Though, along the way, it also does some more explaining of
what’s wrong with contractarianism!)
Parts of Chapters 1 and 3 of this book appeared earlier in my “Con-
tractarianismasaPoliticalMorality”,ProceedingsoftheAristotelianSociety116
(2016):49–67,andIthankOxfordUniversityPressforpermissiontoreprintthat
material.Inaddition,partsofChapters2,3,and6appearedinmy“Teleological
Contractarianism”,JournalofSocialPhilosophy50(2019):91–112,andIthank
John Wiley and Sons for permission to reprint that material. Finally, parts of
Chapters 4 and 7 appeared in my “Connecting Moral Status to Proper Legal
Status”, inSteveClarke,Hazem Zohny, andJulianSavulescu(eds), Rethinking
Moral Status (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). I thank Oxford Uni-
versityPressforpermissiontoreprintthatmaterial.
Parts of this manuscript were presented at the (US) National Institutes of
Health and at the Universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Kent, and Mary-
land; before scholarly societies including the Edinburgh Legal Theory
Research Group, the Role Ethics Network, the Aristotelian Society, the
European Political Science Association, the European Consortium on Poli-
tical Research, and the Scots Philosophical Association; and in addition at
the 2013 Polish–Scottish Philosophy Workshop and at the 2014 conference
of the Centre for Studies in Social and Political Thought (University of
Sussex). I’m grateful to each of these audiences.
For helpful discussion of the ideas presented here, I’m indebted to: Tom
Adams,CormacMacAmhlaigh,MichaelBratman,JuliaDriver,LynnDobson,
Luis Duarte D’Almeida, Graeme Forbes, Jonathan Garthoff, Doug Husak,
David Luban, Sam Mansell, Elie Mason, Jeff McMahan, Claudio Michelon,
ChristopherMorris,PhilipPettit,andAndySachs.