Discussing the perennial question of the relation between law and morals, he (Aristotle) claims that the end and aim of a state is to promote the good life and therefore it has a right and a duty to concern itself with the moral goodness of its citizens. 'Otherwise the political society becomes a mere alliance, differing only in respect of locality from alliances between distant countries; and law becomes a compact, and as Lycophron the Sophist said, a guarantor of men's rights against one another, not a means of making the citizens good and just.' Aristotle, Politics (1280b 10)
All modern thinkers, of whatever stripe, tend to think of the social contract as a solution to a problem. The problems can vary. Historically they were either Locke's or Hobbes' state of nature that the contract was ultimately solving.
They tended to think of the social contract, and of the rule of law, as strictly political or legal, and often failed to see the other dimensions of societies within which law and politics subsist. This was common both at and after the Age of the Democratic Revolution.
Democracy could be generalized, in the manner of the old European alliance system, to the entire brotherhood of man, a globalized social contract among common men everywhere, regardless of their cultural, racial, religious, or civilizational associations.
It was a rather stupendous example of a sort of fallacy, perhaps not strictly of logic but certainly of reasoning of some kind, of what Wittgenstein in his later work called 'mistaken analogies'.
They seldom think, nowadays, of the social contract concept itself as a problem; and of the concept of a state of nature itself, as well, as a bewilderment.
Talleyrand's espousal at Vienna of the rule of law, as against the divine right of kings on the one hand, and Jacobin democracy on the other, was, I think, at least in important senses, also an expression of Aristotle's ideal of the state, for Europe, rather than an example of Lycophron's compact.
It had a moral, and social structural, dimension, call it a Western Civilizational dimension, which pervaded and underpinned the thinking of the representatives of the society of Western states at the Congress of Vienna, even though it was often in practice overidden.
It represented the expression of a self awareness of Europe as an integral civilization as distinct from a welter of Lycophronian balance of power alliances.
All modern thinkers, of whatever stripe, tend to think of the social contract as a solution to a problem. The problems can vary. Historically they were either Locke's or Hobbes' state of nature that the contract was ultimately solving.
They tended to think of the social contract, and of the rule of law, as strictly political or legal, and often failed to see the other dimensions of societies within which law and politics subsist. This was common both at and after the Age of the Democratic Revolution.
Democracy could be generalized, in the manner of the old European alliance system, to the entire brotherhood of man, a globalized social contract among common men everywhere, regardless of their cultural, racial, religious, or civilizational associations.
It was a rather stupendous example of a sort of fallacy, perhaps not strictly of logic but certainly of reasoning of some kind, of what Wittgenstein in his later work called 'mistaken analogies'.
They seldom think, nowadays, of the social contract concept itself as a problem; and of the concept of a state of nature itself, as well, as a bewilderment.
Talleyrand's espousal at Vienna of the rule of law, as against the divine right of kings on the one hand, and Jacobin democracy on the other, was, I think, at least in important senses, also an expression of Aristotle's ideal of the state, for Europe, rather than an example of Lycophron's compact.
It had a moral, and social structural, dimension, call it a Western Civilizational dimension, which pervaded and underpinned the thinking of the representatives of the society of Western states at the Congress of Vienna, even though it was often in practice overidden.
It represented the expression of a self awareness of Europe as an integral civilization as distinct from a welter of Lycophronian balance of power alliances.
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