Lecture: Political Philosophy: The State, Justice, and Liberty
Lecture script · about 15–20 minutes spoken · Week 13
Opening
Picture a mountain lodge in a snowstorm. A group of strangers is stuck there for a week, with no phone signal and nobody in charge. The firewood and the food won't last unless someone shares them out. By the second night, people are arguing over blankets. Then someone stands up and says, "We need rules, and someone to enforce them." Hold that moment. This whole lecture grows out of it.
It isn't only a question for lodges. A nursing student may one day explain to a patient why a rule limits what they can do. A business major may help a team or a town decide how to share out a budget fairly. Each of them is asking what makes authority rightful, and what we owe one another.
In Week 2 you learned standard form and validity, including one invalid pattern that comes back in this lecture. In Weeks 11 and 12 you met three ethical theories. In this lecture I'll introduce the fourth, social contract theory, and turn it toward the state. We'll meet Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, then Mill's limit on power, then Rawls and Nozick. Next week, in Week 14, the course turns to philosophy beyond Europe.
1. The right to rule
Imagine two people who both demand your wallet. One is a mugger with a knife. The other is a tax office with a lawful bill. Both have power over you. But most of us feel that only one of them has a right to ask.
That right has a name. Legitimacy is a government's rightful authority to make rules and enforce them, as opposed to mere power to force people to obey. And one famous explanation of it is social contract theory: the view that legitimate rules and authority come from what free, rational people would agree to for living together. It puts agreement first.
Here's the theory at its strongest. Nobody is born with a right to rule anyone else. So if anyone may make rules for all of us, that right has to come from us, from what each of us, free and thinking well, would accept. That explains why we owe obedience at all, and why some governments don't deserve it.
Its central question is, what rules would rational people agree to for living together? It's the last of the course's 4 ethical theories.
Pause and try this. Does social contract theory say people once signed a real document?
Think about the word "would" in the theory's question.
Here's the answer. No. The agreement works as a test for rules, asking what free, rational people would accept, not as a page somebody signed.
2. Hobbes and the war of every one against every one
Go back to the lodge, and imagine nobody ever takes charge. Everyone guards their food. Everyone sleeps lightly. Nobody can plan for tomorrow, because nobody can trust anyone.
Thomas Hobbes asked what life would be like with no government at all. His Leviathan came out in 1651. He called that imagined life the state of nature, and he described it as a war of every one against every one. In Chapter XIII, in his own English, he wrote: "And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short." That's Hobbes's own spelling of "poore", and the course keeps it.
His way out is to hand our power to a sovereign, the person or assembly that holds supreme authority in a state. For Hobbes, the sovereign's power is absolute. Why accept that? People are roughly equal, so even the strongest can be killed in their sleep. Goods are scarce. With no common power, each of us has reason to strike first. A harsh ruler beats that war.
The strongest objection is that an absolute ruler can become a tyrant. Hobbes's side replies that any ruler who keeps the peace beats the war, and divided power invites the war back.
Pause and try this. Is Hobbes describing a real era from long ago?
Think about what the idea is for.
Here's the answer. No. The state of nature is a thought experiment about life without government, used to show why government is worth having.
3. Locke, rights, and consent
Now picture a hiking trail with no ranger. Most hikers still don't shove each other off the path or steal each other's water. They seem to know some things are wrong before anyone posts a rule.
John Locke built on that thought. His Second Treatise, in Two Treatises of Government, has a title page dated 1690, which the course names but never keys. For Locke, people in the state of nature already have natural rights, rights they hold before and apart from any government: life, liberty, and property. What they lack is a fair, settled way to protect them. So they set up a government whose job is to protect those rights, and it rests on consent, their agreement to be governed. Its power is limited by that job.
On the timeline, Locke's title page comes 39 years after Leviathan.
The hard question is the consent objection: most people alive now never agreed to their government, so the consent seems to be a fiction. The consent theorist replies that you can agree without words, by staying, accepting protection, and using what a government provides. And a government that free, reasonable people couldn't agree to has no claim on them.
Pause and try this. Which three natural rights does Locke name?
Count them on one hand.
Here's the answer. Life, liberty, and property. Government exists to protect them, and that purpose limits what it may do.
4. Rousseau and the general will
Think about a choir. Every singer has a voice of their own. When the choir sings well, nobody is drowned out and nobody is forced. Each voice becomes part of something shared.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract came out in 1762. In it, each person gives themselves to the community as a whole. Authority comes from the general will: the will of the people as a whole aimed at the common good. It isn't the same as whatever most people happen to want. And for Rousseau, freedom comes through it. If you obey a law aimed at the common good, a law you share in making, you're obeying yourself.
That's 72 years after Locke's title page.
The pressure point is the dissenter objection. A citizen who's outvoted on a law seems ruled by the majority's will, not their own. So maybe the general will is a mask for majority rule. Rousseau's side replies that the general will is the will for the common good of each and all, not a head count, so an outvoted citizen still obeys a rule they share in making.
Pause and try this. Is the general will the same thing as the result of a majority vote?
Think about what the general will aims at.
Here's the answer. No. It aims at the common good, and a majority can be wrong about that good, so a vote is at best a way to look for it.
5. Mill's harm principle
Picture a neighbor who goes skydiving every weekend. You think it's reckless. You might warn them or argue with them. But should a law stop them? Now picture a different neighbor setting off fireworks over your roof. That feels like a different kind of case.
John Stuart Mill drew a line between those cases in On Liberty, in 1859. In Chapter I, in his own English, he wrote: "That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." That's the harm principle. It rules out paternalism, limiting a person's liberty for that person's own good.
Notice what kind of idea this is. Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau say where authority starts. Mill says where it stops.
The strongest objection is that almost anything harms somebody somehow. Mill's side replies that harm means a setback to another person's interests, not mere dislike, and the principle still forbids every limit that protects you only from yourself.
Pause and try this. A town debates two path rules. One bans fast cycling where people walk. One requires walkers to wear sun hats for their own protection. Which does the harm principle permit?
Ask who each rule protects.
Here's the answer. It permits the cycling rule, which prevents harm to others, and rules out the sun-hat rule, which is paternalism. So the principle doesn't forbid all limits on liberty.
6. An argument about laws
Here's argument 5 from Dataset B, which is illustrative, written for teaching. In my paraphrase, so the sentences stay easy to hear: every law that has justice on its side protects the vulnerable. This law protects the vulnerable. So this law has justice on its side.
Does it work? Put the pattern into plain words. Every member of one group has some feature. This thing has that feature. So this thing belongs to the group. That's the invalid pattern from Week 2. The conclusion could be false while both premises are true, because an unjust law could also protect the vulnerable.
Here's a counterexample written for this course. Picture a law that protects children on a playground and also bans one group of parents from the park. It protects the vulnerable. And it's unjust.
Pause and try this. Does showing argument 5 invalid prove that the law in it is unjust?
Think back to the difference between a weak argument and a false conclusion.
Here's the answer. No. Invalid means the premises don't guarantee the conclusion. The law might still have justice on its side for other reasons; this argument doesn't show it.
7. Behind the veil of ignorance
Two friends share the last slice of cake. One cuts, and the other chooses first. Now the cutter has every reason to cut evenly.
John Rawls built a theory of justice on a thought like that in A Theory of Justice, in 1971. It's the course's thought experiment this week. Imagine an original position, where people choose the principles of justice for their society together before knowing their own place in it. They choose behind a veil of ignorance, which hides the facts about their own place, such as wealth, talents, and what they most value, while leaving general knowledge about how societies work. The question is, what rules would you choose if you didn't know your place?
Rawls argues you'd choose two principles. First, equal basic liberties: each person has an equal right to the most extensive basic liberties compatible with the same liberties for everyone. Second, the difference principle: social and economic inequalities are allowed only when they work to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged. The first comes first.
Run it on a town budget. One plan shares equally. Another gives some neighborhoods more but leaves the worst-off neighborhood better off than the equal plan. A third leaves the worst-off worse off. The difference principle permits the second plan's inequality and rules out the third's.
Pause and try this. Behind the veil, do you still know how money and markets work?
Think about what the veil hides.
Here's the answer. Yes. The veil hides facts about you, not general knowledge, because the choosers need that knowledge to pick good rules.
8. Nozick, entitlement, and the machine
Imagine you grow tomatoes in a garden plot nobody wanted, and you trade some to a neighbor for a lamp. Then someone proposes taking your lamp to even things out. You'd probably say, "I came by this fairly."
Robert Nozick gave that protest a theory in Anarchy, State, and Utopia, in 1974, a date the course names but never keys. His entitlement theory says what you hold is rightly yours if you acquired it justly, or it was transferred to you justly by someone who held it justly, with any injustice in that history corrected. He defends a minimal state, limited to protecting people against force, theft, and fraud and to enforcing contracts.
Notice the contrast. Nozick looks at a holding's history. Rawls's difference principle looks at a pattern. So the entitlement objection says that taking fairly gained holdings to fit a pattern takes what people are entitled to. Rawls's side replies that nobody deserves the talents or family they were born into. And Nozick faces the history objection: many holdings trace back through force and theft. His side replies that's why the theory includes correcting past injustice.
His book also offers the experience machine. It could give you any experiences you wanted for life, while you believed them real. Would you plug in? If you'd refuse, something besides pleasure seems to matter to you, which presses Bentham from Week 11.
Pause and try this. Does Nozick's minimal state mean no government at all?
Think about what the minimal state still does.
Here's the answer. No. It still protects people against force, theft, and fraud, and it enforces contracts.
9. The accounts side by side
Let's line them up from the most power to the least. Hobbes gives an absolute sovereign. Locke and Rawls give governments limited by rights and liberties. Rousseau grounds authority in the general will. Mill limits every government by the harm principle. And Nozick's minimal state is the smallest.
That's 4 accounts from Dataset H and 2 limits on state power, so 6 views in all. From Leviathan in 1651 to A Theory of Justice in 1971 is 320 years. And this week finishes two of the course's sets: Dataset J's 8 statements are now all keyed, with statements 7 and 8 going to social contract theory, and Hobbes and Mill give the last 2 of the 10 quotations.
Where do they disagree? They agree a government's authority has to be justified to the people it rules. They disagree about where the agreement starts, how much power it hands over, and whether justice looks at a pattern or a history. The course keys no verdict on which one is right, and it argues no question from current politics.
Pause and try this. Which of the 6 views gives the government the most power, and which gives it the least?
Run back down the line we made a moment ago.
Here's the answer. Hobbes's absolute sovereign has the most, and Nozick's minimal state has the least.
Closing
Legitimacy is a right to rule, and social contract theory grounds it in agreement. Hobbes escapes the war of every one against every one with an absolute sovereign. Locke protects natural rights by consent. Rousseau finds freedom in the general will. Mill's harm principle forbids paternalism. Argument 5 is invalid. Rawls's veil yields equal basic liberties and the difference principle, and Nozick's entitlement theory defends a minimal state.
Next in this module come the slide deck, the Readings and Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, the quiz, the discussion, and the assignment. Next week, in Week 14, Philosophy Beyond Europe brings Confucian, Daoist, Buddhist, and ubuntu ideas into the conversation.
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