The Social Contract in the Ruins
eBook - ePub

The Social Contract in the Ruins

Natural Law and Government by Consent

  1. 476 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The Social Contract in the Ruins

Natural Law and Government by Consent

About this book

Most scholars who write on social contract and classical natural law perceive an irreconcilable tension between them. Social contract theory is widely considered the political-theoretic concomitant of modern philosophy. Against the regnant view, The Social Contract in the Ruins, argues that all attempts to ground political authority and obligation in agreement alone are logically self-defeating. Political authority and obligation require an antecedent moral ground. But this moral ground cannot be constructed by human agreement or created by sheer will—human or divine. All accounts of morality as constructed or made collapse into self-referential incoherence. Only an uncreated, real good can coherently ground political authority and obligation or the proposition that rightful government depends on the consent of the governed. Government by consent requires classical natural law for its very coherence. 

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Yes, you can access The Social Contract in the Ruins by Paul R. DeHart in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Politique et relations internationales & Éthique et philosophie morale. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Half Title Page
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Dedication
  6. Contents
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. Introduction. Natural Law, Modernity, and Government by Consent: Where the Conflict Really Lies
  9. Part I: The Social Contract in the Ruins?
  10. Part II: The Inescapability of the Good: On the Nature of Moral Obligation
  11. Part III: Covenantal Realism: The Essential Dependence of Covenant and Consent on Classical Natural Law
  12. Conclusion
  13. Notes
  14. Bibliography
  15. Index