PHIL104 Ethics Discussion Question 4
How would contractarians (contractualists) morally justify the civil disobedience against laws that allow racial discrimination or social inequality? [100-150 words]
Landau, pp. 192-217 [The Theory of Social Contract]
Part II
Reply to the bellow students response to the sam question by addressing a point, problem or offering an alternate perspective. Your reply should be 100 – 150 words in length.
“The term contractualist refers to either a family of political theories in the social contract tradition, or to the ethical theory developed in recent years. Contractarians morally justify the civil disobedience against laws that allow racial discrimination or social inequality because the main goal is to promote good-natured social relations. According to Scanlon, what we owe to eachother, or what we could loosely call “the morality of right and wrong”, is distinct from this broader conception of morality in that contractualism provides a unified account of its content. When the laws mirror the rules liberated and equal people accept, they are morally justified. Everyone else that gets the short end of the stick sacrifice themselves for the sake of others and the social contract theory explains why that is not fair. The main point of morality is to create a mutual benefit in terms of fairness.”
REQUIRED READING
The Fundamentals of Ethics, Russ Shafer-Landau, Oxford University Press.
ISBN# 978-0-19-999723-7
Landau, pp. 192-217 [The Theory of Social Contract]
