The Social Contract has a rich history

What follows are notes from zettelkasten. I hope they retain some of their flow; I wanted to get this down, as it's been in my head for weeks, while not then spending more time away from my family to blog about those notes.


Daily note 2020-06-26


How Can We Win_ by David Jones Media

Tags: #video #racism #usa Link: Published: 06/2020


Rosewood Massacre

Tags: #article #wikipedia #racism #usa #florida #mena Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewood_massacre#Culture_of_silence Accessed: 06/2020


Tulsa Race Massacre

Tags: #article #wikipedia #racism #usa #oklahoma Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre Accessed: 06/2020


The Daily Show with Trevor Noah 30052020

Tags: #video #racism #usa Link: Published: 05/2020


The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Tags: #book Title: The Social Contract Author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau Published: 1762

[[To read]]

For Rousseau there is a radical dichotomy between true law and actual law. Actual law... simply protects the status quo. True law... is just law, and what ensures its being just is that it is made by the people in their collective capacity as sovereign and obeyed by the same people in their individual capacities as subjects. Rousseau is confident that such laws could not be unjust because it is inconceivable that any people would make unjust laws for itself.

– So much of Rousseau seems to be predicated on the idea of “civil society as an artificial person united by a general will, or volonté générale.” A laudable ideal that the US is still clearly falling well short of.

Rousseau... says that under the pact by which they enter civil society people totally alienate themselves and all their rights to the whole community. Rousseau, however, represents this act as a form of exchange of rights whereby people give up natural rights in return for civil rights. The bargain is a good one, because what is surrendered are rights of dubious value, whose realization depends solely on an individual’s own might, and what is obtained in return are rights that are both legitimate and enforced by the collective force of the community.

– Emphasis mine, and one of the main thrusts in [[The Daily Show with Trevor Noah 30052020]], without direct reference (again, IIRC).


END OF NOTES

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