Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-14-2014
Abstract
Ordered social life requires rules of conduct that help generate and preserve peaceful and cooperative interactions among individuals. The problem is that these social rules impose costs. They prohibit us from doing some things we might see as important and they require us to do other things that we might otherwise not do. The question for the contractarian is whether the costs of these social rules can be rationally justified. I argue that traditional contract theories have tended to underestimate the importance of evaluating the cost of enforcement and compliance in the contract procedure. In addition, the social contract has been understood narrowly as a method of justifying specifically moral or political rules. I defend a broader version of contractarianism as a justificatory model that can be used to evaluate any set of social rules or institutions that impose costs on agents. In so doing, I argue that contractarianism is a general method of evaluating and justifying the rules that order the structure of social life
Recommended Citation
Thrasher, John. "Ordering Anarchy." RMM, vol. 5, 2014, pp. 30-46.
Peer Reviewed
1
Copyright
The author
Included in
Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, Family, Life Course, and Society Commons, Other Philosophy Commons, Other Sociology Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons, Social Psychology and Interaction Commons, Sociology of Culture Commons
Comments
This article was originally published in RMM, volume 5, in 2014.