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  • In search of the reason and the right : Rousseau's social contract as a thought experiment
    Miščević, Nenad
    For Rousseau, social contract is a hypothetical one; the paper claims that it is, in contemporary terms, a political thought-experiment (TE). The abductive way of thinking, looking for the best ... normative pattern in the data, finds its counterpart in the historical abduction in the Second Discourse; the analogy between the two secures the methodological unity of Rousseaus political philosophy. The proposed reading of the work as a TE shows that it fulfills the necessary requirements put by (hopefully) intuitively acceptable definition of a TE, and fits in the contractarian tradition that has been experimenting with hypothetical arrangements since its start. The reading of The Social Contract as a TE has helped to systematize some of its shortcomings from the wider perspective of methodology of political philosophy. Finally, the political thought experiment (PTE) reading of Rousseau places his central work where it belongs: in the tradition started by Platos Republic, continuing with Renaissance and early modern philosophical utopias, culminating in the contractarian social contract TE, and going all the way to the work of Rawls and his present day continuators. We hope that this can contribute to a more positive picture of Rousseaus work, despite criticism concerning his brusque manner of thought-experimenting.
    Source: Acta analytica : philosophy and psychology : [international periodical for philosophy in analytical tradition]. - ISSN 0353-5150 (Vol. 28, no. 4, winter 2013, str. 509-526)
    Type of material - article, component part ; adult, serious
    Publish date - 2013
    Language - english
    COBISS.SI-ID - 20253704
    DOI

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