Sublime

In philosophical circles, Rawls’s approach is described as asserting the “priority of the right over the good.” On this view, our rights define a framework within which we can each pursue our beliefs about how to live; in contrast to the alternative, where we start with a particular conception of the good, and design rights in order to promote it.

Individual rights should not be rolled back but rather made concrete and relational by linking them to obligations towards others.

In ranked choice systems, participants rank several alternatives, and the decision depends on this full list in some way.

"It is indeed probable that the men who are best fitted to discharge the duties of this high office would have too much reserve in their manners, and too much austerity in their principles, for them to be returned by the majority at an election where universal suffrage is adopted."

In his 1922 opus, Public Opinion, Lippmann poses a straightforward question: Can citizens achieve a basic knowledge of public affairs and then make reasonable choices about what to do? If the answer is no, then the entire democratic project is at best a folly.

In the Western tradition, the Machiavellian-Hobbesian account departs fundamentally from the Aristotelian-Thomist conception of politics as an art of persuasion and good government, which rests on an idea of right reason in search of ethical ends such as the good life.

Its sphere is indeed small and limited, but within that sphere its action is unrestrained; and its independence gives to it a real importance which its extent and population may not always ensure.

Mestmäcker soutient à juste titre que ce qui distingue le modèle de la CEE, c’est la volonté de créer une communauté politique « au moyen du droit164 ». Si la pensée de Hayek est difficilement perceptible en tant que telle dans les négociations du traité de Rome, elle l’est nettement dans les travaux de Mestmäcker. En 1973, il cite la « conclusion