Sublime

A Key Observation

For politics on the left is politics with a goal: your place within the alliance is judged by the lengths you are prepared to go to on behalf of ‘social justice’, however defined.

Singer’s thought experiment, which he called “the Drowning Child,” became influential within the school of philosophy known as utilitarianism. Utilitarians argue that the proper action is the one that maximizes the world’s collective well-being.

Rosanvallon offers three paths toward legitimacy, both for democratic and for counter-democratic institutions. First, an institution is legitimate if it enjoys majority support. This reads as an extension of electoral democracy: if the majority of people voted for a candidate, she should hold office; if a similar majority believe in a free and inde

Every stage of society requires its own moral rules to help individuals overcome incentive traps peculiar to the choices they face in that particular way of life.

shattering certainty, Machiavelli showed how. “[T]he dilemma has never given men peace since it came to light,” Berlin lightly concludes, “but we have learnt to live with it.”78

People readily commit themselves to things they believe will further their interests.

Does a just society seek to promote the virtue of its citizens? Or should law be neutral toward competing conceptions of virtue, so that citizens can be free to choose for themselves the best way to live?