The state practice questions.

Rawls argues that when citizens who hold irreconcilable religious and philosophical convictions decide fundamental political questions together, they should offer reasons the others could accept as citizens. This requirement of public reason is intended to

• prevent citizens from holding religious convictions about political matters at all
• let coercive political power be justified to those subject to it without presupposing a doctrine they reject
• establish which of the competing comprehensive doctrines is in fact the correct one, so that the others may be set aside
• confine political debate to questions on which the natural sciences can pronounce

Answer: let coercive political power be justified to those subject to it without presupposing a doctrine they reject

The constraint concerns what may be offered as a public justification, not what anyone may believe or say in ordinary life. Its standard objection is that it asks believers to bracket precisely the convictions they take to be most relevant, and that the line around fundamental questions is hard to draw.

A theorist argues that the state is not a neutral arbiter above competing interests, but an apparatus whose form and personnel reflect the interests of those who own productive resources, so that reforms which threaten those interests systematically fail. This account of the state is

• Marxist, since it treats the state as an instrument bound to the structure of ownership
• pluralist, since it treats policy as the resultant of competition between many groups for influence
• contractarian, since it grounds the state in an agreement among those subject to it
• anarchist, since it denies that any state could ever be legitimate

Answer: Marxist, since it treats the state as an instrument bound to the structure of ownership

The pluralist rival holds that many organised groups compete for influence and that none controls the outcome. The two make different predictions, which is what keeps the dispute empirical as well as philosophical: the Marxist expects a pattern in which reforms threatening ownership fail regardless of who governs.

Rousseau holds that sovereignty cannot be represented. Which consequence does he draw for a people that legislates through elected representatives?

• Such a people is free only while it elects, and laws it has not ratified do not bind it
• Such a people remains sovereign, since representatives act in the name of the general will
• Such a people has transferred its sovereignty and can no longer lawfully take it back
• Such a people should choose its representatives by lot rather than by holding elections

Answer: Such a people is free only while it elects, and laws it has not ratified do not bind it

For Rousseau the will that makes law cannot be handed over, though the execution of law can be delegated to a government; contrast Hobbes, for whom authorising a representative is precisely the act that creates a sovereign.

Charles Mills argues that the social contract tradition has to be read alongside what he calls the racial contract. What is his claim?

• That contract theory is sound in itself and was simply applied too late in some places
• That political obligation cannot be grounded in an agreement of any kind whatever
• That the state of nature was a real historical period rather than a device of reasoning
• That the tradition's abstract equality rested on a settled understanding of who counted

Answer: That the tradition's abstract equality rested on a settled understanding of who counted

The argument is internal to the tradition: its universal language was accompanied by an agreement, tacit but effective, about which persons were parties to it. Compare Pateman's parallel argument about the sexual contract; Mills, more than Pateman, still thinks the contract device can be put to critical use.

In arguing for toleration Locke claims that the civil magistrate cannot bring about true religious belief. What reason does he give?

• Religious questions admit of no answers, so no belief about them could be true
• The magistrate has no interest in the salvation of the subjects he governs
• Force can produce outward conformity, and belief is not adopted at will
• Every church has an equal claim to be the true one, so none may be favoured

Answer: Force can produce outward conformity, and belief is not adopted at will

The argument turns on the means available to the state rather than on scepticism about religion: penalties can compel the outward act, and outward conformity is not the inward assent that salvation is said to require. Locke himself limited the argument, excluding those whose beliefs he thought made civil obligation impossible.

Rawls' principles are those that would be agreed in a hypothetical original position. Which objection does Dworkin raise against grounding obligations on such an agreement?

• The parties behind the veil would in fact choose to maximise average utility
• A hypothetical agreement is not a weaker form of an actual one; it binds nobody
• A hypothetical agreement binds only where the parties are actually well informed
• Agreements can never ground obligations, since obligations must precede agreement

Answer: A hypothetical agreement is not a weaker form of an actual one; it binds nobody

Hume's objection is that consent was never in fact given; this one grants that and adds that a merely imagined agreement supplies no reason at all. Rawls replies that the original position is a device for representing reasons we already have, not a promise to be enforced.