Daron Acemoglu: evaluation

Transcript context

…I’d like to start with an oblique question. What is your main objection to social contract theories and contractarianism? That’s jumping into the book, but that’s part of how I try to think of an alternative to the current conceptualization of liberalism, which I believe relies too much on social contract theories. In my mind, social contract theories try to circumvent a key question, which is that we need to build consensus around shared moral values and shared priorities. In their place, contractarian ideas put in some absolute truths that we are supposed to agree on philosophical grounds. That’s a too extreme a view or too extreme way of putting it, but I think it fits the Rousseau end of it. Then the other ones are adjacent to it, not exactly as strict as the Rousseau end. The Rousseau’s general will, for example, overrides any kind of consensus that a community, for example, could have because the general will is defined to have precedence over any kinds of agreements or shared moral values or shared priorities. I think by doing that liberalism avoids asking some of the hard questions. For example, how to deal with intolerance or how to deal with different views than its own, especially those that challenge it. Richard Rorty had a consensus-based defense of liberal democracy. Is your view the same as his, or are there some metrics along which it’s different? Are you more objectivist in some way?…

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