From today’s assigned reading for my Political Philosophy class:
Social institutions must, at the very least, be designed to enable ordinary human beings, who are neither saints nor geniuses, to do each other a minimum of serious harm.
Surely that can’t be right!
4 comments:
You think ordinary human beings are saints and/or geniuses? Oh, wait, that's probably not what you were objecting to.
You don't think the state should enable me to do at least some serious harm to you?
No, I think we should aim higher than the minimum!
Well, it does say "at the very least"--so the passage is consistent with the fact that social institutions should be designed to enable us to do each other the maximal amount of serious harm.
This way, we have something to strive toward in our social institutions.
In a stroke of irony, I believe our current social institution of government does allow for serious citizen-on-citizen harm.
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