Republican liberty may not require citizens to be inwardly virtuous.
Evidence
Part of my argument in this paper is that we do not have to open the individual black box—we do not need to know if individuals in a republican society are truly virtuous. It suffices that they act in ways that convey this. This conjecture is also a rejection of one of Skinner’s earliest discussions on the topic. Skinner (1990) considers that corruption, understood in the classical republican way of a “natural tendency to ignore the claims of our community as soon as they seem to conflict with the pursuit of our own immediate advantage,” is in fact a form of irrationality, an “inability to recognize that our own liberty depends on committing ourselves to a life of virtue and public service” (304). As the remainder of this article should show, we do not need this level of commitment. — Adelin-Costin Dumitru, Forging the Resistive Republic, 21
Categorization
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Adelin-Costin Dumitru, Forging the Resistive Republic: Social…, 21
- XREF: connects to: Civic virtue advances republican freedom instrumentally, not intrinsically. — Frank Lovett, Republicanism, 65; Republican freedom from domination requires redistributive social policy including basic income and wealth constraints. — Adelin-Costin Dumitru, Forging the Resistive Republic: Social…, 12; Republicans prefer civic-minded dispositions over civic virtue to avoid the positive liberty connotation. — Adelin-Costin Dumitru, Forging the Resistive Republic: Social…, 15 (+3 more)
Related
- Republicans prefer civic-minded dispositions over civic virtue to avoid the positive liberty connotation. (similarity 0.87)
- Civic virtue advances republican freedom instrumentally, not intrinsically. (similarity 0.87)
- Republican civic virtue is thin enough to suit pluralist societies (similarity 0.86)
- Civic virtue is an instrumental means to liberty, not a perfectionist end (similarity 0.84)
- Republican theorists have historically neglected explaining how civic norms emerge. (similarity 0.81)
- Republican governance presupposes social capital that citizens must actively build (similarity 0.80)
- Republican civic virtue and a game-theoretic view of democracy can be reconciled. (similarity 0.80)
- Republican freedom from domination requires redistributive social policy including basic income and wealth constraints. (similarity 0.79)
- Lacking civic virtue costs a person identity, not just effort. (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Republican civic virtue is thin enough to suit pluralist societies
#corroborates(0.76) — Adelin-Costin Dumitru, Forging the Resistive Republic, 27 - Unspecialized people, not specialists, hold moral and political capacity.
#qualifies(0.72)