PrescriptivePolitical & legal
Institutions for angels, or for devils?
On the axis: Vision of humanity · institutions
Should laws be designed counting on citizens' virtue, or built so that "even a nation of devils" would be forced to act well? One's vision of humanity governs the kind of institutions one deems necessary.
Philosophers' positions
inferable
+0.4
Moral plasticity
Justification
Kant maintains a : there is in human nature a propensity to subordinate the moral law to self-love, and "unsocial sociability" mixes in each a tendency to oppose others. This diagnosis, tempered by the predisposition to good and by perfectibility, leans toward a moderate anthropological pessimism.
Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Part One · Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose, Fourth Proposition
Anchors: Kant · Madison · Hume
leads to: Ideal and reality