A synthesis of Kantian ethics and Rousseauvian General Will in justifying the moral ground of political laws

The paper distinguishes authority (normative right to command grounded in moral duty) from power (capacity to coerce), and frames the central problem as the conflict between individual autonomy and the authority of political laws. It contrasts moral duty (Kantian obedience to moral law from pure practical reason) and legal duty (obligation to obey state laws via consent and sanction), and asks how political authority can be legitimate without violating autonomy. The author aims to synthesize natural law theory and legal positivism by: (1) showing that Kant’s Categorical Imperatives (CI) ground legitimate authority for a limited class of political laws; (2) arguing that most laws based on Hypothetical Imperatives (HI) face authority–autonomy tensions; (3) examining unanimous and majoritarian direct democracy and Rousseau’s General Will (GW) as potential resolutions; (4) using Hart’s and Rawls’s views to clarify the minimal moral content of law; and (5) evaluating the epistemic status of GW (via Condorcet’s theorem) and implications for U.S. legislative and judicial practice.

The article engages a broad canon in political and legal philosophy. It draws on Kant’s Groundwork, Critique of Practical Reason, and Metaphysics of Morals (autonomy, CI vs HI, perfect vs imperfect duties). It uses Rousseau’s Social Contract (General Will, inalienable and unrepresentable sovereignty, direct democracy). It contrasts natural law and legal positivism through Aquinas (natural vs human law), Hobbes (peace/order), and Hart (primary/secondary rules, rule of recognition, minimum content of natural law). It references Dworkin’s third theory of law and its relation to judicial review, Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (public reason, justice as fairness, original position, majority rule limits), and Mill’s concern about tyranny of the majority. Supplementary discussions include Berlin’s positive/negative liberty, Nozick and Smith on private interests and the invisible hand, and contemporary work on e-democracy and digital media. The paper also cites debates on GW (Kain, Hiley, Bertram, Melzer), Condorcet’s jury theorem (Ladha), and critiques of Rawls (Choptiany). Historical examples (slavery, civil disobedience) illustrate legality–morality divergence.

Conceptual and normative analysis in political philosophy. The author: (1) analytically distinguishes authority vs power, moral vs legal duty; (2) interprets and systematizes Kantian CI/HI and autonomy formulas to assess which political laws can claim moral authority; (3) critically examines Rousseau’s GW as both legislative procedure (secondary rule) and ultimate rule of recognition, integrating elements of legal positivism and natural law; (4) employs thought experiments (e.g., speed limits, emergency vehicles) to test HI-based law authority; (5) invokes Condorcet’s jury theorem as an epistemic model for majoritarian truth-tracking under assumptions (p>0.5) and explores its implications for direct vs representative democracy; and (6) evaluates practical feasibility via contemporary ICT/e-democracy literature and institutional comparisons (U.S. Supreme Court vs jury/GW). No empirical data are collected; arguments proceed by philosophical reasoning and formal-probabilistic illustration.

- Kantian CI can ground the legitimate authority of a limited subset of political laws, chiefly those reflecting perfect duties (e.g., prohibitions on murder); laws tied to imperfect duties are rarer and harder to enforce morally. - Laws based on Hypothetical Imperatives (HI) lack unconditional moral authority because their justification depends on contingent ends and context; they risk heteronomy and conflict with individual autonomy (e.g., speed limits, emergency exceptions). - Unanimous direct democracy would, in principle, reconcile authority and autonomy for HI-based laws, but it is practically unattainable at scale and does not guarantee optimal outcomes. - Rousseau’s General Will (GW) blends features of legal positivism (as secondary, power-conferring legislative rule and rule of recognition) and natural law (as source of moral obligation). It requires majoritarian direct democracy and deliberation aimed at common interest, not aggregation of private preferences. - Epistemic justification: Framed as a synthetic a priori analogue to CI, GW’s legitimacy depends on the Condorcet assumption that individual correctness probability p>0.5; under this, majority outcomes increasingly track truth/common interest as the electorate grows. Representative democracy fares worse due to small numbers. - However, the assumptions are problematic: p is unknowable a priori and may be ≤0.5; majorities can err or act from partial interests; distinguishing GW from the mere “will of all” is difficult. - Practical implications: Majoritarian direct democracy enabled by ICT could improve legitimacy relative to U.S. representative structures (including Supreme Court review), but GW cannot fully justify all political laws. - Overall: CI justifies only a narrow domain; GW offers a partial, conditional solution with notable epistemic and practical caveats.

The analysis addresses the autonomy–authority tension by assigning unconditional moral authority to CI-based laws while acknowledging the predominance of HI-based legislation in real polities. It argues that unanimous consent would theoretically align autonomy and authority but is impractical, shifting attention to Rousseau’s GW as a deliberative, majoritarian mechanism that can, in principle, express laws aligned with common interest and preserve a form of moral liberty. By interpreting GW as both a secondary rule and a rule of recognition, the author proposes a synthesis bridging positivist validity and natural law’s moral grounding. Yet, the epistemic defense of GW via Condorcet’s theorem reveals a dependence on unverifiable assumptions about voter competence and motivation (voting the common interest), limiting GW’s capacity to conclusively legitimize all laws. The discussion underscores that while GW may reduce heteronomy and improve alignment with public reason—potentially outperforming representative institutions (e.g., judicial supremacy)—it remains an imperfect solution that cannot eliminate the risk of majority error or paternalism.

The paper contributes a synthesis: CI can justify a narrow class of political laws without compromising autonomy, while GW offers a broader, though imperfect, route to legitimate authority for HI-based laws by channeling citizens’ deliberated pursuit of the common interest. Interpreted as a synthetic a priori analogue to CI and supported by Condorcet’s theorem, GW provides conditional epistemic support for majoritarian direct democracy. However, because the key assumptions (e.g., voters’ orientation to common interest; p>0.5) are not guaranteed, GW cannot fully justify political laws. Practically, substituting representative procedures with direct, digitally enabled democracy and democratizing judicial validation may improve the U.S. system. Future work should explore mechanisms to increase voter competence and common-interest orientation, institutional designs to approximate unanimity on weighty matters, safeguards against majority tyranny and indoctrination, and more robust epistemic standards for distinguishing GW from the will of all.

- CI’s rigidity and its limited applicability to most contemporary laws (predominantly HI-based). - HI-based laws lack unconditional moral authority; attempts to universalize them risk heteronomy or anarchism. - GW’s epistemic justification hinges on problematic assumptions: voters reliably aim at common interest and have correctness probability p>0.5—assumptions unverifiable a priori and potentially false. - Difficulty distinguishing GW from mere aggregation of private preferences (will of all); risk of majority error and tyranny. - Practical challenges of implementing direct democracy at scale, despite ICT advances; deliberation quality, participation, and security concerns. - Contextual limitations: Rousseau’s model may presuppose smaller, more homogeneous polities; application to diverse, large societies is uncertain. - Additional issues not fully treated: indoctrination, censorship, civil religion, paternalism, and the feasibility of replacing judicial review with popular validation.