ABSTRACT
This chapter contains an argument for contractarianism, which, abbreviating a bit, is the view that the dispositions of those who are disposed to intentionally sustain a state are the ground of the political morality of that state. The first half of the argument aims to demonstrate how it could be true that in virtue of a certain set of people possessing a certain set of dispositions the state possesses a set of purposes, while the second half sets out to explain why it makes a difference to political morality whether the state has purposes and what those purposes are. The first half of the argument sparks a lengthy discussion of how empirical facts (as to what dispositions people possess) can be relevant to political morality—a discussion ranging over metaphysics and methodology. The position arrived at is that it is a feature, not a bug, of a political morality if it is hostage to the empirical facts.
