Verb (dict) + には

Hello,

I have a question about a dialogue I'm reading. It's from a book called 子供のための哲学対話 (which I'd highly recommend btw!). They're talking about the contract-based nature of society here:

A: それは、こわい世の中だね！
B: そう、こわい。こういうみんながこわい状態から、みんながぬけだすにはどうしたらいいかな？

I'm wondering about the highlighted part. I thought you couldn't just attach に to a plain form verb, but.. they have. Why is that?
Thanks!

に can be attached to the adnominal form (連体形; completely the same form as the conclusive form (終止形) in modern Japanese) of verbs/adjectives.

には
（ 連語 ）
〔格助詞「に」に係助詞「は」の付いたもの〕
「…する時には」「…の場合には」「…したら」などの意の，軽い仮定条件を表す。…「始発に乗るには四時に起きなくてはならない」

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にはとは - 国語辞典 Weblio辞書

Many thanks Toritoribe, your post really helped me figure it out!

To summarise what I've found for the benefit of anyone else reading this:

The 連体形 and 終止形 are further discussed at this stackexchange page.
抜け出す is acting in the 連体形 form, modifying the phrase には .

The pattern being used is:
[Verb] には [Adjective]
Apparently the adjective is usually いい , and in this case the phrase means "good for doing [verb]".

Returning to the original sentence:
こういうみんながこわい状態から、みんながぬけだすにはどうしたらいいかな？
It seems a fair translation would be:
What would be a good way for everybody to break out of this state where everybody is afraid all the time?

Of course, I'd welcome any comments improvements on this, however.

Yes, your translation is correct. However, other adjectives than いい are also commonly used in the structure "[Verb] には [Adjective]", e.g. 買うには高い or 捨てるには惜しい.

Robman said:

抜け出す is acting in the 連体形 form, modifying the phrase には

Click to expand...

Grammatically, 抜け出す doesn't modify には. みんなが抜け出す is treated as a noun clause, as same as みんなが抜け出すの/こと. This is a remnant of classical Japanese. Any nominalizer is not needed to form a noun clause/phrase in classical grammar. Instead, 連体形 works as a noun clause/phrase, e.g. 義を見てせざるは勇無きなり（ ＝ 義を見てしないのは勇が無い）. Notice that 連体形 せざる is used here, not 終止形 せず. (These two forms are different in classical Japanese.) This is the reason why the dictionary expressly mentions 連体形.