Rousseau`s theories of the social contract together form a unique and coherent vision of our moral and political situation. We are inherently endowed with freedom and equality, but our nature has been corrupted by our contingent social history. However, we can overcome this corruption by invoking our free will to reconstitute ourselves politically according to strong democratic principles, which is good for us individually and collectively. The transition from Hobbes` state of nature to a society bound by a social contract would be much like A Game of Thrones. A person in the state of nature would eventually gain enough power for others to start following him in exchange for the safety of others. A variety of small groups like this would emerge, but would eventually be conquered by a single individual. Hobbes called this one person in power “the sovereign.” As long as the ruler can better protect his followers from death, they will most likely continue to have authority over the masses unless a new ruler conquers them. The lineage of leaders would be bloody and violent. Not only would the ruler be killed and replaced by force, but the acting ruler would always have to be involved in wars and acts of violence to maintain his rule. Property played an essential role in Locke`s argument for civil government and the treaty that established it. According to Locke, private property occurs when a person mixes his labor with the raw materials of nature. For example, if you cultivate a parcel of land in nature and turn it into a parcel of agricultural land that produces food, then you have a claim to own that parcel of land and the food produced in it. (This led Locke to conclude that America didn`t really belong to the Native Americans who lived there because, according to him, they didn`t use nature`s basic material.
In other words, they did not cultivate it, so they had no legitimate rights to it, and others could therefore legitimately appropriate it.) Given the implications of natural law, there are limits to the amount of goods one can own: one must not take more nature than one can use, leaving others not to have enough for themselves. Because the nature of all mankind is given by God for their common sustenance, one cannot take more than one`s own righteous share. Property is the keystone of Locke`s argument for the social contract and civil government, for it is the protection of their property, including their property in their own bodies, that people seek when they decide to abandon the state of nature. The feminist critique of contractual approaches to our collective moral and political life continues to resonate in social and political philosophy. One of these criticisms, that of Carole Pateman, has influenced philosophers who write outside feminist traditions. In Plato`s best-known dialogue, The Republic, the theory of the social contract is again represented, albeit less favorably this time. In Book II, Glaucon proposes a candidate for an answer to the question “What is justice?” by presenting a contractual social explanation of the nature of justice. What men want most is to be able to commit injustices against others without fear of reprisal, and what they most want to avoid is being treated unfairly by others without being able to do evil in return.
Justice, he says, is the conventional result of the laws and covenants people make to avoid these extremes. Unable to commit injustices with impunity (as do those who wear the ring of Gyges) and fearful of becoming victims themselves, men decide that it is in their interest to submit to the convention of justice. Socrates rejects this view, and most of the rest of the dialogue is aimed at showing that justice is worth doing for its own sake and that the righteous man is the happy man. Thus, according to Socrates, justice has a value that goes far beyond the regulatory value that Glaucon attaches to it. A much more pessimistic social contract theorist, Thomas Hobbes, believed that appetite governs human nature. In his book Leviathan, Hobbes wrote that all men desire material things, prominence and especially power. All human beings are born with an innate thirst for power that is never satisfied until the day they die. As you can imagine, men in Hobbes` world have a serious problem with toxic masculinity.
Modern Anglo-American law, like European civil law, is based on a testamentary theory of contract, according to which all contractual conditions bind the parties because they have chosen these conditions for themselves. This was less true than what Hobbes Leviathan wrote; At that time, greater emphasis was placed on consideration, that is, the reciprocal exchange of benefits necessary to conclude a valid contract, and most contracts contained implied terms arising from the nature of the contractual relationship rather than from the choices made by the parties. Accordingly, it has been argued that social contract theory is more in line with the contract law of the Hobbes and Locke era than with the contract law of our time, and that certain features of the social contract that seem abnormal to us, such as the belief that we are bound by a contract formulated by our distant ancestors, would not have seemed as alien to Hobbes` contemporaries as they were to us. [25] The state of nature is therefore not the same as the state of war as it is according to Hobbes. However, it can enter a state of war, especially a state of war due to property disputes. While the state of nature is the state of freedom in which individuals recognize natural law and therefore do not harm each other, the state of war between two or more people begins as soon as one man declares war on another by stealing him or trying to make him his slave. Since in the state of nature there is no civil power to which people can appeal, and since natural law allows them to defend their own lives, then they can kill those who would use violence against them. Since the state of nature lacks civil authority, once the war begins, it is likely that it will continue. And this is one of the strongest reasons why people have to abandon the state of nature by uniting to form a civilian government. The last crucial aspect of Hobbes` political philosophy is his treatment of religion. Hobbes gradually expanded his discussion of the Christian religion in each revision of his political philosophy until it covered about half of the book in Leviathan.
There is no firm consensus on how Hobbes understands the meaning of religion in his political theory. Some commentators have argued that Hobbes seeks to demonstrate to his readers the compatibility of his political theory with fundamental Christian obligations, because it seems that the religious duties of Christians prohibit them from granting their governors the kind of absolute obedience that Hobbes` theory requires of them. Others questioned the sincerity of his professed Christianity, arguing that Hobbes sought to undermine the religious beliefs of his readers through the use of irony or other subtle rhetorical means. Regardless of how well his intentions are understood, Hobbes` obvious concern for the power of religious faith is a fact that interpreters of his political philosophy must try to explain. After arguing that any rational person who adopts the original position and stands behind the veil of ignorance can discover both principles of justice, Rawls constructed perhaps the most abstract version of a social contract theory. It is very abstract because instead of showing that we have signed or even signed a contract to found society, it shows us what we must accept as rational persons in order to be constrained by justice and therefore to be able to live in a well-ordered society. The principles of justice are more fundamental than the social contract as it has been traditionally conceived. On the contrary, the principles of justice limit this treaty and set the limits on how we can build society in the first place.
For example, if we consider a constitution as a concrete expression of the social contract, Rawls` two principles of justice describe what such a constitution can and cannot demand of us. Rawls` theory of justice thus represents the Kantian limits to the forms of political and social organization that are permitted in a just society. John Locke`s conception of the social contract differed from Hobbes` in several fundamental ways, retaining only the central idea that people in a state of nature would voluntarily come together to form a state. Locke believed that individuals in a state of nature would be morally obligated by natural law not to injure each other in their lives or property. Without a government to defend them against those who wanted to hurt or enslave them, Locke continued to believe that people had no security in their rights and would live in fear. Individuals, Locke said, would only agree to form a state that would provide, in part, a “neutral judge” to protect the life, liberty and property of those who lived there. [13] The theory of the social contract also appears in Krito, another dialogue by Plato. Over time, social contract theory spread after Epicurus (341-270 BC), the first philosopher to see justice as a social contract rather than existing in nature (see below and also Epicurean ethics), decided to bring theory to the top of his society.
Over time, philosophers of traditional political and social thought such as Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau laid out their views on the social contract, which then led the topic to become much more common. [ref. needed] In apparent contrast to this egalitarian foundation, Hobbes spoke of the Commonwealth in patriarchal language.
