SOCIAL

CONTRAC
T THEORY
POLITICAL SCIENCE

SUBMITTED BY: FATIMA SIRAJ

 1 Overview
 2 History
o 2.1 Classical thought
o 2.2 Renaissance developments
 3 Philosophers
o 3.1 Hugo Grotius (1625)
o 3.2 Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan (1651)
o 3.3 John Locke's Second Treatise of Government (1689)
o 3.4 Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Du contrat social (1762)
o 3.5 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's individualist social contract (1851)
o 3.6 John Rawls' Theory of Justice (1971)
o 3.7 David Gauthier's Morals By Agreement (1986)
o 3.8 Philip Pettit's Republicanism (1997)
 4 Criticism
o 4.1 David Hume
o 4.2 Logic of contracting
o 4.3 Multiple contracts
o 4.4 Tacit consent

4.5 Criticisms of natural rights

According to Thomas Hobbes, human life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" in
the absence of political order and law. In its absence, we would live in a state of nature, where
each person has unlimited natural freedoms, including the "right to all things" and thus the
freedom to plunder, rape, and murder; there would be an endless "war of all against all" (bellum
osmium contra omens). To avoid this, free men establish political community i.e. civil society
through a social contract in which each gains security in return for subjecting himself absolutely
to an absolute Sovereign, preferably (for Hobbes) a monarch. Though the Sovereign's edicts may
well be arbitrary and tyrannical, Hobbes saw the only alternative as the terrifying anarchy of the
state of nature.

The central assertion of social contract approaches is that law and political order are not natural,
but are instead human creations. The social contract and the political order it creates are simply
the means towards an end — the benefit of the individuals involved — and (according to some
philosophers such as Rousseau), legitimate only to the extent that they meet the general interest
("general will" in Rousseau). For many social contract theorists, this implies that failings
discovered in laws or political structures can be changed by the citizens through elections or
other means, including if necessary violence.

History
Classical thought

Many have argued that Plato's dialog Crito expresses a Greek version of social contract theory.
In this dialogue, Socrates refuses to escape from jail to avoid being put to death. He argues that
since he has willingly remained in Athens all of his life despite opportunities to go elsewhere, he
has accepted the social contract i.e. the burden of the local laws, and he cannot violate these laws
even when he has been unjustly convicted.

Epicurus seems to have had a strong sense of social contract, with justice and law being rooted in
mutual agreement and advantage, as evidenced by these lines, among others, from his Principal
Doctrines:
31. Natural justice is a pledge of reciprocal benefit, to prevent one man from harming or being
harmed by another. 32. Those animals which are incapable of making binding agreements with
one another not to inflict nor suffer harm are without either justice or injustice; and likewise for
those peoples who either could not or would not form binding agreements not to inflict nor suffer
harm. 33. There never was such a thing as absolute justice, but only agreements made in mutual
dealings among men in whatever places at various times providing against the infliction or
suffering of harm. 34. Injustice is not an evil in itself, but only in consequence of the fear which
is associated with the apprehension of being discovered by those appointed to punish such
actions.

Renaissance developments

Quentin Skinner has argued that several critical modern innovations in contract theory are found
in the writings from French Calvinists and Huguenots, whose work in turn was invoked by
writers in the Low Countries who objected to their subjection to Spain and, later still, by
Catholics in England.[2] Among these, Francisco Suárez (1548–1617), from the School of
Salamanca, might be considered as an early theorist of the social contract, theorizing natural law
in an attempt to limit the divine right of absolute monarchy. All of these groups were led to
articulate notions of popular sovereignty by means of a social covenant or contract: all of these
arguments began with proto-“state of nature” arguments, to the effect that the basis of politics is
that everyone is by nature free of subjection to any government.

However, these arguments relied on a corporatist theory found in Roman Law, according to
which "a populus" can exist as a distinct legal entity. Therefore these arguments held that a group
of people can join a government because it has the capacity to exercise a single will and make
decisions with a single voice in the absence of sovereign authority — a notion rejected by
Hobbes and later contract theorists.

Renaissance developments

Quentin Skinner has argued that several critical modern innovations in contract theory are found
in the writings from French Calvinists and Huguenots, whose work in turn was invoked by
writers in the Low Countries who objected to their subjection to Spain and, later still, by
Catholics in England.[2] Among these, Francisco Suárez (1548–1617), from the School of
Salamanca, might be considered as an early theorist of the social contract, theorizing natural law
in an attempt to limit the divine right of absolute monarchy. All of these groups were led to
articulate notions of popular sovereignty by means of a social covenant or contract: all of these
arguments began with proto-“state of nature” arguments, to the effect that the basis of politics is
that everyone is by nature free of subjection to any government.

However, these arguments relied on a corporatist theory found in Roman Law, according to
which "a populus" can exist as a distinct legal entity. Therefore these arguments held that a group
of people can join a government because it has the capacity to exercise a single will and make
decisions with a single voice in the absence of sovereign authority — a notion rejected by
Hobbes and later contract theorists.

Philosophers
Hugo Grotius (1625)

In the early 17th century, Grotius (1583–1645) introduced the modern idea of natural rights of
individuals. Grotius postulates that each individual has natural rights that enable self-
preservation and employs this idea as a basis for moral consensus in the face of religious
diversity and the rise of natural science. He seeks to find a parsimonious basis for a moral
beginning for society, a kind of natural law that everyone could potentially accept. He goes so far
as to say in his On the Law of War and Peace that even if we were to concede what we cannot
concede without the utmost wickedness, that there is no God, these laws would still hold. The
idea was considered incendiary since it suggested that power can ultimately go back to the
individuals if the political society that they have set up forfeits the purpose for which it was
originally established, which is to preserve themselves. In other words, the individual people, are
sovereign. Grotius says that the people are sui juris (under their own jurisdiction). People have
rights as human beings but there is a delineation of those rights because of what is possible for
everyone to accept morally; everyone has to accept that people as individuals are entitled to try
to preserve themselves. We should, therefore, avoid doing harm to or interfere with one another.
Any breach of these rights should be punished.

Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan (1651)

The first modern philosopher to articulate a detailed contract theory was Thomas Hobbes (1588–
1679). According to Hobbes, the lives of individuals in the state of nature were "solitary, poor,
nasty, brutish and short", a state in which self-interest and the absence of rights and contracts
prevented the 'social', or society. Life was 'anarchic' (without leadership/ the concept of
sovereignty). Individuals in the state of nature were apolitical and asocial. This state of nature is
followed by the social contract.

The social contract was an 'occurrence' during which individuals came together and ceded some
of their individual rights so that others would cede theirs (e.g. person A gives up his/her right to
kill person B if person B does the same). This resulted in the establishment of society, and by
extension, the state, a sovereign entity (like the individuals, now under its rule, used to be) which
was to protect these new rights which were now to regulate societal interactions. Society was
thus no longer anarchic.

But the state system, which grew out of the social contract, was anarchic (without leadership).
Just as the individuals in the state of nature had been sovereigns and thus guided by self-interest
and the absence of rights, so states now acted in their self-interest in competition with each other.
Just like the state of nature, states were thus bound to be in conflict because there was no
sovereign over and above the state (i.e. more powerful) capable of imposing social-contract laws.
Indeed, Hobbes' work helped to serve as a basis for the realism theories of international relations,
advanced by E.H. Carr and Hans Morgenthau.

John Locke's Second Treatise of Government (1689)

John Locke's conception of the social contract differed from Hobbes' in several fundamental
ways, retaining only the central notion that persons in a state of nature would willingly come
together to form a state. Locke believed that individuals in a state of nature would be bound
morally, by "The Law of Nature, not to harm each other in their lives or possession, but he
recognized that, without government to defend them against those seeking to injure or enslave
them, people would have no security in their rights and would live in fear. Locke argued that
individuals would agree to form a state that would provide a "neutral judge", acting to protect the
lives, liberty, and property of those who lived within it. While Hobbes argued for near-absolute
authority, Locke argued for inviolate freedom under law in his Second Treatise of Government.
Locke argued that government's legitimacy comes from the citizens' delegation to the
government of their right of self-defense (of "self-preservation"). The government thus acts as an
impartial, objective agent of that self-defense, rather than each man acting as his own judge, jury,
and executioner--the condition in the state of nature. In this view, government derives its "just
powers from the consent [i.e, delegation] of the governed," in the language of the Declaration.
For Jefferson, as for many of the American Founding Fathers, Locke was the most important and
most esteemed author on political philosophy.
species and even interspecies symbiotic relationships.[1]