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What is it? The Social Contract
Social Contract Theory, nearly as old as philosophy itself, is the view that persons' moral and/or political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement between them to form society. Socrates uses something quite like a social contract argument to explain to Crito why he must remain in prison and accept the death penalty.
The term social contract describes a broad class of republican theories whose subjects are implied agreements by which people form nations and maintain a social order. • Such social contract implies that the people give up some rights to a government and/or other authority in order to receive or jointly preserve social order. • Social contract theory provides the rationale behind the historically important notion that legitimate state authority must be derived from the consent of the governed. • The starting point for most of these theories is a heuristic examination of the human condition absent from any structured social order, termed the “state of nature” or “natural state”.
In this state of being, an individual’s words or action are bound only by his or her conscience. From this common starting point, the various proponents of social contract theory attempt to explain, in different ways, why it is in an individual’s rational self-interest to voluntarily subjugate the freedom of action one has under the natural state (their so called “natural rights”) in order to obtain the benefits provided by the formation of social structures.
Common to all of these theories is the notion of a 'sovereign will', to which all members of a society are bound by the social contract to respect. The various theories of social contract that have developed are largely differentiated by their definition of the 'sovereign' will, be it a King (monarchy), a Council (oligarchy) or The Majority (republic or democracy). • Under a theory first articulated by Plato in his Socratic dialog Crito, members within a society implicitly agree to the terms of the social contract by their choice to stay within the society. Thus implicit in most forms of social contract is that freedom of movement is a fundamental or natural right which society may not legitimately require an individual to subrogate to the sovereign will.
John Locke (1689) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762) are the most famous philosophers of contractarianism, which formed the theoretical groundwork of democracy. Although the theory of natural rights influenced the development of classical liberalism, its emphasis on individualism and its rejection of the necessity to subordinate individual liberty to the sovereign will stands in opposition to the general tenets of social contract theory.[1]
John Locke (1689) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762) are the most famous philosophers of contractarianism, which formed the theoretical groundwork of democracy. Although the theory of natural rights influenced the development of classical liberalism, its emphasis on individualism and its rejection of the necessity to subordinate individual liberty to the sovereign will stands in opposition to the general tenets of social contract theory.[1]
Overview • According to Thomas Hobbes and canonical theory, the essence is as follows: Without society, we would live in a state of nature, where we each have unlimited natural freedoms. The downside of this general autonomy is that it includes the "right to all things" and thus the freedom to harm all who threaten one's own self-preservation; there are no positive rights, only laws of nature and an endless "war of all against all" (Bellum omnium contra omnes, Hobbes 1651). • In other words, anyone in the state of nature can do anything he likes; but this also means that anyone can do anything he likes to anyone else.
To avoid this, free men by a social contract establish political community i.e. civil society in which each gain civil rights in return for subjecting to civil law or to political authority, a government. • In Hobbes' formulation, the sovereign power is not a party of the contract but instead the sovereign is its creation; so it is not bound by it. • Alternatively, some have argued that we gain civil rights in return for accepting the obligation to respect and defend the rights of others, giving up some freedoms to do so; this alternative formulation of the duty arising from the social contract is often identified with militia, or defense activity.
Violations of the Contract • The social contract and the civil rights it gives us are neither "natural" nor permanently fixed. Rather, the contract itself is the means towards an end — the benefit of all — and (according to some philosophers such as Locke or Rousseau), is only legitimate to the extent that it meets the general interest. • Therefore, when failings are found in the contract, we renegotiate to change the terms, using methods such as elections and legislature. Locke theorized the right of rebellion in case of the contract leading to tyranny. • Since rights come from agreeing to the contract, those who simply choose not to fulfill their contractual obligations, such as by committing crimes, deserve losing their rights, and the rest of society can be expected to protect itself against the actions of such outlaws.
To be a member of society is to accept responsibility for following its rules, along with the threat of punishment for violating them. It is justified with laws punishing behavior that breaks the Social Contract because we are concerned about others harming us and don't plan on harming others. • In this way, society works by "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon" (Hardin 1968). • Some rights are defined in terms of the negative obligation they impose on others. For example, your basic property rights entail that everyone else refrain from taking what is yours. • Rights can also involve positive obligations, such as the right to have stolen property returned to you, which obligates others to give you back what's yours when they find it in the hands of others (or, in modern society, to send the police in to do it). • Theorists argue that a combination of positive and negative rights is necessary to create an enforceable contract that protects our interests.
Thomas Hobbe’s Leviathan 1651 • The first modern philosopher to articulate a detailed contract theory was Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), who contended that people in a state of nature ceded their individual rights to create sovereignty, retained by the state, in return for their protection and a more functional society, so social contract evolves out of pragmatic self-interest. Hobbes named the state Leviathan, thus pointing to the artifice involved in the social contract. He believed that the state of nature for humans was asocial and apolitical. The state of nature was also regarded by Hobbes as war because we were nasty and mean; each person was a threat to others for natural resources. People therefore give up their natural law, right, and liberty for a social contract that provides the safety of civil law, right, and liberty. For Hobbes, it is important that this social contract involves an absolute government that does not rule by consent, since people cannot be trusted.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau Du Contrat social 1762 • Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), in his influential 1762 treatise The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right, outlined a different version of contract theory, based on the conception of popular sovereignty, defined as indivisible and inalienable — this last trait explaining • Rousseau's aversion for representative democracy and his advocacy of direct democracy. Rousseau's theory has many similarities with the individualistLockean liberal tradition, but also departs from it on many significant points. • For example, his theory of popular sovereignty includes a conception of a "general will", which is more than the simple sum of individual wills: it is thus collectivist or holistic, rather than individualist. • As an individual, Rousseau argues, the subject can be egoist and decide that his personal interest should override the collective interest. However, as part of a collective body, the individual subject puts aside his egoism to create a "general will", which is popular sovereignty itself.
Popular sovereignty thus decides only what is good for society as a whole: • [The social contract] can be reduced to the following terms. Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will; and in a body we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole[4] • Hence, Rousseau's infamous phrase that man must "be forced to be free"[5] should be understood as such: since individual subjects resign their free will, as in Hobbes's theory, to form popular sovereignty; besides, since the indivisible and inalienable popular sovereignty decides what is good for the whole, then if an individual lapses back into his ordinary egoism, he shall be forced to listen to what they decided as a member of the collectivity.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhoun’s individualist social contract 1851 • [edit] Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's individualist social contract (1851) • While Rousseau's social contract is based on popular sovereignty and not on individual sovereignty, there are other theories espoused by individualists, libertarians and anarchists, which do not involve agreeing to anything more than negative rights and creates only a limited state, if at all. This is related to the non-aggression principle. • Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) advocated a conception of social contract which didn't involve an individual surrendering sovereignty to others. According to him, the social contract was not between individuals and the state, but rather between individuals themselves refraining from coercing or governing each other, each one maintaining complete sovereignty upon oneself: • What really is the Social Contract? An agreement of the citizen with the government? • No, that would mean but the continuation of [Rousseau’s] idea. The social contract is an agreement of man with man; an agreement from which must result what we call society. In this, the notion of commutative justice, first brought forward by the primitive fact of exchange, …is substituted for that of distributive justice … Translating these words, contract, commutative justice, which are the language of the law, into the language of business, and you have commerce, that is to say, in its highest significance, the act by which man and man declare themselves essentially producers, and abdicate all pretension to govern each other • —Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (1851) • This idea of a social contract that excludes intervention by the state in individual liberty was also followed by other individualist anarchists, such as Benjamin Tucker (an enthusiast of Proudhon's writings) who said "Mankind is approaching the real social contract, which is not, as Rousseau thought, the origin of society, but rather the outcome of a long social experience, the fruit of its follies and disasters. It is obvious that this contract, this social law, developed to its perfection, excludes all aggression, all violation of equality and liberty, all invasion of every kind." (Liberty, VII, 1890)
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (1851) • This idea of a social contract that excludes intervention by the state in individual liberty was also followed by other individualist anarchists, such as Benjamin Tucker (an enthusiast of Proudhon's writings) who said "Mankind is approaching the real social contract, which is not, as Rousseau thought, the origin of society, but rather the outcome of a long social experience, the fruit of its follies and disasters. It is obvious that this contract, this social law, developed to its perfection, excludes all aggression, all violation of equality and liberty, all invasion of every kind." (Liberty, VII, 1890)
