Who said social contract

According to Locke, the state of nature is not a condition of moral anarchy as Hobbes supposed; instead, it is an environment in which we have God-given natural rights to life, health, liberty, and possessions. Locke agreed that we need to contractually form governments to punish rights violators. However, whereas Hobbes believed that governments should have absolute authority once we put them in place and political revolutions are never justifiable, Locke argued that citizens may overthrow their government if it fails at its peacekeeping role.

This, in turn, provided the intellectual climate to justify the American Revolution and the rights expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

As in Great Britain, social contract theory played a vital role in 18th-century French political thought, especially in the writings of French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau — Contrary to Hobbes, who described the state of nature as a condition of mutual conflict, Rousseau argued that it is a condition of individual freedom in which creativity flourishes. According to Rousseau, in this state of nature people cannot avoid interacting with one another, and so citizens set up a social contract to regulate this interaction.

The contract specifically establishes an absolute democracy that is ruled by the general will of the people, which, for Rousseau, involves what is best for all people. Just as social contract theory offered a philosophical justification for revolutionary activity in Great Britain, it similarly offered justification for the French Revolution of Serious interest in social contract theory declined during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as an ever-growing number of political philosophers questioned speculations about the state of nature and the very concept of a social contract.

Contemporary discussions usually expand on three central aspects of the social contract. First, there is a description of a hypothetical environment in which we interact.

This involves an account of the limits of our human rationality, the levels of risk that we take in making decisions, the way we balance our short-term versus long-term interests, the extent to which we are self-regarding versus other-regarding, and the degree to which we are physically and mentally equal.

Second, in view of this hypothetical environment, there is a description of conflicts that inevitably arise. According to another explanation, conflicts arise based on how we rationally calculate what is in our respective best interests. Third, in view of the inevitable conflicts, there is a description of the type of political authority that is reasonable for us to create. Imagine that you and I are caught robbing a bank, but the district attorney does not have quite enough evidence to guarantee a conviction.

He needs us to confess to our crime, so, using a common interrogation tactic, he puts us in separate rooms and tries to get each of us to turn on the other. In this case, he offers a plea bargain based on various confessions that we might make:. The point of this illustration is that, although mutual cooperation is the best mutual deal, I will still be rationally motivated to pursue the best deal for me individually.

If I eliminate you first, then I serve my interests better than if I sat around passively. Ultimately, cooperation in the state of nature is not reasonable for any of us individually, and we will always be poised for war. Is this distrust justified?

My reasons for distrust in the state of nature rest on a variety of intricate questions about human nature—specifically, whether we can be naturally kind to strangers. Hobbes believed that we are not psychologically designed to be naturally kind to people whom we do not know. However, this pessimistic view is a matter of debate; in fact, this is among the more hotly debated issues in ethics. The most influential contemporary proponent of social contract theory is John Rawls, as he develops it in his book A Theory of Justice In the original position, we are neither at war with one another nor trying to start a government.

Instead, we are merely a group of rational, equal, and self-interested people who want to devise mutually beneficial moral guidelines for reforming our social system. To help us arrive at the most impartial moral guideline, we temporarily ignore our actual status in society, such as the size of our bank accounts and the amount of property that we own. Metaphorically, it is as though we voluntarily stand behind a veil of ignorance. This assures that I will not try to rig the system and create moral guidelines that benefit me the most—whether I am rich or poor.

According to Rawls, after some back-and-forth discussion, we will eventually arrive at two rules of justice. We will then use these two rules to generate a longer and more specific list of obligations. The two rules of justice are these:. The first rule tells us that we should give one another as much freedom as we can.

This includes moral liberties such as free speech and free movement. It also includes economic liberties, such as acquiring property and making money. Finally, it includes political liberties, such as voting and holding public office.

So far, none of this is controversial from the standpoint of American society, which was founded on broad notions of liberty. However, we sometimes need to place limits on the wealth and power that we individually accumulate from our various liberties. Economic liberty is nice, but when we look at the vast fortunes accumulated by entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, we might feel that enough is enough.

The second rule is a guideline for regulating the accumulation of wealth and power. The default economic arrangement is that Bill Gates should get only an equal share of wealth. The burden of proof, then, is on the capitalist businessperson to show that even poor people benefit when an entrepreneur can pursue his economic dreams unimpeded.

This, though, is a tough case to support, which makes socialism the default economic policy. Rawls clearly thinks that this socialistic orientation is the most impartial way to distribute wealth. Since the seventeenth century, social contract theory has been a useful tool for justifying political revolutions when governments fail to do their jobs.

In the years ahead, political revolutionaries will likely continue to draw on social contract theory to justify overthrowing incompetent governments. Social contract theory also helps us understand why we allow our governments to have so much control over our lives.

Take, for example, the power that we give our local police officers. We permit them to walk around with guns and even shoot us if necessary. We give them the authority to kick down our doors, storm through our homes, haul us to jail, and interrogate us for hours. Why would we want to give someone this kind of power over us? Social contract theory offers the best, and perhaps only reasonable, answer: We give the police this power in exchange for protection. The first problem with social contract theory is that it does not adequately account for moral obligations that go beyond our political obligations.

Social contract theories commonly weave together issues of political authority and moral obligation. Hobbes, for example, believed that we have no moral duties outside of the social contract, and morality emerges as a tool for preserving a peaceful society under the absolute authority of a ruler. From one perspective, this is an advantage of social contract theory since it reduces the conceptual clutter of two separate theories explaining our distinct moral and political obligations. Moral theories and political theories both talk about the behavioral obligations that we have to our fellow humans, and it makes sense to connect these obligations.

From another perspective, though, the close relationship between political theory and moral theory is a liability of social contract theory, since it gives too much weight to political obligations. Issues of political authority and political obligation are undoubtedly important for us, and, if we simply ignore the government, we might do things send us to prison.

However, political issues are not the only important issues in our lives, and for many of us, they are not even among our most important issues. Moral issues permeate our lives, and every encounter we have with other people involves a proper and an improper way of behaving. Although some of these obligations have direct ties to political issues, many have only a very remote connection. Suppose, for example, that you cheat on your spouse and continually lie to your family and friends concerning your secret life.

Although all of these actions are immoral, they do not violate any laws, and they pose no threat to political authorities and the continuation of a peaceful political society. So, issues of political obligation only go so far in defining the scope of our moral obligations. The Oklahoma City bombing illustrates this point, too. Most of us feel that the bombers were grossly misdirected in their belief that the U. Does this make the bombing any less of an immoral deed? Certainly not. The second lingering problem with social contract theory is that it is naive to take the notion of a contract literally.

When people negotiate the rules of justice, they willfully consent to step behind the veil of ignorance. In reality, though, neither we nor our legislators do this.

We may not even be psychologically capable of doing this. Although we may not be able to fully rescue social contract theory from this problem, we might recast the theory in a more modest form as a theory of social reciprocation. That is, instead of seeing our situation as involving a formal contract that we consciously consent to, it is more plausible to see it simply as a kind of social reciprocation that we are content with.

We pay our taxes, follow the laws, and acknowledge the authority of our government; what do we get in return? We receive governmental protection and some governmental benefits, such as free education and the use of public highways. Most of us are content with this give-and-take relationship, and we may not really care about who established the relationship to begin with.

From our individual perspectives, we do not object to keeping the social relationship going, and many of us are even grateful for this relationship when we consider the horrible alternatives that we find in war-torn countries around the world.

For example, without strong governmental protection, members of ethnic or religious factions might rise up and slaughter each other. To the extent that we are content with this reciprocal relationship, we will routinely follow the rules of the relationship to keep the social machine working.

The key difference between a social contract and social reciprocation is that a contract involves a distinct mental act of consent that occurs at a distinct time. Philosophers today refer to this kind of psychological act as an occurrent mental state, which means that it principally occurs during a short and fixed period of time. By contrast, a merely reciprocal relationship requires only a long-term mental viewpoint of contentment.

We might compare this mental viewpoint to the outlook of someone who is persistently happy. Suppose, for example, that you are a persistently happy person, and I ask you when you first became happy.

Such is the case concerning our mental contentment with the give-and-take relationship between ourselves and society. Even if I am content today, I may become discontent a week from now and then stop following the rules.

The Oklahoma City bombing is a good illustration of this. A traditional social contract theorist would say that earlier in their lives the bombers tacitly consented to the terms of the contract, but later in life they both violated those terms. A less cumbersome explanation would be that, early in life, the bombers were dispositionally content with the give-and-take relationship between themselves and society.

Later, though, they became dispositionally discontent and no longer felt compelled to continue the relationship or to abide by the rules. Thomas Hobbes presented the first systematic account of social contract theory. According to Hobbes, our human nature prevents us from naturally living at peace with one another. Hobbes depicts this by describing a pre-political state of nature in which people constantly war. To move beyond this state of nature, we recognize the need to seek peace, the need to give up our hostile rights, and the need to keep our agreements.

Accordingly, we enter into a social contract with one another and establish a government with absolute authority over us to assure that we abide by our agreements. Morality, for Hobbes, involves acquiring virtues that habitually incline us to do what the terms of the social contract require of us. Edward Hyde criticized Hobbes for denying the immutable and eternal status of morality. But contemporary moral philosophers have abandoned the specific concepts of immutability and eternality because of the metaphysical difficulties that they create.

Samuel Clarke criticized Hobbes for thinking that fear of punishment would sufficiently motivate people to follow the rules of the social contract. If we plan a perfect crime and face no risk of getting caught, then fear of punishment alone will fail as a motivation.

As creatures of habit, we are inclined to repeat crimes, and this continually increases our chances of getting caught and punished. To eliminate all risk, we should develop virtues that habitually incline us to follow the rules in all situations. Hume criticized social contract theory on the grounds that people do not willfully consent to the terms of the contract; and, without willful consent, there is no contract.

Social contract theorists cannot rescue themselves by claiming that the contract is only hypothetical. Rawls offers a contemporary version of social contract theory, which involves a group of rational people devising rules of justice in an original position.

There are two lingering problems with social contract theory. First, we should recognize that social contract theory does not adequately account for moral obligations that rise above our politically-based obligations. Second, we must abandon the idea of a contract involving an occurrent mental state of willful consent. Instead, we should see the relationship as involving a dispositional mental state of contentment.

More precisely, we are simply content to have a reciprocal relationship with governing bodies whereby we follow rules in exchange for protection and benefits. Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war. And such a war as is of every man against every man. For war consists not in battle only, or the act of fighting, but [also] in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known.

And, therefore, the notion of time is to be considered in the nature of war, as it is in the nature of weather. For as the nature of foul weather lies not in a shower or two of rain, but in an inclination thereto of many days together; so the nature of war consists not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary.

All other time is peace. Whatever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same is consequent to the time wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. As it is constituted only by individual wills, these private, individual wills must assemble themselves regularly if the general will is to continue.

One implication of this is that the strong form of democracy which is consistent with the general will is also only possible in relatively small states. The people must be able to identify with one another, and at least know who each other are. They cannot live in a large area, too spread out to come together regularly, and they cannot live in such different geographic circumstances as to be unable to be united under common laws. Could the present-day U. It could not. Although the conditions for true democracy are stringent, they are also the only means by which we can, according to Rousseau, save ourselves, and regain the freedom to which we are naturally entitled.

We are endowed with freedom and equality by nature, but our nature has been corrupted by our contingent social history. We can overcome this corruption, however, by invoking our free will to reconstitute ourselves politically, along strongly democratic principles, which is good for us, both individually and collectively. For Rawls, as for Kant, persons have the capacity to reason from a universal point of view, which in turn means that they have the particular moral capacity of judging principles from an impartial standpoint.

In A Theory of Justice , Rawls argues that the moral and political point of view is discovered via impartiality. It is the position from which we can discover the nature of justice and what it requires of us as individual persons and of the social institutions through which we will live together cooperatively. These are the conditions under which, Rawls argues, one can choose principles for a just society which are themselves chosen from initial conditions that are inherently fair.

Because no one has any of the particular knowledge he or she could use to develop principles that favor his or her own particular circumstances, in other words the knowledge that makes for and sustains prejudices, the principles chosen from such a perspective are necessarily fair.

For example, if one does not know whether one is female or male in the society for which one must choose basic principles of justice, it makes no sense, from the point of view of self-interested rationality, to endorse a principle that favors one sex at the expense of another, since, once the veil of ignorance is lifted, one might find oneself on the losing end of such a principle.

In such a position, behind such a veil, everyone is in the same situation, and everyone is presumed to be equally rational. Since everyone adopts the same method for choosing the basic principles for society, everyone will occupy the same standpoint: that of the disembodied, rational, universal human.

Therefore all who consider justice from the point of view of the original position would agree upon the same principles of justice generated out of such a thought experiment.

Any one person would reach the same conclusion as any other person concerning the most basic principles that must regulate a just society. The principles that persons in the Original Position, behind the Veil of Ignorance, would choose to regulate a society at the most basic level that is, prior even to a Constitution are called by Rawls, aptly enough, the Two Principles of Justice. These two principles determine the distribution of both civil liberties and social and economic goods. The first principle states that each person in a society is to have as much basic liberty as possible, as long as everyone is granted the same liberties.

That is, there is to be as much civil liberty as possible as long as these goods are distributed equally. This would, for example, preclude a scenario under which there was a greater aggregate of civil liberties than under an alternative scenario, but under which such liberties were not distributed equally amongst citizens. The second principle states that while social and economic inequalities can be just, they must be available to everyone equally that is, no one is to be on principle denied access to greater economic advantage and such inequalities must be to the advantage of everyone.

This means that economic inequalities are only justified when the least advantaged member of society is nonetheless better off than she would be under alternative arrangements. So, only if a rising tide truly does carry all boats upward, can economic inequalities be allowed for in a just society. The method of the original position supports this second principle, referred to as the Difference Principle, because when we are behind the veil of ignorance, and therefore do not know what our situation in society will be once the veil of ignorance is lifted, we will only accept principles that will be to our advantage even if we end up in the least advantaged position in society.

These two principles are related to each other by a specific order. The first principle, distributing civil liberties as widely as possible consistent with equality, is prior to the second principle, which distributes social and economic goods. In other words, we cannot decide to forgo some of our civil liberties in favor of greater economic advantage. Rather, we must satisfy the demands of the first principle, before we move on to the second. Having argued that any rational person inhabiting the original position and placing him or herself behind the veil of ignorance can discover the two principles of justice, Rawls has constructed what is perhaps the most abstract version of a social contract theory.

It is highly abstract because rather than demonstrating that we would or even have signed to a contract to establish society, it instead shows us what we must be willing to accept as rational persons in order to be constrained by justice and therefore capable of living in a well ordered society. The principles of justice are more fundamental than the social contract as it has traditionally been conceived. Rather, the principles of justice constrain that contract, and set out the limits of how we can construct society in the first place.

In his book, Morals by Agreement , David Gauthier set out to renew Hobbesian moral and political philosophy. In that book, he makes a strong argument that Hobbes was right: we can understand both politics and morality as founded upon an agreement between exclusively self-interested yet rational persons.

Gauthier, however, believes that rationality alone convinces persons not only to agree to cooperate, but to stick to their agreements as well. We should understand ourselves as individual Robinson Crusoes, each living on our own island, lucky or unlucky in terms of our talents and the natural provisions of our islands, but able to enter into negotiations and deals with one another to trade goods and services with one another. Entering into such agreements is to our own advantage, and so rationality convinces us to both make such agreements and stick to them as well.

Gauthier has an advantage over Hobbes when it comes to developing the argument that cooperation between purely self-interested agents is possible. He has access to rational choice theory and its sophisticated methodology for showing how such cooperation can arise. The police have solid evidence of a lesser crime that they committed, but need confessions in order to convict them on more serious charges.

Each prisoner is told that if she cooperates with the police by informing on the other prisoner, then she will be rewarded by receiving a relatively light sentence of one year in prison, whereas her cohort will go to prison for ten years. If they both remain silent, then there will be no such rewards, and they can each expect to receive moderate sentences of two years.

And if they both cooperate with police by informing on each other, then the police will have enough to send each to prison for five years. The dilemma then is this: in order to serve her own interests as well as possible, each prisoner reasons that no matter what the other does she is better off cooperating with the police by confessing. And if she does not confess, then I should confess, thereby being sentenced to one year instead of two. So, no matter what she does, I should confess.

However, had they each remained silent, thereby cooperating with each other rather than with the police, they would have spent only two years in prison. We should, therefore, insofar as we are rational, develop within ourselves the dispositions to constrain ourselves when interacting with others.

Both SMs and CMs are exclusively self-interested and rational, but they differ with regard to whether they take into account only strategies, or both the strategies and utilities, of whose with whom they interact. To take into account their utilities is to consider how they will fare as a result of your action and to allow that to affect your own actions.

Both SMs and CMs take into account the strategies of the other with whom they interact. But whereas SMs do not take into account the utilities of those with whom they interact, CMs do. And, whereas CMs are afforded the benefits of cooperation with others, SMs are denied such advantage. According to Gauthier, rationality is a force strong enough to give persons internal reasons to cooperate. The enforcement mechanism has been internalized. Given the longstanding and widespread influence that social contract theory has had, it comes as no surprise that it is also the objects of many critiques from a variety of philosophical perspectives.

Feminists and race-conscious philosophers, in particular, have made important arguments concerning the substance and viability of social contract theory. For the most part, feminism resists any simple or universal definition. Given the pervasive influence of contract theory on social, political, and moral philosophy, then, it is not surprising that feminists should have a great deal to say about whether contract theory is adequate or appropriate from the point of view of taking women seriously.

To survey all of the feminist responses to social contract theory would carry us well beyond the boundaries of the present article. Contract theory represents itself as being opposed to patriarchy and patriarchal right. It is not, however, a fundamental change in whether women are dominated by men. Modern patriarchy is characterized by a contractual relationship between men, and part of that contract involves power over women. According to that story, a band of brothers, lorded over by a father who maintained exclusive sexual access to the women of the tribe, kill the father, and then establish a contract among themselves to be equal and to share the women.

Patriarchal control of women is found in at least three paradigmatic contemporary contracts: the marriage contract, the prostitution contract, and the contract for surrogate motherhood. According to the terms of the marriage contract, in most states in the U.

All these examples demonstrate that contract is the means by which women are dominated and controlled. Contract is not the path to freedom and equality. Rather, it is one means, perhaps the most fundamental means, by which patriarchy is upheld.

The liberal individual is purported to be universal: raceless, sexless, classless, disembodied, and is taken to represent an abstract, generalized model of humanity writ large.

Many philosophers have argued, however, that when we look more closely at the characteristics of the liberal individual, what we find is not a representation of universal humanity, but a historically located, specific type of person.

Macpherson, for example, has argued that Hobbesian man is, in particular, a bourgeois man, with the characteristics we would expect of a person during the nascent capitalism that characterized early modern Europe. Feminists have also argued that the liberal individual is a particular, historical, and embodied person. As have race-conscious philosophers, such as Charles Mills, to be discussed below.

More specifically, they have argued that the person at the heart of liberal theory, and the social contract, is gendered. Christine Di Stefano, in her book Configurations of Masculinity , shows that a number of historically important modern philosophers can be understood to develop their theories from within the perspective of masculinity, as conceived of in the modern period. In particular, it fails to adequately represent children and those who provide them with the care they require, who have historically been women.

Theorizing from within the emerging tradition of care ethics, feminist philosophers such as Baier and Held argue that social contract theory fails as an adequate account of our moral or political obligations.

Social contract theory, in general, only goes so far as to delineate our rights and obligations. Gaus , for instance, uses an evolutionary mechanism to generate determinacy in his aggregation model.

Brian Kogelmann argues, however, that under reasonable assumptions about the preferences of the representative agents, aggregation alone is sufficient to generate determinacy. There is a long tradition of thinking of the social contract as a kind of equilibrium. Brian Skyrms , suggests a different approach. We thus get Figure 1. The issue in the Stag Hunt is not whether we fight or not, but whether we cooperate and gain, or each go our separate ways.

There are two Nash equilibria in this game: both hunting stag and both hunting hare. Alf and Betty, should they find themselves at one of these equilibria, will stick to it if each consults only his or her own ranking of options. In a Nash equilibrium, no individual has a reason to defect. Of course, the contract in which they both hunt stag is a better contract: it is Pareto superior to that in which they both hunt hare.

The Hare equilibrium is, however, risk superior in that it is a safer bet. Skyrms argues that the theory of iterated games can show not simply that our parties will arrive at a social contract, but how they can come to arrive at the cooperative, mutually beneficial contract. The problem with equilibrium solutions is that, as in the stag hunt game, many games have multiple equilibria.

The problem then becomes how to select one unique equilibrium from a set of possible ones. The problem is compounded by the controversies over equilibrium refinement concepts see Harsanyi and Selten Many refinements have been suggested but, as in bargaining theory, all are controversial to one degree or another.

One of the interesting developments in social contract theory spurred by game theorists such as Skyrms and Binmore is the appeal to evolutionary game theory as a way to solve the commensuration and equilibrium selection problem Vanderschraaf What cannot be solved by appeal to reason because there simply is no determinate solution may be solved by repeated interactions among rational parties.

The work of theorists such as Skyrms and Binmore also blurs the line between justification and explanation. Their analyses shed light both on the justificatory problem—what are the characteristics of a cooperative social order that people freely follow?

The use of evolutionary game theory and evolutionary techniques is a burgeoning and exciting area of contract theory. One of the many questions that arise, however, is that of why, and if so under what circumstances, we should endorse the output of evolutionary procedures.

Should one equilibrium be preferred to another merely because it was the output of an evolutionary procedure? Surely we would want reasons independent of history for reflectively endorsing some equilibrium. This problem highlights the concern that social contracts that are the product of evolutionary procedures will not meet the publicity condition in the right kind of way. If the publicity condition seems harder to meet, the evolutionary approach provides a powerful and dynamic way to understand stability.

Following Maynard Smith , we can see stability as being an evolutionarily stable strategy equilibrium or an ESS. Basically, this is the idea that an equilibrium in an evolutionary game where successful strategies replicate at higher rates is stable if the equilibrium composition of the population in terms of strategies is not susceptible to invasion by a mutant strategy. An ESS is an application of the Nash equilibrium concept to populations. A population is evolutionarily stable when a mutant strategy is not a better response to the population than the current mix of strategies in the population.

This new conception of stability combined with the dynamic nature of evolutionary games provides interesting new ways for the social contract theorist to model the output of the contract. Social contract theories differ about the object of the contract.

In the traditional contract theories of Hobbes and Locke, the contract was about the terms of political association.

For Rawls, as for most contemporary contract theorists, the object of agreement is not, at least directly, the grounds of political obligation, but the principles of justice that regulate the basic institutions of society. Gauthier , Scanlon , Darwall , Southwood , and Gaus a employ the contract device to justify social moral norms or rules.

The level at which the object of the contract is described is apt to affect the outcome of the agreement. However, if a Hobbesian sought to divide the contract up into, say, more fine-grained agreements about the various functions of government, she is apt to find that agreement would not be forthcoming on many functions.

On his view, the state of nature is characterized by both predation and defense. We all have reason to contract, according to Buchanan, in order to increase the overall ability of everyone to produce by limiting the need for defense by constraining the ability to engage in predation.

Once the solution to the predation-production conflict has been solved by the constitutional contract, members of society also realize that if all contributed to the production of various public goods, the productive possibility of society would be similarly increased.

The distinction between the two stages is analogous to the traditional distinction between commutative and distributive justice. First, drawing on their pluralistic moral commitments individuals seek to agree on social-moral rules that all can endorse as a common morality. The second-level agreement is appropriate to circumstances in which pluralism is so deep and wide no common morality can be forged. Rather than moral agents, the parties are reconceived as instrumentally rational prudential agents: the object of this second level is rules of cooperation that advance the interests of all when a deeper moral basis cannot be uncovered.

Suppose, then, that we have arrived at some social contract. Depending on the initial justificatory problem, it will yield an outcome R principles, rules, etc. But, supposing that the contract has generated a principle, rule, etc. Throughout we have been distinguishing the justificatory problem from the deliberative model. Rawls, along with Gauthier and Buchanan, was sometimes attracted to such a reading. We might say that the deliberative model is evidence of the proper answer to the question of justification.

The weakest interpretation of the contract is that the contractual result is simply indicative of the correct answer to the justificatory problem, which itself is simply indicative of the fact that R has L. Even if this is correct, Scanlon can be a sort of social contract theorist. The diversity of possible approaches within social contract theory indicates the variety of different uses to which social contract theory can be applied.

The social contract theories of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau all stressed that the justification of the state depends on showing that everyone would, in some way, consent to it. In September , Gerald Gaus became a co-author of this entry for the purpose of maintaining it and keeping it current. In December , Gaus was joined by co-author John Thrasher. In , Thrasher became solely responsible for updates.

The Role of the Social Contract 1. Modeling the Parties 2. Non-Reductionist 2. Identification 2. Heterogeneity 2.

Evaluative 3. Modeling Agreement 3. The Object of Agreement 5. What Does the Contract Show? As Rawls argues: [T]he question of justification is settled by working out a problem of deliberation: we have to ascertain which principles it would be rational to adopt given the contractual situation.

This connects the theory of justice with the theory of rational choice Rawls , Non-Reductionist How contract theorists model the representative choosers N is determined by our actual justificatory problem and what is relevant to solving it.

And so we ask, what reason can a person have for recognizing and accepting a constraint that is independent of his desires and interests? Heterogeneity Social contract theories model representative choosers N so as to render the choice situation determinate.

Evaluative Any representation of the reasoning of the parties will have two elements that need to be specified: 1 doxastic and 2 evaluative. Modeling Agreement Social contract theories fundamentally differ in whether the parties reason differently or the same. There he distinguishes between three different perspectives relevant to the assessment of the model , 28 : you and me the parties to the deliberative model persons in a well-ordered society The agreement of the parties in the deliberative model is certainly counterfactual in the two-fold sense we have analyzed: a counterfactual agreement among counterfactual parties.

All three levels, Rawls contends, are exemplified in a well-ordered society. Bibliography Ackerman, Bruce, Social Justice in the Liberal State. Alexander, Jason and Brian Skyrms, Alexander, Jason, Berlin, Isaiah, Bicchieri, Cristina, Binmore, Ken, Game Theory and the Social Contract Vol. Braithwaite R. Brennan, Geoffrey and James Buchanan, []. Broome, John, Bruner, Justin, The problem of asymmetry becomes particularly acute at the international level, where there is and, for much of recorded history, has been a tremendous discrepancy in power among parties to any putative law of peoples.

Rawls avoids this problem by beginning from an assumption of rough equality between the parties to the second level original position, an assumption which is, of course, highly questionable, particularly in the current geopolitical context, in which one state exerts tremendous power over most, if not all, of the others. Beyond the problem of inequality, there are other obstacles to using states as proxies for moral persons in the process of enacting an international social contract.

Many states, for example, do not adhere to fundamental moral principles with respect to the way they treat their own people. This makes it unlikely that they would reason in accordance with the principles outlined in Section II.

If tyrannical regimes treat their citizens shabbily or cannot or will not represent all of their citizens equally at home, it is unlikely that they will carry norms of equity and reciprocity into international relations. Finally, there is the problem of the high degree of interdependence that characterizes, even constitutes, nations long before they enter into discussion about international laws or treaties.

Just as Rousseau dismissed traditional theories of the social contract only to later propose his own, so too have contemporary philosophers such as Martha Nussbaum, Thomas Pogge, and Charles Beitz introduced a qualitatively different version of the international social contract, one that they believe overcomes some of the problems of that contract, as articulated by Rousseau, Kant, and Rawls. The fundamental difference in this alternative approach to an international social contract lies in the nature of the parties to the contract.

Whereas for Rousseau, Kant, and Rawls, the parties to the international social contract would be states or peoples, for Nussbaum, Pogge, and Beitz, social contract theory makes the most sense at the international level when the parties to the social contract are imagined to be individual human beings. Only when imagined in these terms, these writers argue, will the social contract be construed so as to meet basic liberal principles of justice.

On this account, the two-stage model favored by Rawls is replaced with a single original position, in which individual human beings contract to a series of human rights that are not constrained by the contingencies of any particular conception of the state. This approach overcomes the problem of asymmetry identified above VI , ensuring that any forward-looking regime of international justice will not reinstitute hierarchies that exist among states in the status quo.

The disadvantage of this approach is that it deviates so dramatically from contemporary practices, in which nation-states dominate international politics. Indeed, it is quite possible that this alternative international social contract will require the wholesale reconceptualization of the state and the corresponding consideration of alternative modes of social organization.

Professor Neidleman is currently at work on a monograph on Rousseau and truthseeking. Masters and Christopher Kelly ed. Italics in original. Before you download your free e-book, please consider donating to support open access publishing.