Social contract
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<!-- I'm fucking screwed for my test! -->{{about|"social contract" as a political and philosophical concept|Rousseau's 1762 treatise|The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right|other meanings|Social Contract (disambiguation)}}
[[Image:Locke-John-LOC.jpg|260px|thumb|right|[[John Locke]]'s writings on the Social Contract were particularly influential among the [[Founding Fathers of the United States|American Founding Fathers]].]]
The term '''social contract''' describes a broad class of [[philosophical theories]] whose subjects are implied agreements by which people form [[nation]]s 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|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.<ref>Sturgis, Amy H. [http://web.archive.org/web/20021201234034/http://www.belmont.edu/lockesmith/essay.html ''The Rise, Decline, and Reemergence of Classical Liberalism''], Locke smith Institute, 1994.</ref>
== 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 [[Wiktionary:autonomy|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 law|positive rights]], only [[law of nature (precept)|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, we jointly agree to a social contract by which we each gain [[civil rights]] in return for subjecting ourselves to civil law or to political authority. 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 rights|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 [[crime]]s, 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 [[Social responsibility|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 rights|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.
== History ==
=== Classical thought ===
<ref>[http://www.iep.utm.edu/s/soc-cont.htm#H1 Social Contract Theory - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]</ref>. Some have argued that [[Epicurus]] explicitly endorsed "social contract" ideas; the last fourth of his ''Principal Doctrines'' state that [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Epicurus#XXXI justice comes from agreement not to harm each other], and in laws being made for mutual advantage (pleasure, happiness), and that laws which are no longer advantageous are [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Epicurus#XXXVII no longer just]. In this sense, the Greeks had little to do with [[contractualism]] as it is formulated by modern philosophy: [[conventionalism]] is in fact quite the opposite of contractualism, since it considers [[justice]] to be the product of social conventions (as in the [[sophist]]s' acceptation of the term), while contractualism considers nature to be the grounds of justice. Other have argued that Plato's dialog [[Crito]] express the Greek social contract theory. In this dialog, Socrates refuses to escape from jail to avoid being put to death. He argues that since he has benefited from living in Athens all of his life, this shows that he has (at least tacitly) accepted the social contract i.e. the burden of the local laws, and he cannot therefore abandon these laws now, even though they are against his self-interest.
=== 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.<ref>Quentin Skinner, ''The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: Volume 2: The Age of the Reformation'' (Cambridge, 1978)</ref> 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 community of people can join a government because they have 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.
It is largely as a result of having rejected this medieval, Roman-Legal, and Aristotelian notion that in common parlance, contractualism refers to the theory of sovereignty first elaborated by Hobbes in the 17th century. His book ''[[Leviathan (book)|Leviathan]]'' is generally considered to be a landmark of [[Absolutism (European history)|absolutism]].
== Philosophers ==
=== Hugo Grotius ===
In the early 17th century, [[Grotius]] ([[1583]]-[[1645]]) introduced the modern idea of ''natural rights'' of individuals. Grotius says that we each have natural rights which we have in order to preserve ourselves. He uses this idea to try and establish a basis for moral consensus in the face of religious diversity and the rise of natural science and to find a minimal basis for a moral beginning for society, a kind of natural law that everyone could potentially accept. He goes so far as to say ''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 suggests 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 people i.e. 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 each person is entitled to try and preserve themselves and therefore they shouldn't try to do harm to others or to interfere with them and they should punish any breach of someone else's rights that arises.
=== Thomas Hobbes'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 [[natural rights|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 (book)|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 ''[[Social Contract (Rousseau)|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 [[individualist]] Lockean 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 [[holism|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:
{{quote|[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''<ref>Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ''Oeuvres complètes'', ed. B. Gagnebin and M. Raymond (Paris, 1959–95), III, 361; ''The Collected Writings of Rousseau'', ed. C. Kelley and R. Masters (Hanover, 1990-), IV, 139. </ref>}}
Hence, Rousseau's infamous phrase that man must "be forced to be free"<ref>''Oeuvres complètes'', III, 364; ''The Collected Writings of Rousseau'', IV, 141</ref> 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.
Rousseau's version of the social contract is the one most often associated with the term "social contract" itself. His theories had an influence on both the 1789 [[French Revolution]] and the subsequent formation of the [[socialist]] movement{{fact|date=April 2008}}. Furthermore, one can note that, as in Locke or Hobbes' theories, Rousseau gave particular attention to subjective and individual questions, as in his ''[[Confessions (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)|Confessions]]'' for example.
=== 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 [[individualist]]s, [[libertarians]] and [[Anarchism|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:
{{quote|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 (1881–1908)|Liberty]]'', VII, 1890)
=== John Rawls's ''Theory of Justice'' (1971) ===
[[John Rawls]] ([[1921]]–[[2002]]) proposed a contractarian approach that has a decidedly [[Kantian]] flavour, in ''[[A Theory of Justice]]'' (1971), whereby rational people in a hypothetical "[[original position]]," setting aside their individual preferences and capacities under a "[[veil of ignorance]]," would agree to certain general principles of justice. This idea is also used as a [[game theory|game-theoretical]] formalization of the notion of fairness.
=== Philip Pettit's conception of republicanism (1997) ===
[[Philip Pettit]] (b. [[1945]]) has argued, in ''[[Republicanism]]: A Theory of Freedom and Government'' (1997), that the theory of social contract, classically based on the [[consent of the governed]] (as it is assumed that the contract is valid as long as the people consent to being governed by its representatives, who exercise sovereignty), should be modified, in order to avoid dispute. Instead of arguing that an explicit consent, which can always be [[Manufacturing Consent|manufactured]], should justify the validity of social contract, Philip Pettit argues that the absence of an effective rebellion against the contract is the only legitimacy of it.
== Criticism ==
=== Hume ===
An early critic of the validity of social contract theory was David Hume. In his essay "Of the Original Contract", contained in his ''Essays Moral and Political'' (1748), Hume stressed that the contract theory of government was not supported by available historical data.
=== Social contract is a violation of contract theory? ===
According to the will theory of contract, which was dominant in the 19th century and still exerts a strong influence, a contract is not presumed valid unless all parties agree to it voluntarily, either tacitly or explicitly, without coercion. [[Lysander Spooner]], a 19th century lawyer and staunch supporter of a right of contract between individuals, in his essay ''[[No Treason]]'', argues that a supposed social contract (of the Rousseauean sort) cannot be used to justify governmental actions such as taxation, because government will initiate force against anyone who does not wish to enter into such a contract. As a result, he maintains that such an agreement is not voluntary and therefore cannot be considered a legitimate contract at all. However, the philosophical concept of social contract does not address the same issues as present-day juridical [[contract theory]], making the name "social contract" potentially misleading. For this reason some thinkers, such as [[James Madison]], preferred the term ''social compact''. The key notion of social contract or compact is that the individual consents by entering or remaining on the dominion of an existing society, which is usually a geographic territory, in much the same way one does when entering or remaining in someone's household or private property. People are normally brought up from childhood to respect the boundaries of societies, including families, and the rules made by them for their territorial spaces. That is part of the socialization development process.
As legal scholar [[Randy Barnett]] has argued,<ref>''[http://www.randybarnett.com/ Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty]'', Randy Barnett (2004)</ref> however, while presence in the territory of a society is necessary for consent, it is not consent to ''any'' rules the society might make, and a second condition of consent is that the rules be consistent with underlying principles of justice and the protection of natural and social rights, and have procedures for effective protection of those rights (or liberties). This has also been discussed by O.A. Brownson,<ref>[http://terrenceberres.com/broame.html ''The American Republic: its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny'', O. A. Brownson (1866)]</ref> who argued that there are, in a sense, three "constitutions" involved: The first the ''constitution of nature'' that includes all of what the Founders called "natural law". The second would be the ''constitution of society'', an unwritten and commonly understood set of rules for the society formed by a social contract before it establishes a government, by which it does establish the third, a ''constitution of government''. To consent, a necessary condition is that the rules be ''constitutional'' in that sense.
Modern Anglo-American law, like European civil law, is based on a will theory of contract, according to which all terms of a contract are binding on the parties because they chose those terms for themselves. This was less true when Hobbes wrote Leviathan; then, more importance was attached to consideration, meaning a mutual exchange of benefits necessary to the formation of a valid contract, and most contracts had implicit terms that arose 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 consistent with the contract law of the time of Hobbes and Locke than with the contract law of our time, and that features in the social contract which seem anomalous to us, such as the belief that we are bound by a contract formulated by our distant ancestors, would not have seemed as strange to Hobbes' contemporaries as they do to us.<ref>Joseph Kary, "Contract Law and the Social Contract: What Legal History Can Teach Us About the Political Theory of Hobbes and Locke", 31 Ottawa Law Review 73 (Jan. 2000)</ref>
=== Implicit social contract theory presupposes its conclusion ===
The theory of an implicit social contract holds that by remaining in the territory controlled by some government, people give consent to be governed. This consent is what gives legitimacy to the government. Philosopher [[Roderick Long]] argues that this is a case of [[question begging]], because the argument has to presuppose its conclusion:
{{quote|I think that the person who makes this argument is already assuming that the government has some legitimate jurisdiction over this territory. And then they say, well, now, anyone who is in the territory is therefore agreeing to the prevailing rules. But they’re assuming the very thing they're trying to prove – namely that this jurisdiction over the territory is legitimate. If it's not, then the government is just one more group of people living in this broad general geographical territory. But I've got my property, and exactly what their arrangements are I don't know, but here I am in my property and they don't own it – at least they haven't given me any argument that they do – and so, the fact that I am living in "this country" means I am living in a certain geographical region that they have certain pretensions over – but the question is whether those pretensions are legitimate. You can’t assume it as a means to proving it.<ref>See Long, Roderick. [http://www.mises.org/etexts/longanarchism.pdf Libertarian Anarchism: Responses to Ten Objections], Section (1).</ref>}}
An answer to this argument is that a society which has effective dominion over a territory, that is, a [[state]], is the [[Sovereignty|sovereign]] over that territory, and therefore the true, legal ''owner'' of all of it. This is actually the theory of law for [[real property]] in every country. What individuals can own is not the land itself, but an [[Estate (law)|estate]] in the land, that is, a transferrable right to use and exclude others from use. The true owner is the sovereign, or supreme lawmaking authority, because it can make and enforce laws that restrict what one can do on one's estate.
=== Ronald Dworkin's ''Law's Empire'' (1986) ===
In his 1986 book ''Law's Empire'', [[Ronald Dworkin]] touches briefly on social contract theory, firstly distinguishing between the use of social contract theory in an ''ethical'' sense, to establish the character or content of justice (such as John Rawls' ''A Theory of Justice'') and its use in a ''jurisprudential'' sense as a basis for legitimate government.
Dworkin argues that if every citizen were a party to an actual, historical agreement to accept and obey political decisions in the way his community's political decisions are in fact taken, then the historical fact of agreement would provide at least a good ''[[prima facie]]'' case for coercion even in ordinary politics:
A typical counterargument is that the choice is not limited to tacit consent to the status quo vs. expatriation, but also includes accepting the contract, then working to alter the parts that are disagreed with, as by participating in the political process.
Another counterargument is that there is tacit consent as long as there is somewhere else to go, even if life there is difficult or impossible, or the regime there oppressive. A society has dominion over its territory and the [[Sovereignty|sovereign]] power to make the rules for it, but no duty to provide a comfortable alternative. By this argument, the Universe is not organized for our comfort or convenience, and life is often not a choice between good and bad, but among the alternatives that are available, which may all be bad.
=== Criticisms of natural rights ===
Contractualism is based on a philosophy of rights being agreed to in order to further our interests, which is a form of [[individualism]]: each individual [[subject (philosophy)|subject]] is accorded individual rights, which may or may not be inalienable, and form the basis of [[civil rights]], as in the 1789 ''[[Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen]]''. It must be underlined, however, as [[Hannah Arendt]] did on her book on [[imperialism]], that the 1789 Declarations, in this agreeing with the social contract theory, bases the natural rights of the human-being on the civil rights of the citizen, instead of doing the reverse as the contractualist theory pretends to do.<ref>Hannah Arendt's book on ''Imperialism'' was published in 1951 in ''[[The Origins of Totalitarianism]]'', but was written apart. This interpretation by Hannah Arendt of natural rights being based on civil rights founds its illustration with the growing number of [[refugee]]s and stateless people. [[Giorgio Agamben]] would further explore it, with his concept of an ''[[Homo sacer]]'': "the so-called sacred and inalienable rights of man prove to be completely unprotected at the very moment it is no longer possible to characterize them as rights of the citizens of a state" (Agamben, 2005)</ref> However, this individualist and liberal approach has been criticized since the 19th century by thinkers such as [[Marx]], [[Nietzsche]] or [[Freud]], and afterward by [[structuralism|structuralist]] and [[post-structuralism|post-structuralist]] thinkers, such as [[Lacan]], [[Althusser]], [[Michel Foucault|Foucault]], [[Deleuze]] or [[Derrida]]. Several of those philosophers have attempted, in a [[Spinoza|spinozist]] inspiration, of thinking some sort of ''transindividuality'' which would precede the division between individual subject and collective subject (i.e. society).
== See also ==
* [[Contract]]
* [[Mayflower Compact]]
* [[Kohlberg's stages of moral development]]
* [[Monarchomachs]]
* [[Right of rebellion]]
* [[Social capital]]
* ''[[Social Justice in the Liberal State]]''
* [[School of Salamanca]]
* professor [[Th. Donaldson|Thomas Donaldson]]
* [[Theory of Consent]]
== References ==
=== Notes ===
{{reflist|2}}
=== Other references ===
* Ankerl, Guy. ''Toward a Social Contract on a Worldwide Scale.'' Geneva: ILO, 1980, ISBN 9290141654.
* Dworkin, Ronald. ''Law's Empire'', Fontana Press, 1986,
* Hobbes, Thomas. ''[http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/hobbes/leviathan-contents.html Leviathan]'' (1651)
* Locke, John. ''[http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke2/locke2nd-a.html Second Treatise on Government]'' (1689)
* Pettit, Philip. ''Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government'', NY: Oxford U.P., 1997, ISBN 0-19-829083-7, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997
* Rawls, John. ''A Theory of Justice'' (1971)
* Robinson, Dave & Groves, Judy (2003). ''Introducing Political Philosophy''. Icon Books. ISBN 1-84046-450-X.
* Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. ''[http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/r/rousseau/jean_jacques/r864s/ The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right]'' (1762)
* Hardin, Garrett. ''[http://dieoff.org/page95.htm The Tragedy of the Commons]'' (1968)
== External links ==
*{{sep entry|contractarianism|Contractarianism|Ann Cudd}}
*{{sep entry|contractarianism-contemporary|Contemporary Approaches to the Social Contract|Fred D'Agostino}}
*{{iep|s/soc-cont.htm}}
* [http://www.depressedmetabolism.com/the-contractarian-theory-of-morals-faq/ The Contractarian Theory of Morals:FAQ]
* [http://www.worldtrans.org/sov/soccont.html An example social contract for the United States]
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