Contractarianism

 stems initially from the principle of social contract of Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau and John Locke
 social contract
o the idea that the people give up some rights to a government and/or other authority in order to
receive, or jointly preserve, social order
o notion that legitimate state authority must be derived from the consent of the governed,
where the form and content of this consent derives from the idea of contract or mutual
agreement.
 Contractarianism suggests that people are primarily self-interested, and that a rational
assessment of the best strategy for attaining the maximization of their self-interest will lead them to
act morally and to consent to governmental authority.
 He argued that, in a primitive unstructured social order (a “state of nature”), individuals
have unlimited natural freedoms and their words or actions are bound only by their consciences.
 However, this general autonomy also includes the freedom to harm all who threaten one's own self-
preservation(and for others to harm in their own interests), and Hobbes was of the opinion that
humans are by their very nature nasty and mean
 It is therefore, he argued, in an individual’s rational self-interest to voluntarily subjugate his freedom
of action in order to obtain the benefits provided by the formation of social structures and civil rights.
 So, individuals implicitly agree to a social contract with a state or authority in return
for protection from harm and a more functional society.
 It is important that this social contract involves an absolute government that does not rule
by consent (effectively Totalitarianism), since in his view people cannot be trusted. The position of
free individuals in a state of nature is presented by Hobbes as so dire (a life which is "solitary, poore,
nasty, brutish and short") that they are willing to contract to submit all except their actual lives to the will
of a sovereign who thus exercises an almost absolute political authority
 He argued that the human body is like a machine, and that political organization ("commonwealth") is
like an artificial human being. Beginning from this mechanistic understanding of human beings and
the passions, Hobbes postulated what life would be like without government, a condition which he
called the "state of nature" and which he argued inevitably leads to conflict and lives that are
"solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".
 In order to escape this state of war and insecurity, men in the state of nature accede to a "social
contract" and establish a civil society. Thus, all individuals in that society cede their natural rights
for the sake of protection, and any abuses of power by this authority must be accepted as the price
of peace (although in severe cases of abuse, rebellion is to be expected). In particular, he rejected
the doctrine of separation of powers, arguing that the sovereign must control civil, military, judicial
and ecclesiastical powers, which some have seen as a justification for authoritarianism and
even Totalitarianism.

“This is … made by covenant of every man with every man … as if every man should say to every man, I authorise and
give up my right of governing myself, to this man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy
right to him, and authorize all his actions in like manner.”