SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY

✓ Social contract theory was first proposed by Thomas Hobbes who believed that

people live according to a social contract in a society aimed at combating the

perpetual conflict they find themselves in.

✓ To avoid that conflict, people adopted two approaches; 1) harmony with each other

2) subjection to authorities. Man used to live in “State of Nature.”

✓ Hobbes was absolutist. All powers lie in the hand of supreme authority. Thomas

Hobbes: Governments without swords are but words and of no strength to secure a

man at all.

✓ Hobbes was thus dependent on mechanistic theory – humans want more pleasure,

avoid pains. Humans are rational and pursue pleasure rationally. This rationality

prompted them to enter into the social contract.

✓ Humans have thus conferred authority on some special institutions, which work to

exert authority in a way that does not harm the interests of the people but assists

them in pursuing their goals.

✓ John Locke’s “state of nature” is not anarchic, but peaceful. He contended as per

basic human nature, everyone was living a life of liberty and ease, which, however,

provided no protection against degenerate entities.

✓ The “state of nature” is, therefore, pre-political, not pre-moral.

✓ Property plays central role in Locke’s argument of social theory. Man builds

property by combining labor with natural resources. Each man can hold as much

property and must be constrained by some supreme authority.

✓ The property was not considered safe in John Locke’s theory because there was no

supreme authority to discipline the society.

✓ In the wake of this, the man adopted a superior authority, which had not absolute

power, but rather only the responsibility to protect.

✓ He proposed constitutionally limited government.

✓ Jean Rousseau’s theory of social contract is based on advancements that

accompanied the Neolithic revolution. Prior to the revolution, men's needs and

resources were limited.

✓ As its needs and resources increased, man accumulated property, which brought

him out of the state of nature.

✓ To protect the property, man conferred the authority on not a single institution or

entity, but on a whole community as a whole – the so-called “general will.”

✓ The state was established that only conformed to “general will” and did not make

any laws out of this will.

✓ Rousseau favored people’s sovereignty. The view of the majority formed “general

will.”
 READING LINKS

https://sci-hub.se/10.2139/ssrn.2410525