Editing Social contract (section)

== History ==

===Classical thought===
Social contract formulations are preserved in many of the world's oldest records.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/enlightenment--33?print=1|title=Enlightenment|website=www.timetoast.com|date=29 August 1632 |access-date=2016-11-10|archive-date=2016-11-10|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161110235657/https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/enlightenment--33?print=1|url-status=live}}</ref> The Indian Buddhist text of the second century BC ''[[Mahāvastu]]'' recounts the legend of Mahasammata. The story goes as follows:
{{blockquote|In the early days of the cosmic cycle mankind lived on an immaterial plane, dancing on air in a sort of fairyland, where there was no need of food or clothing, and no private property, family, government or laws. Then gradually the process of cosmic decay began its work, and mankind became earthbound, and felt the need of food and shelter. As men lost their primeval glory, distinctions of class arose, and they entered into agreements with one another, accepting the institution of private property and the family. With this theft, murder, adultery, and other crime began, and so the people met together and decided to appoint one man from among them to maintain order in return for a share of the produce of their fields and herds. He was called "the Great Chosen One" (Mahasammata), and he received the title of raja because he pleased the people.<ref>AL Basham, ''The Wonder That Was India'', pp. 83</ref>}}

In his [[Rock Edicts|rock edicts]], the Indian Buddhist king [[Asoka]] was said to have argued for a broad and far-reaching social contract.{{Citation needed|date=June 2018}} The Buddhist ''vinaya'' also reflects social contracts expected of the monks; one such instance is when the people of a certain town complained about monks felling saka trees, the Buddha tells his monks that they must stop and give way to social norms.{{Citation needed|date=April 2023}}

[[Epicurus]] in the fourth century BC seemed to have had a strong sense of social contract, with justice and law being rooted in mutual agreement and advantage, as evidenced by these lines, among others, from his ''Principal Doctrines'' (see also [[Epicureanism#Ethics|Epicurean ethics]]):

{{blockquote|31. Natural justice is a pledge of reciprocal benefit, to prevent one man from harming or being harmed by another.

32. Those animals which are incapable of making binding agreements with one another not to inflict nor suffer harm are without either justice or injustice; and likewise for those peoples who either could not or would not form binding agreements not to inflict nor suffer harm.

33. There never was such a thing as absolute justice, but only agreements made in mutual dealings among men in whatever places at various times providing against the infliction or suffering of harm.<ref>{{cite web |author=Vincent Cook |url=http://www.epicurus.net/en/principal.html |title=Principal Doctrines |publisher=Epicurus |date=2000-08-26 |access-date=2012-09-26 |archive-date=2007-04-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070407084128/http://www.epicurus.net/en/principal.html |url-status=live }}</ref>}}

The concept of the social contract was originally posed by [[Glaucon]], as described by [[Plato]] in ''[[The Republic (Plato)|The Republic]]'', Book{{nbsp}}II.

{{blockquote|They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil; but that the evil is greater than the good. And so when men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice;—it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil, and honoured by reason of the inability of men to do injustice. For no man who is worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such an agreement if he were able to resist; he would be mad if he did. Such is the received account, Socrates, of the nature and origin of justice.<ref>The Republic, Book II. Quoted from http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.3.ii.html {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111016011312/http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.3.ii.html |date=2011-10-16 }}</ref>}}

The social contract theory also appears in ''[[Crito]]'', another dialogue from Plato. Over time, the social contract theory became more widespread after [[Epicurus]] (341–270 BC), the first philosopher who saw justice as a social contract, and not as existing in Nature due to divine intervention (see below and also [[Epicureanism#Ethics|Epicurean ethics]]), decided to bring the theory to the forefront of his society. As time went on, philosophers of traditional political and social thought, such as Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau put forward their opinions on social contract, which then caused the topic to become much more mainstream.{{Citation needed|date=June 2018}}

===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> [[Francisco Suárez]] (1548–1617), from the [[School of Salamanca]], might be considered an early theorist of the social contract, theorizing [[natural law]] in an attempt to limit the [[Divine Right of Kings|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, and 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.

These arguments, however, relied on a corporatist theory found in Roman law, according to which "a populus" can exist as a distinct legal entity. Thus, these arguments held that a group of people can join a government because it has 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 and later contract theorists.