Editing Social contract (section)

==Philosophers==

===Thomas Hobbes' ''Leviathan'' (1651)===
{{main|Leviathan (Hobbes book)}}

The first modern philosopher to articulate a detailed contract theory was [[Thomas Hobbes]] (1588–1679). According to Hobbes, the lives of individuals in the [[state of nature]] were "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short", a state in which self-interest and the absence of rights and contracts prevented the "social", or society. Life was "anarchic" (without leadership or the concept of sovereignty). Individuals in the state of nature were apolitical and asocial. This state of nature is followed by the social contract.

The social contract was seen as an "occurrence" during which individuals came together and ceded some of their [[natural rights|individual rights]] so that others would cede theirs.<ref>E.g. person{{nbsp}}A gives up his/her right to kill person{{nbsp}}B if person{{nbsp}}B does the same.</ref> This resulted in the establishment of the state, a sovereign entity like the individuals now under its rule used to be, which would create laws to regulate social interactions. Human life was thus no longer "a war of all against all".

The state system, which grew out of the social contract, was, however, also anarchic (without leadership). Just as the individuals in the state of nature had been sovereigns and thus guided by self-interest and the absence of rights, so states now acted in their self-interest in competition with each other. Just like the state of nature, states were thus bound to be in conflict because there was no sovereign over and above the state (more powerful) capable of imposing some system such as social-contract laws on everyone by force. Indeed, Hobbes' work helped to serve as a basis for the [[Political realism|realism]] theories of international relations, advanced by [[E. H. Carr]] and [[Hans Morgenthau]]. Hobbes wrote in ''[[Leviathan (Hobbes book)|Leviathan]]'' that humans ("we") need the "terrour of some Power" otherwise humans will not heed the [[Golden Rule|law of reciprocity]], "(in summe) doing to others, as wee would be done to".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Hobbes|first1=Thomas|title=Leviathan|url=https://archive.org/details/leviathanpenguin00thom|url-access=registration|date=1985|publisher=Penguin|location=London|page=[https://archive.org/details/leviathanpenguin00thom/page/223 223]|isbn=9780140431957}}</ref>

===John Locke's ''Second Treatise of Government'' (1689)===
[[John Locke]]'s conception of the social contract differed from Hobbes' in several fundamental ways, retaining only the central notion that individuals in a state of nature would willingly come together to form a state. Locke believed that individuals in a state of nature would be bound morally, by the Law of Nature, in which man has the "power... to preserve his property; that is, his life, liberty and estate against the injuries and attempts of other men". Without government to defend them against those seeking to injure or enslave them, Locke further believed people would have no security in their rights and would live in fear. Individuals, to Locke, would only agree to form a state that would provide, in part, a "neutral judge", acting to protect the lives, liberty, and property of those who lived within it.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Gaba|first=Jeffery|date=Spring 2007|title=John Locke and the Meaning of the Takings Clause|url=https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3727&context=mlr|journal=Missouri Law Review|volume=72|issue=2|access-date=2018-04-19|archive-date=2021-03-05|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210305162433/https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3727&context=mlr|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Locke|first=John|author-link=John Locke|date=1690|title=Two Treatises on Civil Government|publisher=Books on Demand |url=https://english.hku.hk/staff/kjohnson/PDF/LockeJohnSECONDTREATISE1690.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/https://english.hku.hk/staff/kjohnson/PDF/LockeJohnSECONDTREATISE1690.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live|isbn=9783749437412}}</ref>

While Hobbes argued for near-absolute authority, Locke argued for inviolate freedom under law in his [[Two Treatises of Government#Second Treatise|''Second Treatise of Government'']]. Locke argued that a government's legitimacy comes from the citizens' delegation to the government of their absolute right of violence (reserving the inalienable right of self-defense or "self-preservation"), along with elements of other rights (e.g. property will be liable to taxation) as necessary to achieve the goal of security through granting the state a monopoly of violence, whereby the government, as an impartial judge, may use the collective force of the populace to administer and enforce the law, rather than each man acting as his own judge, jury, and executioner—the condition in the state of nature.{{citation needed|date=February 2017}}

===Jean-Jacques Rousseau's ''Du Contrat social'' (1762)===
[[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]] (1712–1778), in his influential 1762 treatise ''[[The Social Contract]]'', outlined a different version of social-contract theory, as the foundations of society based on the sovereignty of the "[[general will]]".

Rousseau's political theory differs in important ways from that of Locke and Hobbes. Rousseau's collectivist conception is most evident in his development of the "luminous conception" (which he credited to [[Denis Diderot]]) of the "[[general will]]". Summarised, the "[[general will]]" is the power of all the citizens' collective interest—not to be confused with their individual interests.

Although Rousseau wrote that the British were perhaps at the time the freest people on earth, he did not approve of their representative government, nor any form of representative government. Rousseau believed that society was only legitimate when the sovereign (i.e. the "[[general will]]") were the sole [[legislator]]s. He also stated that the individual must accept "the total alienation to the whole community of each associate with all his rights".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Rousseau|first=Jean-Jacques|title=The social contract; and, the first and second discourses / Jean-Jacques Rousseau; edited and with an introduction by Susan Dunn; with essays by Gita May [and others].|publisher=New Haven: Yale University Press|year=2002|isbn=9780300129434|location=|pages=163}}</ref> In short, Rousseau meant that in order for the social contract to work, individuals ''must'' forfeit their rights to the whole so that such conditions were "equal for all".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Rousseau|first=Jean-Jacques|title=The social contract ; and, the first and second discourses / Jean-Jacques Rousseau; edited and with an introduction by Susan Dunn; with essays by Gita May [and others].|publisher=New Haven : Yale University Press|year=2002|isbn=9780300129434|location=|pages=163}}</ref>{{blockquote|[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, ''Œuvres complètes'', ed.&nbsp;B.&nbsp;Gagnebin and M.&nbsp;Raymond (Paris, 1959–95), III, 361; ''The Collected Writings of Rousseau'', ed.&nbsp;C.&nbsp;Kelley and R.&nbsp;Masters (Hanover, 1990–), IV, 139.</ref>}}

Rousseau's striking 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{{according to whom|date=May 2019}} this way: since the indivisible and inalienable popular sovereignty decides what is good for the whole, if an individual rejects this "civil liberty"<ref name="Rousseau 2002 167">{{Cite book|last=Rousseau|first=Jean-Jacques|title=The social contract ; and, the first and second discourses / Jean-Jacques Rousseau ; edited and with an introduction by Susan Dunn ; with essays by Gita May [and others].|publisher=New Haven : Yale University Press|year=2002|isbn=9780300129434|location=|pages=167}}</ref> in place of "natural liberty"<ref name="Rousseau 2002 167"/> and self interest, disobeying the law, he will be forced to listen to what was decided when the people acted as a collective (as [[citizen]]s). Thus the law, inasmuch as it is created by the people acting as a body, is not a limitation of individual freedom, but rather its expression. The individual, as a citizen, explicitly agreed to be constrained if, as a private individual, he did not respect his own will as formulated in the general will.

Because laws represent the restraint of "natural liberty",<ref name="Rousseau 2002 167"/> they represent the leap made from humans in the state of nature into civil society. In this sense, the law is a civilizing force. Therefore, Rousseau believed that the laws that govern a people help to mould their character.

Rousseau also analyses the social contract in terms of [[risk]] management,<ref>
{{cite book
| last1 = Gourevitch
| first1 = Victor
| translator1-last = Gourevitch
| translator1-first = Victor
| year = 1997
| chapter = Of the Social Contract
| editor1-last = Gourevitch
| editor1-first = Victor
| title = The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=6L9tDwAAQBAJ
| series = Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought
| edition = 2
| location = Cambridge
| publisher = Cambridge University Press
| publication-date = 2018
| page = 66
| isbn = 9781107150812
| access-date = 2019-05-11
| quote = Is it not nevertheless a gain to risk for the sake of what makes for our security just a portion of what we would have to risk for our own sakes as soon as we are deprived of it?
}}
</ref>
thus suggesting the origins of the state as a form of mutual [[insurance]].

===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]] that do not involve agreeing to anything more than [[Negative and positive rights|negative rights]] and creates only a limited state, if any.

[[Pierre-Joseph Proudhon]] (1809–1865) advocated a conception of social contract that did not involve an individual surrendering sovereignty to others. According to him, the social contract was not between individuals and the state, but rather among individuals who refrain from coercing or governing each other, each one maintaining complete sovereignty upon him- or herself:

{{blockquote|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|''[[The General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century|General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century]]'' (1851)}}

===John Rawls' ''Theory of Justice'' (1971)===
Building on the work of Immanuel Kant with its presumption of limits on the state,<ref>• Gerald Gaus and Shane D. Courtland, 2011, [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism/  "Liberalism"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180908003440/https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism/ |date=2018-09-08 }}, 1.1, ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''.<br />&nbsp;&nbsp; • Immanuel Kant, ([1797]). ''[[The Metaphysics of Morals]]'', Part{{nbsp}}1.</ref> [[John Rawls]] (1921–2002), in ''[[A Theory of Justice]]'' (1971), proposed a contractarian approach whereby rational people in a hypothetical "[[original position]]" would set aside their individual preferences and capacities under a "[[veil of ignorance]]" and agree to certain general principles of justice and legal organization. This idea is also used as a [[game theory|game-theoretical]] formalization of the notion of fairness.

===David Gauthier's ''Morals by Agreement'' (1986)===
{{Main|Contractarian ethics}}
[[David Gauthier]]'s "neo-Hobbesian" theory argues that cooperation between two independent and self-interested parties is indeed possible, especially when it comes to understanding morality and politics.<ref name="Iep.utm.edu-2004">{{cite web |url=http://www.iep.utm.edu/soc-cont/#SH3b |title=Social Contract Theory [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy&#93; |publisher=Iep.utm.edu |date=2004-10-15 |access-date=2011-01-20 |archive-date=2011-01-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110116033545/http://www.iep.utm.edu/soc-cont/#SH3b |url-status=live }}</ref> Gauthier notably points out the advantages of cooperation between two parties when it comes to the challenge of the [[prisoner's dilemma]]. He proposes that, if two parties were to stick to the original agreed-upon arrangement and morals outlined by the contract, they would both experience an optimal result.<ref name="Iep.utm.edu-2004" /><ref name="stanford1">{{cite web |url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractarianism/#3 |title=Contractarianism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) |publisher=Plato.stanford.edu |access-date=2011-01-20 |archive-date=2011-04-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110429065139/http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractarianism/#3 |url-status=live }}</ref> In his model for the social contract, factors including trust, rationality, and self-interest keep each party honest and dissuade them from breaking the rules.<ref name="Iep.utm.edu-2004" /><ref name="stanford1"/>

===Philip Pettit's ''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]], should be modified. Instead of arguing for explicit consent, which can always be manufactured, Pettit argues that the absence of an effective rebellion against it is a contract's only legitimacy.