According to Hobbes (Leviathan, 1651), the state of nature was one in which there were no enforceable criteria of right and wrong. … The
social contract allows individuals to leave the state of nature and enter civil society
, but the former remains a threat and returns as soon as governmental power collapses.
The starting point for most social contract theories is
an examination of the human condition absent of any political order
(termed the “state of nature” by Thomas Hobbes). In this condition, individuals’ actions are bound only by their personal power and conscience.
The state of nature, in moral and political philosophy, religion, social contract theories and international law, is the hypothetical
life of people
before societies came into existence.
Locke used the
claim that men are naturally free and equal as part of
the justification for understanding legitimate political government as the result of a social contract where people in the state of nature conditionally transfer some of their rights to the government in order to better ensure the stable, comfortable …
First, Locke argued that natural rights such as life, liberty, and property existed in the state of nature. … Locke also
disagreed with Hobbes
about the social contract. For him, it was not just an agreement among the people, but between them and the sovereign (preferably a king).
Locke pleaded for
a constitutionally limited government
. The nineteenth century doctrine of laissez faire was the result of individual’s freedom in matters relating to economic activities which found support in Locke’s theory. Unlike Hobbes who supported State authority, Locke pleaded for the individual liberty.
The social contract is unwritten, and is inherited at birth. It dictates that we will not break laws or certain moral codes and, in exchange, we reap the benefits of our society, namely security, survival, education and other necessities needed to live.
Social contracts can be explicit,
such as laws, or implicit
, such as raising one’s hand in class to speak. The U.S. Constitution is often cited as an explicit example of part of America’s social contract. It sets out what the government can and cannot do.
The State of Nature, Equality, and Liberty
.
social contract, in political philosophy,
an actual or hypothetical compact, or agreement, between the ruled or between the ruled and their rulers, defining the rights and duties of each
. … They then, by exercising natural reason, formed a society (and a government) by means of a social contract.
What are the two contracts mentioned by John Locke?
People made two contracts, namely
social and political contracts
. The Social Contract was made between the people themselves. They surrendered only some of their rights- the right of interpreting and enforcing the law of nature. It was only a limited surrender and not a complete surrender of their rights.
Social Contract. John Locke’s idea. It was
an agreement which had a purpose that the government is to protect the people’s natural rights in exchange for that protection
, the people give up their less important freedoms. You just studied 4 terms! 1/4.
What government did John Locke believe in?
Locke favored
a representative government such as the English Parliament
, which had a hereditary House of Lords and an elected House of Commons. But he wanted representatives to be only men of property and business. Consequently, only adult male property owners should have the right to vote.
Hobbes was one of the earliest western philosophers to count women as persons when devising a social contract among persons.
He insists on the equality of all people, very explicitly including women
. People are equal because they are all subject to domination, and all potentially capable of dominating others.
How did the social contract theory justify the American Revolution?
Locke believed that people were born free and equal. They established a government, formed by a social contract, only to protect the rights that they already had in the state of nature
.
The Social Contract — as espoused by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean Jacque Rousseau, as three dynamic thinkers, and also by a few other modern philosophical thinkers — is
a convention between men that aims to discard the proverbial “State of Nature”, whereby people are to live without government or written laws
.
