Jean-Jacques Rousseau is famous for reconceiving the social contract as
a compact between the individual and a collective “
general will” aimed at the common good and reflected in the laws of an ideal state and for maintaining that existing society rests on a false social contract that perpetuates inequality and rule by …
In Du Contrat social (1762; The Social Contract), Rousseau argued that
freedom and authority are not contradictory
, since legitimate laws are founded on the general will of the citizens. … In obeying the law, the individual citizen is thus only obeying himself as a member of the political community.
Rousseau’s central argument in The Social Contract is
that government attains its right to exist and to govern by “the consent of the governed
.” Today this may not seem too extreme an idea, but it was a radical position when The Social Contract was published.
Social contract theory says that
people live together in society in accordance with an agreement that establishes moral and political rules of behavior
. Some people believe that if we live according to a social contract, we can live morally by our own choice and not because a divine being requires it.
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.
The main idea of Rousseau’s famous work ‘Social Contract’ was
each member would have one vote which would have one value each
. This was one of the democratic principles put forward by philosophers like Rousseau in his book The Social Contract.
The social contract is an implicit agreement among self-interested, rational agents. This seems to imply we have no duties to beings who are not able to participate (even implicitly) in the contract. Examples:
nonhuman animals, those with mental disabilities
.
Rousseau concluded that
the social contract was not a willing agreement
, as Hobbes, Locke, and Montesquieu had believed, but a fraud against the people committed by the rich. In 1762, Rousseau published his most important work on political theory, The Social Contract.
The Social Contract helped
inspire political reforms or revolutions in Europe
, especially in France. … The Social Contract argued against the idea that monarchs were divinely empowered to legislate. Rousseau asserts that only the people, who are sovereign, have that all-powerful right.
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.
Thus, three stages described by Rousseau, are investigated: (a) the state of nature, where man is free and independent, (b) society, in which man is oppressed and dependent on others, and
(c) the state under the Social Contract, in which, ironically, man becomes free through obligation; he is only independent through
…
social contract.
the agreement by which people define and limit their individual rights
, thus creating an organized society or government. Natural Rights. the idea that all humans are born with rights, which include the right to life, liberty, and property.
Social Contract Theory.
The authority to rule is granted to the government by the people who make a contract with the government
. Each side has obligations which must be met for the contract to be valid. Thomas Hobbes.
A social contract is
an unofficial agreement shared by everyone in a society in which they give up some freedom for security
. … As members of a society, we agree to the social contract — we cooperate with each other and obey society’s laws. We also give up some freedoms, because we want the protection society can offer.
The relation between natural and legal rights is often a topic of social contract theory. The term takes its name from The Social Contract (French: Du contrat social ou Principes du droit politique), a 1762 book by
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
that discussed this concept.
| code of conduct rule of law | societal agreement societal rules |
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