Jean-Jacques Rousseau, born in Geneva in 1712, was one of the 18th century’s most important political thinkers. His work focussed on the relationship between human society and the individual, and contributed to the ideas that would lead eventually to the French Revolution.
Although similar ideas can be traced to the Greek Sophists, social-contract theories had their greatest currency in the 17th and 18th centuries and are associated with the
English philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke
and the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Prominent 17th- and 18th-century theorists of social contract and natural rights include Hugo Grotius (1625), Thomas Hobbes (1651), Samuel von Pufendorf (1673), John Locke (
1689
), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762) and Immanuel Kant (1797), each approaching the concept of political authority differently.
The social contract was introduced by early modern thinkers—
Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, Samuel Pufendorf, and John Locke
the most well-known among them—as an account of two things: the historical origins of sovereign power and the moral origins of the principles that make sovereign power just and/or legitimate.
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
attempts to evaluate and show the purpose and value of the organized government by comparing and contrasting the civil society and the state of nature
. It has played a role of identifying the useful government to the western communities and the best state of governance to hold.
The social contract states that
“rational people” should believe in organized government
, and this ideology highly influenced the writers of the Declaration of Independence. that created it, or popular sovereignty. He believed that every citizen was equal in the view of the government.
In simple terms, Locke’s social contract theory says:
government was created through the consent of the people to be ruled by the majority, “(unless they explicitly agree on some number greater than the majority)
,” and that every man once they are of age has the right to either continue under the government they were …
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.
(1) Hobbes’ sovereign is not a party to any contract and has no obligation to protect his citizens’ natural rights. (2) Locke has
two contracts (between citizens and citizens, and between citizens and the government)
in place of Hobbes’ single contract (between citizens to obey the sovereign).
| code of conduct rule of law | societal agreement societal rules |
|---|
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 classic social-contract theorists of the 17th and 18th centuries—Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), John Locke (1632–1704), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78)—held that the
social contract is the means by which civilized society, including government, arises from a historically or logically preexisting condition of
…
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 contact can refer to: In the sociological hierarchy
leading up to social relations
, an incidental social interaction between individuals. In social networks, a node (representing an individual or organization) to which another node is socially.
