Social Contract Theory

Ask Not What You Should Do For Your Country. Ask What Your Country Should Do For You.

Social Contract Theory

• The Social Contract is a theory that explains why governments were created and why people join into a society.

Social Contract Theory

• Before society we were in the State of Nature.

• An individual dictated what he/she could/could not do.

• Survival of the Fittest• Murder Example…

Social Contract Theory

• When we came into contact with other people we entered a Society.

• When we created government we entered a Social Contract.

• If you are born into a governmental system you are born into the Social Contract.

Philosophers

• Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)• John Locke (1632-1704)• Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

Thomas Hobbes

• Believed that life in the state of nature is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"

• His most famous work is Leviathan.

Thomas Hobbes• Believed that humans are inherently bad

because everyone is self-interested.• Hobbs felt it was best to submit to the will of a

Sovereign without question.

Thomas Hobbes

• Man entered into government for Safety.

• The main role of government is to protect its citizens.

• Rights and liberty always come after safety and protection.

• Never overthrow the government because doing so creates anarchy and then there is no safety.

John Locke

• Wrote Two Treatises on Government.• The first treatise is concerned almost

exclusively with refuting the argument of Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, that political authority was derived from religious authority, also known by the description of the Divine Right of Kings.

• The second treatise contains Locke’s own constructive view of the aims and justification for civil government.

John Locke

• Believed that people entered into society to protect their “life, liberty, and property”.

• Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, admired Locke.

John Locke

• The government’s main job is to protect the citizen’s property.

• If they government is not providing you with protection for your property you have the right to revolt.

• Justified the American Revolution

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• "Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.“

• His most famous works are Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men (AKA The Second Discourse) & The Social Contract.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau• Believed that humans are

born inherently good. He coined the term “Nobel Savage”.

• However, once the idea of private property was introduced mankind experienced a “fall from grace”.

• Individuals with many possessions saw that it would be in their best interest to create a government to protect their possessions.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau• How can we be free and live together?

Or, put another way, how can we live together without succumbing to the force and coercion of others?

• We can do so, Rousseau maintains, by submitting our individual wills to the collective or general will, created through agreement with other free and equal persons.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau• All men are made by

nature to be equals, therefore no one has a natural right to govern others, and therefore the only justified authority is the authority that is generated out of agreements or covenants.

• Rousseau advocates the strictest form of Direct Democracy.

Social Contract Theory

• Essentially, Social Contract Theory is about protection – protection of oneself or protection of one’s property. Without that inherent human need government would not exist.