Thomas Hobbes – Social Contract

Hobbes infers that humans are necessarily and exclusively self-interested. All men pursue
only what they perceive to be in their own individually considered bests interests – they are being
drawn to that which they desire and repelled by that to which they averse. Everything
we do is motivated solely by the desire to better our own situations, and satisfy as many of our
own, individually considered desires as possible.
Hobbes also argues that human beings are reasonable. They have in them the rational
capacity to pursue their desires as efficiently and maximally as possible. From these
premises of human nature, Hobbes goes on to construct an argument for why we ought to be
willing to submit ourselves to political authority.
According to Hobbes, the justification for political obligation is this: given that men are naturally
self-interested, yet they are rational, they will choose to submit to the authority of a
Sovereign in order to be able to live in a civil society, which is conducive to their own
interests.
In the State of Nature, men are self-interested and are more or less equal to one another (as
even the strongest man can be killed in his sleep). There are limited resources, and there is no
power to able to force men to cooperate.
Given these conditions in the State of Nature, Hobbes conclude that it would be unbearably
brutal where every person is always in fear of losing his life to another. It is the state of
perpetual and unavoidable war.
But because men are also reasonable, they can see their way out of such a state by recognizing
the laws of nature, which shows them the means by which to escape the State of Nature and
create a civil society.
The first and most important law of nature commands that each person are willing to pursue
peace if others are willing to do the same, all while retaining the right to continue to
pursue war if others do not pursue peace. Being reasonable, men can be expected to
construct a Social Contract that will afford them a life different from the one in the State of
Nature.
This contract is constituted by two distinguishable contracts. First, they must agree to
establish society by collectively and reciprocally renouncing the rights they had
against one another in the State of Nature. Second, they must imbue some one person
or assembly of persons with the authority and power to enforce the initial contract.
In other words, to ensure their escape from the State of Nature, they must both agree to live
together under common laws, and create an enforcement mechanism for the social contract and
the laws that constitute it.
After these contracts are established, however, then society becomes possible, and people can be
expected to keep their promises, cooperate with one another, and so on. The Social Contract is the
most fundamental source of all that is good and that which we depend upon to live well. Our
choice is either to abide by the terms of the contract, or return to the State of Nature, which
Hobbes argues no reasonable person could possibly prefer.
John Locke – Consent of the Governed
For Hobbes, the necessity of an absolute authority, in the form of a Sovereign, followed from the
utter brutality of the State of Nature. The State of Nature was completely intolerable, and so
rational men would be willing to submit themselves even to absolute authority in order to escape
it.
According to Locke, the State of Nature, the natural condition of mankind, is a state of perfect and
complete liberty to conduct one's life as one best sees fit, free from the interference of others. This
does not mean, however, that it is a state of license: one is not free to do anything at all one pleases,
or even anything that one judges to be in one’s interest.
The State of Nature, although a state wherein there is no civil authority or government to punish
people for transgressions against laws, is not a state without morality. The State of Nature is
pre-political, but it is not pre-moral.
The Law of Nature, which is on Locke’s view the basis of all morality, and given to us by God,
commands that we not harm others with regards to their "life, health, liberty, or possessions" (par.
6). Because we all belong equally to God, and because we cannot take away that which is rightfully
His, we are prohibited from harming one another.
So, the State of Nature is a state of liberty where persons are free to pursue their own interests
and plans, free from interference, and, because of the Law of Nature and the restrictions that it
imposes upon persons, it is relatively peaceful.
The State of Nature therefore, is not the same as the state of war, as it is according to Hobbes. It
can, however devolve into a state of war, in particular, a state of war over property disputes.
Property plays an essential role in Locke's argument for civil government and the contract that
establishes it. According to Locke, private property is created when a person mixes his labor with
the raw materials of nature. So, for example, when one tills a piece of land in nature, and makes
it into a piece of farmland, which produces food, then one has a claim to own that piece of land
and the food produced upon it
Property is the linchpin of Locke’s argument for the social contract and civil government because
it is the protection of their property, including their property in their own bodies, which men seek
when they decide to abandon the State of Nature.
According to Locke, the State of Nature is not a condition of individuals, as it is for Hobbes.
Rather, it is populated by mothers and fathers with their children, or families - what he calls
"conjugal society" (par. 78). These societies are based on the voluntary agreements to care for
children together, and they are moral but not political.
Political society comes into being when individual men, representing their families, come together
in the State of Nature and agree to each give up the executive power to punish those who
transgress the Law of Nature, and hand over that power to the public power of a government.
Having done this, they then become subject to the will of the majority. In other words, by making
a compact to leave the State of Nature and form society, they make “one body politic under one
government” (par. 97) and submit themselves to the will of that body.
Having created a political society and government through their consent, men then gain three
things which they lacked in the State of Nature: laws, judges to adjudicate laws, and the executive
power necessary to enforce these laws. Each man therefore gives over the power to protect himself
and punish transgressors of the Law of Nature to the government that he has created through the
compact.
Given that the end of "men's uniting into common-wealths"( par. 124) is the preservation of their
wealth, and preserving their lives, liberty, and well-being in general, Locke can easily imagine the
conditions under which the compact with government is destroyed, and men are justified in
resisting the authority of a civil government, such as a King.
When the executive power of a government devolves into tyranny, such as by dissolving the
legislature and therefore denying the people the ability to make laws for their own preservation,
then the resulting tyrant puts himself into a State of Nature, and specifically into a state of war
with the people, and they then have the same right to self-defense as they had before making a
compact to establish society in the first place.
In other words, the justification of the authority of the executive component of government is the
protection of the people’s property and well-being, so when such protection is no longer present,
or when the king becomes a tyrant and acts against the interests of the people, they have a right,
if not an outright obligation, to resist his authority. The social compact can be dissolved and the
process to create political society begun anew.
Because Locke did not envision the State of Nature as grimly as did Hobbes, he can imagine
conditions under which one would be better off rejecting a particular civil government and
returning to the State of Nature, with the aim of constructing a better civil government in its place.
It is therefore both the view of human nature, and the nature of morality itself, which account for
the differences between Hobbes' and Locke’s views of the social contract.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Naturalized and Normative (General Will)

Naturalized Social Contract
Rousseau has two distinct social contract theories. The first is an account of the moral and political
evolution of human beings over time, from a State of Nature to modern society. As such it contains
his naturalized account of the social contract, which he sees as very problematic. The second is
his normative, or idealized theory of the social contract, and is meant to provide the means by
which to alleviate the problems that modern society has created for us, as laid out in the Social
Contract.
In it he describes the historical process by which man began in a State of Nature and over time
‘progressed' into civil society. According to Rousseau, the State of Nature was a peaceful and
quixotic time. People lived solitary, uncomplicated lives. Their few needs were easily satisfied by
nature. Because of the abundance of nature and the small size of the population, competition was
non-existent, and persons rarely even saw one another, much less had reason for conflict or fear.
Moreover, these simple, morally pure persons were naturally endowed with the capacity for pity,
and therefore were not inclined to bring harm to one another.
As time passed, however, humanity faced certain changes. As the overall population increased,
the means by which people could satisfy their needs had to change. People slowly began to live
together in small families, and then in small communities. Divisions of labor were introduced,
both within and between families, and discoveries and inventions made life easier, giving rise to
leisure time.
Most importantly however, according to Rousseau, was the invention of private property, which
constituted the pivotal moment in humanity's evolution out of a simple, pure state into one
characterized by greed, competition, vanity, inequality, and vice. For Rousseau the invention of
property constitutes humanity’s ‘fall from grace’ out of the State of Nature.
Having introduced private property, initial conditions of inequality became more pronounced.
Some have property and others are forced to work for them, and the development of social classes
begins. Eventually, those who have property notice that it would be in their interests to create a
government that would protect private property from those who do not have it but can see that
they might be able to acquire it by force.
So, government gets established, through a contract, which purports to guarantee equality and
protection for all, even though its true purpose is to fossilize the very inequalities that private
property has produced. In other words, the contract, which claims to be in the interests of
everyone equally, is really in the interests of the few who have become stronger and richer as a
result of the developments of private property. This is the naturalized social contract, which
Rousseau views as responsible for the conflict and competition from which modern society
suffers.

Normative Social Contract

The normative social contract, argued for by Rousseau in The Social Contract (1762), is meant to
respond to this sorry state of affairs and to remedy the social and moral ills that have been
produced by the development of society. The distinction between history and justification,
between the factual situation of mankind and how it ought to live together, is of the utmost
importance to Rousseau. While we ought not to ignore history, nor ignore the causes of the
problems we face, we must resolve those problems through our capacity to choose how we ought
to live. Might never makes right, despite how often it pretends that it can.
Humans are essentially free, and were free in the State of Nature, but the ‘progress' of civilization
has substituted subservience to others for that freedom, through dependence, economic and
social inequalities, and the extent to which we judge ourselves through comparisons with others.
Since a return to the State of Nature is neither feasible nor desirable, the purpose of politics is to
restore freedom to us, thereby reconciling who we truly and essentially are with how we live
together.
Since a return to the State of Nature is neither feasible nor desirable, the purpose of politics is to
restore freedom to us, thereby reconciling who we truly and essentially are with how we live
together. So, this is the fundamental philosophical problem that The Social Contract seeks to
address: 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, particular wills to the collective
or general will, created through agreement with other free and equal persons. 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.
Through the collective renunciation of the individual rights and freedom that one has in the State
of Nature, and the transfer of these rights to the collective body, a new ‘person', as it were, is
formed. The sovereign is thus formed when free and equal persons come together and agree to
create themselves anew as a single body, directed to the good of all considered together.
So, just as individual wills are directed towards individual interests, the general will, once formed,
is directed towards the common good, understood and agreed to collectively. Included in this
version of the social contract is the idea of reciprocated duties: the sovereign is committed to the
good of the individuals who constitute it, and each individual is likewise committed to the good
of the whole. Given this, individuals cannot be given liberty to decide whether it is in their own
interests to fulfill their duties to the Sovereign, while at the same time being allowed to reap the
benefits of citizenship. They must be made to conform themselves to the general will, they must
be “forced to be free” (64).
One cannot transfer one's will to another, to do with as he or she sees fit, as one does in
representative democracies. Rather, the general will depends on the coming together periodically
of the entire democratic body, each and every citizen, to decide collectively, and with at least near
unanimity, how to live together, i.e., what laws to enact
Rousseau's social contract theories together form a single, consistent view of our moral and
political situation. We are endowed with freedom and equality by nature, but our nature has been
corrupted by our contingent social history. We can overcome this corruption, however, by
invoking our free will to reconstitute ourselves politically, along strongly democratic principles,
which is good for us, both individually and collectively.