Social Contract Theory

While there has been a revival of interest in the “social contract,” the idea is a very ancient one, with more than a nod given to it in Plato's Republic and in the writings of Epicurus, for example, and then again in a great explosion in the 17th and 18th centuries. We also encounter considerable variation, and controversy, in the idea: first, in what it is an idea about, and second, in just what the “contractual” element is supposed to consist.

Regarding the first point, the two main options are (1) that it should be exclusively a theory of politics in particular or (2) that it should be more generally a theory about moral relations in society as a whole. In the first view, people agree on how they shall be governed by some institutional system of people occupying positions of political power. In the second, however, no one is the “governor”; rather, we agree on a set of principles by which we will regulate our interactions. In effect, the second views the social contract device as a means of grounding, and supplying substance to, morality.

How different are the two interpretations in this respect? It is difficult to see why we would agree on who would govern us or in what form if we did not also have in mind certain general principles that we expected those forms to exemplify, uphold, or be constrained by. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1676), the first and widely considered to be the greatest of the early modern contractarians, argued that in the absence of government we would all be abjectly miserable, as well as very short-lived, and that the cure for this was to identify some person or small group of people to whom we would turn over our independent liberty of action, thus authorizing a force powerful enough to “overawe” any subgroup of troublemakers and enable people in society to get on with their various projects. That the resulting rulers might prove to be dictators [Page 1949]with motives very contrary to what we might like does not seem to have worried him overly. But in light of the 20th century with its Stalins, Hitlers, and Maos, we are all worried about that. And Hobbes, in fact, did supply a remarkably interesting principle: his “first law of nature,” which he elaborated into a set of “Laws of Nature” that he supposed the “leviathan” created by social contract would actually fairly well adhere to and enforce among the rest of us as well.

The Hobbesian first law of nature advises us that everyone is to seek peace, as far as possible, and when one cannot get it, then and only then may one proceed to use the methods of war. This powerful idea is closely echoed by most of his successors, including Locke, Kant, and John Stuart Mill. War, reasoned Hobbes, was the problem; peace, therefore, is the solution. War is the problem in the specific sense that if people spend their time and energies fighting, they will be unable to achieve the benefits of cooperation: industry, learning, navigation, agriculture, commodious buildings, arts, letters, or society.

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