Social contract

Social contract formulations are preserved in many of the world's oldest records.^[6] The Indian Buddhist text of the second century BC Mahāvastu recounts the legend of Mahasammata. The story goes as follows:

In the early days of the cosmic cycle mankind lived on an immaterial plane, dancing on air in a sort of fairyland, where there was no need of food or clothing, and no private property, family, government or laws. Then gradually the process of cosmic decay began its work, and mankind became earthbound, and felt the need of food and shelter. As men lost their primeval glory, distinctions of class arose, and they entered into agreements with one another, accepting the institution of private property and the family. With this theft, murder, adultery, and other crime began, and so the people met together and decided to appoint one man from among them to maintain order in return for a share of the produce of their fields and herds. He was called "the Great Chosen One" (Mahasammata), and he received the title of raja because he pleased the people.^[7]

In his Rock Edicts, the Indian Buddhist king Asoka was said to have argued for a broad and far-reaching social contract. The Buddhist Vinaya also reflects social contracts expected of the monks; one such instance is when the people of a certain town complained about monks felling saka trees, the Buddha tells his monks that they must stop and give way to social norms.

In Western philosophy, the concept of the social contract was originally posed by Glaucon, as described by Plato in The Republic, Book II.

They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil; but that the evil is greater than the good. And so when men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice;—it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil, and honoured by reason of the inability of men to do injustice. For no man who is worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such an agreement if he were able to resist; he would be mad if he did. Such is the received account, Socrates, of the nature and origin of justice.^[8]

The social contract theory also appears in Crito, another dialogue from Plato.

Epicurus in the fourth century BC seemed to have had a strong sense of social contract, with justice and law being rooted in mutual agreement and advantage, as evidenced by these lines, among others, from his Principal Doctrines (see also Epicurean ethics):

31. Natural justice is a pledge of reciprocal benefit, to prevent one man from harming or being harmed by another.

32. Those animals which are incapable of making binding agreements with one another not to inflict nor suffer harm are without either justice or injustice; and likewise for those peoples who either could not or would not form binding agreements not to inflict nor suffer harm.

33. There never was such a thing as absolute justice, but only agreements made in mutual dealings among men in whatever places at various times providing against the infliction or suffering of harm.^[9]

Quentin Skinner has argued that several critical modern innovations in contract theory are found in the writings from French Calvinists and Huguenots, whose work in turn was invoked by writers in the Low Countries who objected to their subjection to Spain and, later still, by Catholics in England.^[10]Francisco Suárez (1548–1617), from the School of Salamanca, might be considered an early theorist of the social contract, theorizing natural law in an attempt to limit the divine right of absolute monarchy. All of these groups were led to articulate notions of popular sovereignty by means of a social covenant or contract, and all of these arguments began with proto-"state of nature" arguments, to the effect that the basis of politics is that everyone is by nature free of subjection to any government.

These arguments, however, relied on a corporatist theory found in Roman law, according to which "a populus" can exist as a distinct legal entity. Thus, these arguments held that a group of people can join a government because it has the capacity to exercise a single will and make decisions with a single voice in the absence of sovereign authority—a notion rejected by Hobbes and later contract theorists.

The first modern philosopher to articulate a detailed contract theory was Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679). According to Hobbes, the lives of individuals in the state of nature were "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short", a state in which self-interest and the absence of reliably protected rights and contracts prevented the "social", or society. Life was "anarchic" (without rulers or the concept of sovereignty). Individuals in the state of nature were apolitical and asocial. This state of nature is followed by the social contract.

The social contract was seen as an "occurrence" during which individuals came together and ceded some of their individual rights so that others would cede theirs.^[11] This resulted in the establishment of the state—a sovereign entity like the individuals (now under its rule) used to be, which would create laws to regulate social interactions. Human life was thus no longer "a war of all against all". Notably, this theory features the ability of individuals to irrevocably relinquish their rights, even to a state which has absolute authority over life and death. How one could be said to do so "freely" while in the state of nature, i.e. under actual or potential duress, is not fully worked out by Hobbes or other social contract theorists (cf. "inalienable rights" in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, with marked Lockean influence, wherein rights are characterized as God-given and merely guaranteed or protected by the state. For a right to be "inalienable" arguably precludes its being given up under some or all circumstances by a rational autonomous agent bearing or possessing those rights as social contract theories require).

The state system, which grew out of the social contract, was, however, also anarchic (without rulers). Just as the individuals in the state of nature had been sovereign and thus guided by self-interest and the absence of rights, so states now acted in their self-interest in competition with each other. Just like the state of nature, states were thus bound to be in conflict because there was no sovereign over and above the state (more powerful) capable of imposing some system such as social-contract laws on everyone by force. Indeed, Hobbes' work helped to serve as a basis for the realism theories of international relations which consider the basic unit of analysis to be states with no overarching higher authority (akin to the "anarchy" of Hobbes' state of nature), advanced by E. H. Carr and Hans Morgenthau. Hobbes wrote in Leviathan that humans ("we") need the "terrour of some Power" otherwise humans will not heed the law of reciprocity, "(in summe) doing to others, as wee would be done to".^[12]

John Locke's conception of the social contract differed from Hobbes' in several fundamental ways, retaining only the central notion that individuals in a state of nature would willingly come together to form a state. Locke believed that individuals in a state of nature would be bound morally, by the Law of Nature, in which man has the "power... to preserve his property; that is, his life, liberty and estate against the injuries and attempts of other men". Without government to defend them against those seeking to injure or enslave them, Locke further believed people would have no security in their rights and would live in fear. Individuals, to Locke, would only agree to form a state that would provide, in part, a "neutral judge", acting to protect the lives, liberty, and property of those who lived within it.^[13][14]

While Hobbes argued for near-absolute authority, Locke argued for inviolate freedom under law in his Second Treatise of Government. Locke argued that a government's legitimacy comes from the citizens' delegation to the government of their absolute right of violence (reserving the inalienable right of self-defense or "self-preservation"), along with elements of other rights (e.g. property will be liable to taxation) as necessary to achieve the goal of security through granting the state a monopoly of violence, whereby the government, as an impartial judge, may use the collective force of the populace to administer and enforce the law, rather than each man acting as his own judge, jury, and executioner—the condition in the state of nature.^[15]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), in his influential 1762 treatise The Social Contract, outlined a different version of social-contract theory, as the foundations of society based on the sovereignty of the "general will".

Rousseau's political theory differs in important ways from that of Locke and Hobbes. Rousseau's collectivist conception is most evident in his development of the "luminous conception" (which he credited to Denis Diderot) of the "general will". Summarised, the "general will" is the power of all the citizens' collective interest—not to be confused with their individual interests.

Although Rousseau wrote that the British were perhaps at the time the freest people on earth, he did not approve of their representative government, nor any form of representative government. Rousseau believed that society was only legitimate when the sovereign (i.e. the "general will") were the sole legislators. He also stated that the individual must accept "the total alienation to the whole community of each associate with all his rights".^[16] In short, Rousseau meant that in order for the social contract to work, individuals must forfeit their rights to the whole so that such conditions were "equal for all".^[17]

[The social contract] can be reduced to the following terms: Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will; and in a body, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.^[18]

Rousseau's other writings assert that his striking phrase that man must "be forced to be free"^[19] should be understood this way: since the indivisible and inalienable popular sovereignty decides what is good for the whole, if an individual rejects this "civil liberty"^[20] in place of "natural liberty"^[20] and self interest, disobeying the law, he will be forced to listen to what was decided when the people acted as a collective (as citizens). Thus the law, inasmuch as it is created by the people acting as a body, is not a limitation of individual freedom, but rather its expression. The individual, as a citizen, explicitly agreed to be constrained if, as a private individual, he did not respect his own will as formulated in the general will.

Because laws represent the restraint of "natural liberty",^[20] they represent the leap made from humans in the state of nature into civil society. In this sense, the law is a civilizing force. Therefore, Rousseau believed that the laws that govern a people help to mould their character.

Rousseau also analyses the social contract in terms of risk management,^[21] thus suggesting the origins of the state as a form of mutual insurance.

ルソーの社会契約論は人民主権に基づくものであり、個人主権に基づくものではないが、個人主義者、自由主義者、無政府主義者によって提唱されている他の理論では、消極的権利以外のいかなるものにも同意する必要はなく、国家が存在するとしても限定的なものにとどまる。

ピエール＝ジョゼフ・プルードン（1809年～1865年）は、個人が他者に主権を譲り渡すことを伴わない社会契約の概念を提唱した。彼によれば、社会契約は個人と国家の間ではなく、互いに強制したり支配したりすることを控え、各個人が自分自身に対して完全な主権を維持する個人間の契約である。

社会契約とは一体何でしょうか？市民と政府との合意でしょうか？いいえ、それはルソーの思想の延長線上にあるにすぎません。社会契約とは、人間と人間との合意であり、そこから私たちが社会と呼ぶものが必然的に生じる合意です。この中で、交換という原始的な事実によって最初に提示された交換的正義の概念が、分配的正義の概念に取って代わられます。契約、交換的正義といった法律の言語をビジネスの言葉に翻訳すると、商業、つまり最も重要な意味において、人間と人間が本質的に生産者であることを宣言し、互いを支配しようとするあらゆる主張を放棄する行為が得られます。

イマヌエル・カントの国家に対する制限の前提に基づく研究^{[ 22 ]}を基盤として、ジョン・ロールズ（1921-2002）は『正義論』 （1971）において、仮想的な「原初状態」にある合理的な人々が「無知のベール」の下で個々の好みや能力を脇に置き、正義と法組織の特定の一般原則に同意するという契約論的アプローチを提案した。この考え方は、公平性の概念をゲーム理論的に形式化するためにも用いられている。

David Gauthier's "neo-Hobbesian" theory argues that cooperation between two independent and self-interested parties is indeed possible, especially when it comes to understanding morality and politics.^[23] Gauthier notably points out the advantages of cooperation between two parties when it comes to the challenge of the prisoner's dilemma. He proposes that, if two parties were to stick to the original agreed-upon arrangement and morals outlined by the contract, they would both experience an optimal result.^[23][24] In his model for the social contract, factors including trust, rationality, and self-interest keep each party honest and dissuade them from breaking the rules.^[23][24]

Philip Pettit (b. 1945) has argued, in Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (1997), that the theory of social contract, classically based on the consent of the governed, should be modified. Instead of arguing for explicit consent, which can always be manufactured, Pettit argues that the absence of an effective rebellion against it is a contract's only legitimacy.

Rousseau argued that societal laws are upheld by the collective will of the citizens whom they represent. Thus, in obeying laws, the citizen "remains free." Within elections, the will of the establishment is the will of the collective. Barring corruption, the legitimacy of the democratic government is absolute.^[25]

In every real democracy, magistracy is not an advantage, but a burdensome charge which cannot justly be imposed on one individual rather than another. The law alone can lay the charge on him on whom the lot falls. For, the conditions being then the same for all, and the choice not depending on any human will, there is no particular application to alter the universality of the law.

According to other social contract theorists, when the government fails to secure their natural rights (Locke) or satisfy the best interests of society, citizens can withdraw their obligation to obey or change the leadership through elections or other means including, when necessary, violence. Locke believed that natural rights were inalienable, and therefore the rule of God superseded government authority, while Rousseau believed that democracy (majority-rule) was the best way to ensure welfare while maintaining individual freedom under the rule of law. The Lockean concept of the social contract was invoked in the United States Declaration of Independence.^[27]

The social contract can be used as a theoretical object to analyse the capacity for a population to accept change, upon which the change exerts 'pressure'. In an analysis of the consequences of the Gulf Cooperation Council states changing energy prices, the social contract defines the capacity for change. Higher energy prices for resident households can have an adverse impact, meaning that the consent of the participants in the contract needs to be maintained, because before energy price increases, prices for residents were kept low by charging higher prices for exported oil.^[28]

Locke’s idea that everyone has the right to 'life, liberty, and property' inspired the founding document. The Declaration posits, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”^[29]. The terms ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ reflect the ideas of John Locke, who argued for human beings’ natural rights to ‘life, liberty, and property.’ In The Second Treatise of Government, Locke has asserted that “the state of Nature (...) teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions^[30]. Since the “state of nature,” which largely means the condition in which humans used to live before civilization^[31], teaches humans to learn that all were born “equal and independent,” Locke emphasizes the inherent equality that exists among human beings, which is reflected in the Declaration's idea that "all men are created equal." Furthermore, Locke argued that men “have rights to life, (...) liberty, or possessions” and that “no one ought to harm another” in these rights. Since the rights to ‘life’ and ‘liberty,’ which constitute two of the three essential rights protected under the social contract, are repeated in the Declaration, Locke’s idea on the natural rights of human beings proves to be influential. As the John Locke Foundation, an independent and nonprofit think tank, establishes, "Locke’s influence can be seen throughout the Declaration of Independence" through the phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” ^[32]

Locke’s idea of ‘the right to revolt’ was also influential. The Declaration posits that, when the natural rights of human beings are violated under the social contract, “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government”^[33]. The usage of the word “right” not only shows how people should be allowed to revolt, but have a moral obligation to overthrow a tyrannical government. In a similar vein, Locke posited that people have ‘the right to revolt’ when their natural rights are violated. According to the philosopher, “Whenever the legislators endeavour to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience” and gain the “right to resume their original liberty”^[30]. In short, if a government becomes tyrannical, such as by infringing on people’s right to property or on their freedoms, its constituents gain the freedom to overthrow the government at will. This aligns closely with the Declaration’s assertion that people gain the right to “abolish” and to “institute” a new government, showing another way in which Locke's ideas pertaining to the social contract intellectually inspired the Declaration^[33].

Thomas Jefferson, one of the main authors of the Declaration, wrote in a 1825 letter that “Locke,” along with figures such as “Aristotle, Cicero, (...) [and] Sidney,” served as great intellectual foundations for the Declaration, as the text’s “authority rests then on the harmonising sentiments” of such writers^[34]. An explicit mention of Locke’s name, adding to the letter’s admission that his influence proved to be significant in serving as an inspiration for the text, further strengthens the claim that Locke's ideas, particularly those pertaining to the social contract, inspired the Declaration.

An early critic of social contract theory was Rousseau's friend the philosopher David Hume, who in 1742 published an essay "Of Civil Liberty". The second part of this essay, entitled "Of the Original Contract",^[35] stresses that the concept of a "social contract" is a convenient fiction:

現代において、いかなる政党も、政治的あるいは実践的な原則に付随する哲学的あるいは思弁的な原則体系なしには、自らを十分に支えることはできない。したがって、この国を分裂させている各派閥は、自らが追求する行動計画を保護し隠蔽するために、前者の種類の組織を構築してきたことがわかる。…一方（絶対的かつ神聖的な王権の擁護者、すなわちトーリー党）は、政府を神にまで遡って考えることで、政府を非常に神聖で不可侵なものにしようと努め、たとえどれほど専制的になったとしても、それをほんの些細なことでも侵害したり侵したりすることは、冒涜に等しい行為となるようにしている。もう一方の政党（ホイッグ党、あるいは立憲君主制の信奉者）は、政府を国民の同意に基づいて完全に設立することで、臣民が特定の目的のために自発的に委ねた権力によって不利益を被った場合にはいつでも、君主に抵抗する権利を暗黙のうちに留保するという、一種の原初的な契約が存在すると考えている。

ヒュームは、統治される者の同意こそが政府の理想的な基盤であると主張したが、実際には一般的にそのような形で実現されてはいないと述べた。

ここで私が意図しているのは、国民の同意が正当な統治の基盤の一つとして認められるべきであるという事実を否定することではありません。国民の同意は、あらゆる基盤の中で最も優れ、最も神聖なものであることは間違いありません。私が主張するのは、国民の同意が何らかの形で、あるいは完全にその地位を占めたことは極めて稀であり、ほとんど一度もなかったということです。したがって、他の統治の基盤も認められるべきであると私は考えています。

The legal scholar Randy Barnett has argued^[36] that, while presence in the territory of a society may be necessary for consent, this does not constitute consent to all rules the society might make regardless of their content. A second condition of consent is that the rules be consistent with underlying principles of justice and the protection of natural and social rights, and have procedures for effective protection of those rights (or liberties). This has also been discussed by O. A. Brownson,^[37] who argued that, in a sense, three "constitutions" are involved: first, the constitution of nature that includes all of what the Founders called "natural law"; second, the constitution of society, an unwritten and commonly understood set of rules for the society formed by a social contract before it establishes a government, by which it does establish the third, a constitution of government. To consent, a necessary condition is that the rules be constitutional in that sense.

The theory of a tacit social contract holds that by remaining in the territory controlled by some society, which usually has a government, people give consent to join that society and be governed by its government if any. This consent is what gives legitimacy to such a government.

Other writers have argued that consent to join the society is not necessarily consent to its government. For that, the government must be set up according to a constitution of government that is consistent with the superior unwritten constitutions of nature and society.^[38]

The theory of an implicit social contract also goes under the principles of explicit consent.^[39] The main difference between tacit consent and explicit consent is that explicit consent is meant to leave no room for misinterpretation. Moreover, you should directly state what it is that you want and the person has to respond in a concise manner that either confirms or denies the proposition.

According to the will theory of contract, a contract is not presumed valid unless all parties voluntarily agree to it, either tacitly or explicitly, without coercion. Lysander Spooner, a 19th-century lawyer who argued before the Supreme Court of the United States and a staunch supporter of a right of contract between individuals, argued in his essay No Treason that a supposed social contract cannot be used to justify governmental actions such as taxation because government will initiate force against anyone who does not wish to enter into such a contract. As a result, he maintains that such an agreement is not voluntary and therefore cannot be considered a legitimate contract at all. As an abolitionist, he made similar arguments about the unconstitutionality of slavery in the US.

Joseph Kary asserts that Modern Anglo-American law, like European civil law, is based on a will theory of contract, according to which all terms of a contract are binding on the parties because they chose those terms for themselves. This was less true when Hobbes wrote Leviathan; at that time more importance was attached to consideration (meaning a mutual exchange of benefits necessary to the formation of a valid contract) and most contracts had implicit terms that arose from the nature of the contractual relationship rather than from the choices made by the parties. Accordingly, it has been argued that social contract theory is more consistent with the contract law of the time of Hobbes and Locke than with the contract law of the present time and that certain features in the social contract which seem anomalous, such as the belief that people are bound by a contract formulated by their distant ancestors, would not have seemed as strange to Hobbes' contemporaries as they do to people today.^[40]

In their book Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy, the philosopher Karl Widerquist and anthropologist Grant McCall criticise social contract theory on the grounds that not all individuals are better off than they could reasonably expect to be in the state of nature, thereby removing the justification for giving up liberty in exchange for welfare.^[41]