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Social Contract Essay

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Every human being in a society has to go through certain development phases in our live. Each phases has their own contract that we need to prevail as our live moves from one stage to another. During childhood, men are bind to the filial contract with their parents and siblings as the contract is established during the bonding moment . At this stage, the terms of the contract is that the child will give the parents certain enjoyments that come with parenthood and as in return, the children will receive the parents’ love, guidance and support. As the child grows, he then will meet a larger society, which consists of other individuals with different ideologies and beliefs. And in order for these individuals to live in peace, they will have to bind themselves to the next contract, which is social contract. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, social contract is an agreement among the people in a society or between a group and its leader that defines and limits the rights and duties of each. Meanwhile from the legal perspective, Merriam-Webster defined social contract as “an actual or hypothetical agreement among individuals forming an organized society or between the community and the ruler that defines and limits the rights and duties of each”. On the other hand, social contract in …show more content…

They are so self-interest that they could harm other people up to the extend of killing each other. Therefore, social contract was introduced in order for men to escape the state of nature and unites as a civil society. Hobbes argues that since men are naturally self-interested, yet rational, they will submit themselves to the Sovereign’s authority in order to be able to live in an organized and peaceful society (Hobbes, 1651). Hobbes believes that society become possible because there is a superior and powerful person to force men to

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According to Hobbes, a sovereign, whether the sovereign was placed into power by violence or force, is the only way to secure law and order. For him, if a citizen obeys the sovereign for fear of punishment or in the fear of the state of nature, it is the choice of the citizen. According to Hobbes, this is not tyranny; it is his idea of a society that is successful, one that does not have room for democracy. As a realist, Hobbes has a fierce distrust of democracy and viewed all of mankind in a restless desire for power. If the people are given power, law and order would crumble in Hobbes’ eyes.

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Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Discourse on Inequality and Social Contract each attempt to explain the rise of and prescribe the proper management of human society. At the foundation of both philosophies is the principle that humans are asocial by nature, a precept each philosopher interprets and approaches in a different way. Hobbes states that nature made humans relatively “equal,” and that “every man is enemy to every man.” Life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” he says, and “every man has right to everything.” Rousseau outlines primitive asocial man having “everything necessary for him to live in the state of nature” from “instinct alone,” and being “neither good nor evil.”

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There were many philosophers in the 17th and 18th century that influenced and inspired the founders of our country. For instance, John Locke believed that life, liberty, and property should be our natural rights as humans and if the government could not secure these rights then the people could get rid of them. That idea impacted Thomas Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. This was the perfect time to develop different theories and contradictions because this was right around the time of the printing press and protestant reformation where people started to question the catholic church. Other philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau impacted founders like George Washington and James Madison who have positively affected this country in many different ways.

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Both social contract philosophers defended different views about moral and political obligations of men living in the state of nature stripped of their social characters. The state of nature illustrates how human beings acted prior to entering into civil society and becoming social beings living under common legitimacy. The state of nature is to be illustrated as a hypothetical device to explain political importance in the society. Thomas Hobbes, propounded politics and morality in his concept of the state

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Locke suggested that the nature of humans is in fact not competitive but rather social and cooperative (p. 14). Locke portrayed a much more positive view on society than did Hobbes. However despite differences in opinions Locke’s theory, like Hobbes’s was based on the rights of individuals and the need to curtail the powers of the sovereign (p.14). In contrary to Hobbes “Locke postulated that individuals were in a “State of perfect Freedom” and a “State also of Equality” before the formation of the state” (p. 14), this freedom and equity is then transferred into society.

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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. I believe that thanks to the social contract we created justice and established what is moral and immoral for the whole society and not only on what we think could be moral or immoral. This topic may be controversial for some people because they will probably think that even though the social contract was created to be equal for all people there are some things until today that does not apply for all. But for me that is not a strong reason to do not believe in the Social contract I strongly believe in this theory because this is what makes a civil society with justice and morality. A philosopher Stuart Rachels suggests that, “ morality is the set of rules governing behavior that rational people accept, on the condition that others accept them too”.

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Summary Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) theory of social contract, which states that we need moral, legal rules because we want to escape the state of nature which is solitary, poor, brutal, nasty, and short. In this state, a man can kill others, and there are limited resources. This can soon lead to a state of war in which we are constantly disposed to harm others to achieve our goals. So, in this state of war if a person was to possess a beautiful house or property, and had all the comforts, luxuries, and amenities to lead a wonderful life; others could come and harm him and deprive him of his fruit of labor, life, and liberty. Therefore, the state of nature is that of fear, violence, and distrust.

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While Hobbes also states that the human nature does not allow for the people to live in peace and to pursue common goals since “here are very many that think themselves wiser and abler to govern the public better than the rest” (Hobbes 3). respectively, there always exists the notion of competition, and if there is no possibility to reach consensus over the issue, there is the need for establishing an authority. This is the reflection of the social contract idea in the work by Hobbes as far as the author is concerned that only through common action and goals the society is able to function without problems and conflicts. Nevertheless, even though, in contrast to Machiavelli, Hobbes suggests the way of getting power that is based on agreement rather than on power and intellectual games, their ideas regarding the need for a strong ruler who would be able to establish the order in the society is rather similar, even though in one case this task is taken by a person himself and in the other case delivered by the

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Hobbes holds that “it is impossible to subjugate a man without first having placed him in the position of being unable to do without another.” Thus, the lack of organizational interdependence in primitive society prevents inequality. Similarly, the lawlessness of early society makes conflict impossible: war “can exist neither in the state of nature, where there is no stable property.”

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Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau have become known as three of the most prominent political theorists in the world today. Their philosophies and innovative thinking is known worldwide and it has influenced the creation of numerous new governments. All three thinkers agree on the idea of a social contract but their opinions differ on how the social contract is established and implemented within each society. These philosophers state, that in order for the social contract to be successful people need to give up certain freedoms in order to secure fundamental protections from the state, henceforth the state then has certain responsibilities to their citizens. Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau all believe that before men were governed we all lived in a state of nature.

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Furthermore, famous philosophers found several flaws in his plan. Thomas Hobbes argued that if society were on the basis of natural law, society would develop an “every man for himself” mentality, causing

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