Essay About Social Contract Theory And State Of Nature

The Social Contract Theory: Hobbes V. Rousseauan Analysis
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The term social contract describes a broad class of philosophical theories whosesubject is the implied agreements by which people form nations and maintain a socialorder. In laymens terms this means that the people give up some of their rights to agovernment in order to receive protection and social order. Social contract theory provides the rationale behind the historically important notion that legitimate stateauthority must be derived from the consent of the governed. The starting point for mostof these theories is an heuristic examination of the human condition absent any socialorder, termed the “state of nature” or “natural state”. In this state of being, an individualsaction is bound only by his or her conscience. From this common starting point, thevarious features of social contract theory attempt to explain, in different ways, why it is inan individuals rational self-interest to voluntarily give up the freedom of action one hasunder the natural state (their so called “natural rights”) in order to obtain the benefits provided by the formation of social structures.Common to all of these theories is the notion of a sovereign will which allmembers of a society are bound by the social contract to respect. The various types of social contract theory that have developed are largely differentiated by their definition of the sovereign will, be it a King (monarchy), a Council (oligarchy) or The Majority(republic or democracy). Under a theory first articulated by Plato, members within asociety implicitly agree to the terms of the social contract by their choice to stay withinthe society and receive protection. Thus implicit in most forms of social contract is thatfreedom of movement is a fundamental or natural right which society may notlegitimately require an individual to surrender to the sovereign will.The social contract theory has some basic features where it says- firstly. State isan artificial institution signifying that it is a means to an end, secondly, it is created byhuman beings with the help of a contract, thirdly, the contract must be based on theconsent of one and all, and lastly that prior to formation of state me lived in ahypothetical situation known as state of nature.Thomas Hobbes (1651), John Locke (1689), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762)are the most famous philosophers of the social contract theory, which formed thetheoretical groundwork of democracy . Although the theory of natural rights influencedthe development of classical