Social contract

In moral and political philosophy, the social contract is an idea, theory, or

model that usually, although not always, concerns the legitimacy of the authority
of the state over the individual.[1] Conceptualized in the Age of Enlightenment, it
is a core concept of constitutionalism, while not necessarily convened and
written down in a constituent assembly and constitution.

Social contract arguments typically are that individuals have consented, either
explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the
authority (of the ruler, or to the decision of a majority) in exchange for protection
of their remaining rights or maintenance of the social order.[2][3] The relation
between natural and legal rights is often a topic of social contract theory. The
term takes its name from The Social Contract (French: Du contrat social ou
Principes du droit politique), a 1762 book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau that
discussed this concept. Although the antecedents of social contract theory are
found in antiquity, in Greek and Stoic philosophy and Roman and Canon Law,
the heyday of the social contract was the mid-17th to early 19th centuries, when it
emerged as the leading doctrine of political legitimacy. The original cover of Thomas
Hobbes's work Leviathan (1651),
The starting point for most social contract theories is an examination of the in which he discusses the
concept of the social contract
human condition absent any political order (termed the "state of nature" by
theory
Thomas Hobbes).[4] In this condition, individuals' actions are bound only by
their personal power and conscience, assuming that 'nature' precludes mutually
beneficial social relationships. From this shared starting point, social contract theorists seek to demonstrate why
rational individuals would voluntarily consent to give up their natural freedom to obtain the benefits of political
order.

Prominent 17th- and 18th-century theorists of the social contract and natural rights included Hugo de Groot
(1625), Thomas Hobbes (1651), Samuel von Pufendorf (1673), John Locke (1689), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762)
and Immanuel Kant (1797), each approaching the concept of political authority differently. Grotius posited that
individual humans had natural rights. Thomas Hobbes famously said that in a "state of nature", human life would
be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short". In the absence of political order and law, everyone would have
unlimited natural freedoms, including the "right to all things" and thus the freedom to plunder, rape and murder;
there would be an endless "war of all against all" (bellum omnium contra omnes). To avoid this, free men contract
with each other to establish political community (civil society) through a social contract in which they all gain
security in return for subjecting themselves to an absolute sovereign, one man or an assembly of men. Though the
sovereign's edicts may well be arbitrary and tyrannical, Hobbes saw absolute government as the only alternative
to the terrifying anarchy of a state of nature. Hobbes asserted that humans consent to abdicate their rights in
favor of the absolute authority of government (whether monarchical or parliamentary).

Alternatively, Locke and Rousseau argued that we gain civil rights in return for accepting the obligation to respect
and defend the rights of others, giving up some freedoms to do so.
The central assertion that social contract theory approaches is that law and political order are not natural, but
human creations. The social contract and the political order it creates are simply the means towards an end—the
benefit of the individuals involved—and legitimate only to the extent that they fulfill their part of the agreement.
Hobbes argued that government is not a party to the original contract and citizens are not obligated to submit to
the government when it is too weak to act effectively to suppress factionalism and civil unrest.

Overview

The model of the social contract

There is a general form of social contract theories, which is:

I chooses R in M and this gives I* reason to endorse and comply with R in the real world insofar as the
reasons I has for choosing R in M are (or can be) shared by I*.[5]

With M being the deliberative setting; R rules, principles or institutions; I the (hypothetical) people in original
position or state of nature making the social contract; and I* being the individuals in the real world following the
social contract.[5]

History

Classical thought
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.

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.[8]

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.[9]

The social contract theory also appears in Crito, another dialogue from Plato. Over time, the social contract
theory became more widespread after Epicurus (341–270 BC), the first philosopher who saw justice as a social
contract, and not as existing in Nature due to divine intervention (see below and also Epicurean ethics), decided
to bring the theory to the forefront of his society. As time went on, philosophers of traditional political and social
thought, such as Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau put forward their opinions on social contract, which then caused
the topic to become much more mainstream.

Renaissance developments
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.

Philosophers

Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan (1651)

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 rights and contracts prevented the "social", or society. Life was
"anarchic" (without leadership 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".

The state system, which grew out of the social contract, was, however, also anarchic (without leadership). Just as
the individuals in the state of nature had been sovereigns 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, 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 Second Treatise of Government (1689)

John Locke's conception of the social contract differed from Hobbes' in several fundamental ways, retaining only
the central notion that persons 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.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Du Contrat social (1762)

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".[15] 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".[16]

[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.[17]

Rousseau's striking phrase that man must "be forced to be free"[18] 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"[19] in place of "natural liberty"[19] 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",[19] 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,[20] thus suggesting the origins of the
state as a form of mutual insurance.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's individualist social contract (1851)

While Rousseau's social contract is based on popular sovereignty and not on individual sovereignty, there are
other theories espoused by individualists, libertarians, and anarchists that do not involve agreeing to anything
more than negative rights and creates only a limited state, if any.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) advocated a conception of social contract that did not involve an individual
surrendering sovereignty to others. According to him, the social contract was not between individuals and the
state, but rather among individuals who refrain from coercing or governing each other, each one maintaining
complete sovereignty upon him- or herself:

What really is the Social Contract? An agreement of the citizen with the government? No, that would
mean but the continuation of [Rousseau's] idea. The social contract is an agreement of man with man;
an agreement from which must result what we call society. In this, the notion of commutative justice,
first brought forward by the primitive fact of exchange, ... is substituted for that of distributive justice ...
Translating these words, contract, commutative justice, which are the language of the law, into the
language of business, and you have commerce, that is to say, in its highest significance, the act by which
man and man declare themselves essentially producers, and abdicate all pretension to govern each
other.

— Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (1851)

John Rawls' Theory of Justice (1971)

Building on the work of Immanuel Kant with its presumption of limits on the state,[21] John Rawls (1921–2002),
in A Theory of Justice (1971), proposed a contractarian approach whereby rational people in a hypothetical
"original position" would set aside their individual preferences and capacities under a "veil of ignorance" and
agree to certain general principles of justice and legal organization. This idea is also used as a game-theoretical
formalization of the notion of fairness.

David Gauthier's Morals by Agreement (1986)

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.[22] 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.[22][23] 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.[22][23]

Philip Pettit's Republicanism (1997)

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.

Application

Elections
Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that societal laws are upheld up 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 democractic government is absolute.[24]

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.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right. Book IV[25]

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.[26]

Courtroom
In court, the social contract is used to diagnose mental health, with the ultimate aim of delivering a fair
sentence.[27] Judge John Geoffrey Jones called it "an aspect of the instinct for self-preservation." He saw the
committer of bad deeds as the impervious person: that "rare person whose intuition is stunted and who misses
out on instruction grows up uninhibited, so continues bad deeds." Jones argued that the legitimancy of the
judiciary is not absolute. Rather than the court, it is the psychiatrist's job to diagnose mental health.[28]
 My own present, unresolved thoughts are that 'evil' is within the realm of theologians and moral
philosophers. Doctors, judges and lawyers would do well to concern themselves with bad deeds and bad
health, that is deeds, which society has determined as criminal. If the perpetrators of bad deeds are not
sick, they should be punished according to law. If they are sick, they should be treated.

— John Geoffrey Jones, Psychopaths: An Introduction[29]

Criticism

Consent of the governed

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",[30]
stresses that the concept of a "social contract" is a convenient fiction:

As no party, in the present age can well support itself without a philosophical or speculative system of
principles annexed to its political or practical one; we accordingly find that each of the factions into
which this nation is divided has reared up a fabric of the former kind, in order to protect and cover that
scheme of actions which it pursues. ... The one party [defenders of the absolute and divine right of kings,
or Tories], by tracing up government to the DEITY, endeavor to render it so sacred and inviolate that it
must be little less than sacrilege, however tyrannical it may become, to touch or invade it in the smallest
article. The other party [the Whigs, or believers in constitutional monarchy], by founding government
altogether on the consent of the PEOPLE suppose that there is a kind of original contract by which the
subjects have tacitly reserved the power of resisting their sovereign, whenever they find themselves
aggrieved by that authority with which they have for certain purposes voluntarily entrusted him.

— David Hume, "On Civil Liberty" [II.XII.1][30]

Hume argued that consent of the governed was the ideal foundation on which a government should rest, but that
it had not actually occurred this way in general.

My intention here is not to exclude the consent of the people from being one just foundation of
government where it has place. It is surely the best and most sacred of any. I only contend that it has
very seldom had place in any degree and never almost in its full extent. And that therefore some other
foundation of government must also be admitted.

— Ibid II.XII.20

Natural law and constitutionalism

Legal scholar Randy Barnett has argued[31] 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,[32] 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.

Tacit consent
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.[33]

Explicit consent
The theory of an implicit social contract also goes under the principles of explicit consent.[34] 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.

Contracts must be consensual

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
United States Supreme Court and 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. An abolitionist, he made similar arguments about the unconstitutionality of slavery in the US.

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 our time and that certain features in the social contract which
seem anomalous to us, such as the belief that we are bound by a contract formulated by our distant ancestors,
would not have seemed as strange to Hobbes' contemporaries as they do to us.[35]

See also
Philosophy portal
Mandate of Heaven
Classical republicanism
Consent
Consent of the governed
Constitution
Constitutionalism
 Self determination
Contract
Epicurean ethics
Federalism
Mandate (politics)
Mayflower Compact
Monarchomachs
Ordered Liberty
Organic crisis
The Racial Contract
Rights of Man
Right of rebellion
Rule of law
School of Salamanca
Social capital
Social cohesion
Social Contract (Britain) – British Labour Party policy involving trade-offs between employment conditions and
social welfare
Social disintegration
Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development
Social Justice in the Liberal State
Social rights (social contract theory)
Social solidarity
Societal collapse
Consent theory
Crito – dialogue by Plato
Juan de Mariana
Sovereign citizen movement

References
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the evolution of the theory, it is well to distinguish The first] generally involved some theory of the origin of the
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promises his protection and good government. While he keeps his part of the bargain, they must keep theirs,
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Further reading
Ankerl, Guy. Towards a Social Contract on a Worldwide Scale: Solidarity contracts. Research series. Geneva:
International Institute for Labour Studies [Pamphlet], 1980, ISBN 92-9014-165-4.
Carlyle, R. W. A History of mediæval political theory in the West. Edinburgh London: W. Blackwood and sons,
1916.
 Falaky, Faycal (2014). Social Contract, Masochist Contract: Aesthetics of Freedom and Submission in
Rousseau. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-1-4384-4989-0
Gierke, Otto Friedrich Von and Ernst Troeltsch. Natural Law and the Theory of Society 1500 to 1800.
Translated by Sir Ernest Barker, with a Lecture on "The Ideas of Natural Law and Humanity", by Ernst
Troeltsch. Cambridge: The University Press, 1950.
Gough, J. W.. The Social Contract. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1936.
Harrison, Ross. Hobbes, Locke, and Confusion's Empire: an Examination of Seventeenth-Century Political
Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. 1651. (http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/hobbes/leviathan-contents.ht
ml)
Locke, John. Second Treatise on Government (https://web.archive.org/web/20070304114414/http://oregonsta
te.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke2/locke2nd-a.html) 1689.
Narveson, Jan; Trenchard, David (2008). "Contractarianism/Social Contract". In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). The
Encyclopedia of Libertarianism (https://books.google.com/books?id=yxNgXs3TkJYC). Thousand Oaks, CA:
SAGE; Cato Institute. pp. 103–05. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n66 (https://doi.org/10.4135%2F9781412965
811.n66). ISBN 978-1412965804. LCCN 2008009151 (https://lccn.loc.gov/2008009151). OCLC 750831024 (h
ttps://search.worldcat.org/oclc/750831024).
Pettit, Philip. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. NY: Oxford U.P., 1997, ISBN 0-19-
829083-7, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997
Pufendorf, Samuel, James Tully and Michael Silverthorne. Pufendorf: On the Duty of Man and Citizen
according to Natural Law. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Cambridge University Press
1991.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice (1971)
Riley, Patrick. "How Coherent is the Social Contract Tradition?" Journal of the History of Ideas 34: 4 (Oct. –
Dec., 1973): 543–62.
Riley, Patrick. Will and Political Legitimacy: A Critical Exposition of Social Contract Theory in Hobbes, Locke,
Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel. Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 1982.
Riley, Patrick. The Social Contract and Its Critics, chapter 12 in The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century
Political Thought. Eds. Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler. Vol 4 of The Cambridge History of Political Thought.
Cambridge University Press, 2006. pp. 347–75.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right (https://web.archive.org/web/20
080404234937/http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/r/rousseau/jean_jacques/r864s/complete.html) (1762)
Scanlon, T. M. 1998. What We Owe To Each Other. Cambridge, Massachusetts

External links
"The Social Contract". In Our Time (7 Feb 2008). BBC Radio Program. Melvyn Bragg, moderator; with
Melissa Lane, Cambridge University; Susan James, University of London; Karen O'Brien, University of
Warwick. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b008w3xm)
"Game Theory". In Our Time (May 10, 2012). BBC Radio Program. Melvin Bragg, moderator, with Ian
Stewart, Emeritus, University of Warwick, Andrew Colman, University of Leicester, and Richard Bradley,
London School of Economics. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio4/2012/05/in_our_time_-_game_theory.html)
Discussion of game theory that touches on relation of game theory to the Social Contract.
Foisneau, Luc. "Governing a Republic: Rousseau's General Will and the Problem of Government". Republics
of Letters: A Journal for the Study of Knowledge, Politics, and the Arts 2, no. 1 (December 15, 2010) (https://w
eb.archive.org/web/20120413015649/http://arcade.stanford.edu/journals/rofl/files/article_pdfs/roflv02i01_Fois
neau_121510.pdf)
Sigmund, Paul E. "Natural Law, Consent, and Equality: William of Ockham to Richard Hooker". Published on
website Natural Law, Natural Rights, and American Constitutionalism. A We the People project of the National
Endowment for the Humanities. (http://www.nlnrac.org/classical/late-medieval-transformations)
Cudd, Ann. "Contractarianism" (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractarianism/). In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.).
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
D'Agostino, Fred. "Contemporary Approaches to the Social Contract" (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contra
ctarianism-contemporary/). In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
 "Social contract" (http://www.iep.utm.edu/soc-cont). Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Jan Narveson. "The Contractarian Theory of Morals:FAQ". On website Against Politics: Anarchy Naturalized.
(https://web.archive.org/web/20110510101647/http://www.againstpolitics.com/the-contractarian-theory-of-mor
als-faq/)
A satirical example of a social contract for the United States from the Libertarian Party. (http://www.worldtrans.
org/sov/soccont.html) Parody.
Social Contract: A Basic Contradiction in Western Liberal Democracy (https://ssrn.com/abstract=1268335),
Eric Engle. A critique of social contract theory as counter-factual myth.

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