Ok. This is the philosophy board in a political forum. This topic seems a perfect place to start.

While the origins of the Social Contract are speculative or imagined to be informal. I think it is one of our most powerful political concepts and there have been many attempts to formalise the Social Contract. There are Constitutions, Bill of Rights, the Magna Carta etc etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract


Quote:

The notion of the social contract implies that the people give up sovereignty to a government or other authority in order to receive or maintain social order through the rule of law. It can also be thought of as an agreement by the governed on a set of rules by which they are governed. Social contract theory formed a central pillar in the historically important notion that legitimate state authority must be derived from the consent of the governed. The starting point for most of these theories is a heuristic examination of the human condition absent from any structured social order, usually termed the “state of nature”. In this condition, an individual’s actions are bound only by his or her personal power, constrained by conscience, and outside resistance. From this common starting point, the various proponents of social contract theory attempt to explain, in different ways, why it is in an individual’s rational self-interest to voluntarily give up the freedom one has in the state of nature in order to obtain the benefits of political order.

It has been spoken about by many of the great philosophers such as Socrates (attributed), Hobbes, probably most famously by Rousseau, John Locke, and in modern times by one of the most important contributors to the subject John Rawls in his Theory of Justice.

Socrates cites it as one of the reasons he refuses to escape death when the opportunity was offered..http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates
Quote:

He believed such a flight would indicate a fear of death, which he believed no true philosopher has. If he fled Athens his teaching would fare no better in another country as he would continue questioning all he met and undoubtedly incur their displeasure. Having knowingly agreed to live under the city's laws, he implicitly subjected himself to the possibility of being accused of crimes by its citizens and judged guilty by its jury. To do otherwise would have caused him to break his "social contract" with the state, and so harm the state, an act contrary to Socratic principle.

Hobbs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract#Thomas_Hobbes.27s_Leviathan_.281651.29

Quote:

According to Hobbes, the lives of individuals in the state of nature were "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short", a state where self-interest and the absence of rights and contracts prevented the 'social', or society. Life was 'anarchic' (without leadership/ 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 an 'occurrence' during which individuals came together and ceded some of their individual rights so that others would cede theirs (e.g. person A gives up his/her right to kill person B if person B does the same). This resulted in the establishment of society, and by extension, the state, a sovereign entity (like the individuals, now under its rule, used to be) which was to protect these new rights which were now to regulate societal interactions. Society was thus no longer anarchic. But the state system, which grew out of the social contract, was 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 (i.e. more powerful) capable of imposing social-contract laws.

Locke

Quote:

John Locke's conception of the social contract differed from Hobbes' in several ways, but retained 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 have stronger moral limits on their action than accepted by Hobbes, but recognized that people would still live in fear of one another. Locke argued that individuals would agree to form a state that would provide a "neutral judge", and that could therefore protect the lives, liberty, and property of those who lived within it. While Hobbes argued for near-absolute authority, Locke argued in his Second Treatise of Government that laws could only be legitimate if they sought to achieve the common good. Locke also believed that people will do the right thing as a group, and that all people have natural rights.

Rousseau http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract#Thomas_Hobbes.27s_Leviathan_.281651.29


Quote:

outlined a different version of social contract theory, based on popular sovereignty. Although Rousseau wrote that the British were perhaps at the time the freest people on earth, he did not approve of their representative government. Rousseau believed that liberty was possible only where there was direct rule by the people as a whole in lawmaking, where popular sovereignty was indivisible and inalienable. Citizens must, in at least some circumstances, be able to choose together the fundamental rules by which they would live, and be able to revise those rules on later occasions if they choose to do so - something the British people as a whole were unable to do. Rousseau's political theory has some points in common with Locke's individualism, but departs from it in his development of the "luminous conception" (which he credited to Diderot) of the general will. Rousseau argues a citizen can be an egoist and decide that his personal interest should override the collective interest. However, as part of a collective body, the individual citizen puts aside his egoism to create a "general will", which is popular sovereignty itself. Popular sovereignty (i.e., the rule of law), thus decides what is good for society as a whole, and the individual (including the administrative head of state, who could be a monarch) must bow to it, or be forced to bow to it: [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.[2] Rousseau's striking phrase that man must "be forced to be free"[3] should be understood this way: since the indivisible and inalienable popular sovereignty decides what is good for the whole, then if an individual lapses back into his ordinary egoism and breaks the law, he will be forced to listen to what they decided as a member of the collectivity (i.e. as citizens). Thus, the law, inasmuch as it is voted by the people's representatives, is not a limitation of individual freedom, but its expression; and enforcement of law, including criminal law, is not a restriction on individual liberty, as 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 restraints of civil freedom, they represent the leap made from humans in the state of nature into civil society. In this sense, the law is a civilizing force, and therefore Rousseau believed that the laws that govern a people helped to mold their character.

Rawls
Quote:

John Rawls (1921–2002) proposed a contractarian approach that has a decidedly Kantian flavour, in A Theory of Justice (1971), whereby rational people in a hypothetical "original position", setting aside their individual preferences and capacities under a "veil of ignorance", would agree to certain general principles of justice. This idea is also used as a game-theoretical formalization of the notion of fairness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice#The_First_Principle_of_Justice


Quote:

The First Principle of Justice “ First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others.” The Second Principle of Justice Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that (Rawls, 1971, p.303): a) they are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society (the difference principle). b) offices and positions must be open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity

Just posting here to start things off, but will add some other things including my own ideas. And other thinkers on this subject.

An alternative view of the origins of the social contract by Nietzsche from On the Genealogy of Morals, essay 2, section 17.


Quote:

The oldest “State” emerged as a terrible tyranny, as an oppressive and inconsiderate machinery, and continued working until such raw materials of people and half-animals finally were not only thoroughly kneaded and submissive but also given a shape. I used the word “State”: it is self-evident who is meant by that term—some pack of blond predatory animals, a race of conquerors and masters, which, organized for war and with the power to organize, without thinking about it, sets its terrifying paws on a subordinate population which may perhaps be vast in numbers but is still without any form, is still wandering about. That is, in fact, the way the “State” begins on earth. I believe that fantasy has been done away with which sees the beginning of the state in a “contract.” The man who can command, who is by nature a “master,” who comes forward with violence in his actions and gestures—what has he to do with making contracts! We do not negotiate with such beings. They come like fate, without cause, reason, consideration, or pretext. They are present as lightning is present, too fearsome, too sudden, too convincing, too “different” even to become merely hated. Their work is the instinctive creation of forms, the imposition of forms. They are the most involuntary and most unconscious artists in existence:—where they appear something new is soon present, a power structure which lives, something in which the parts and functions are demarcated and coordinated, in which there is, in general, no place for anything which does not first derive its “meaning” from its relationship to the totality. These men, these born organizers, have no idea what guilt, responsibility, and consideration are. In them that fearsome egotism of the artist is in charge, which stares out like bronze and knows how to justify itself for all time in the “work,” just as a mother does in her child.

The First Principle of Justice
“ First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others.”

The Second Principle of Justice
Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that (Rawls, 1971, p.303):
a) they are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society (the difference principle).
b) offices and positions must be open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity



I wish that the a)and b) Principle of Justice wouls be more prevalent in the Society.
The Social Contract is definitely heavy reading.

Isn't a) basically socialism?

freediver wrote on Nov 15^th, 2010 at 9:47pm:

Isn't a) basically socialism?

I believe Rawls would have said no. His concern was to develop Just relationships between Individuals and the State. The things that would be rationally surrendered in return for official obligation.

He has made a statement that is essentially concerned with Justice. Justifying Socialism was not the intention but Rawl's was renowned for giving intellectual credit to other thinkers that was almost unprecedented, and his sources were very wide. That would have included extensive reading from "socialist" and utilitarian thinkers.

Would he have been wrong when he said no?

Does a Social Contract only work with Politics or a Governing Body??
What if in Australia, the entire Political system goes broke and has to do sexual favours to get anywhere ...while the country is developed by a Privatised Art Company that pumps out mass visualisations and other art projects  around the world, along with a Company based upon Fashion (spirituality). In essence, Australia has become a giant version of Minoa in the ancient Mediterrean?