Contractarianism And Contractarian Ethics

Moral norms derive their normative force from the idea of contract or mutual agreement, according to Contractarian Ethics (or the Moral Theory of Contractarianism).

 

•    It holds that moral acts are those that we would all agree to if we were all unbiased, that moral rules are a kind of contract, and that only those who understand and agree to the contract's terms are bound by it.

 

•    The theory is based on political Contractarianism and the social contract principle developed by Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Locke, which states that people give up some rights to a government and/or other authority in exchange for receiving, or jointly maintaining, social order.

 

•    The concept of a social contract is that people give up some of their rights to a government or other authority in exchange for social order, which they jointly maintain. 

 

•    The historical notion that legitimate state authority must be derived from the consent of the governed, where the form and content of this consent derives from the idea of contract or mutual agreement, is rationalised by social contract theory.

 

•    People are primarily self-interested, according to contractarianism, and a rational assessment of the best strategy for maximising their self-interest will lead them to act morally and consent to governmental authority.

 

•    Plato first pointed out in his Socratic dialogue "Crito" that by choosing to stay in a society, members implicitly agree to the terms of a kind of social contract. 

 

•    Epicurus also endorsed the notion that justice stems from a mutual agreement not to harm one another.

 

•    He advanced the theory in a more explicit way. Individuals in a primitive unstructured social order (a "state of nature"), he argued, have unlimited natural freedoms and are only bound by their consciences in their words and actions. 

 

•    However, this general autonomy includes the freedom to harm all who threaten one's own survival (and for others to harm in their own interests), and Hobbes believed that humans are nasty and mean by nature. 

 

•    As a result, he argued, it is in an individual's racial self-interest to voluntarily give up his freedom of action in order to reap the benefits of social structures and civil rights formation.

 

•    In exchange for protection from harm and a more functional society, individuals implicitly agree to a social contract with a state or authority. 

•    However, for Hobbes, as outlined in his 1657 work "Leviathan," it is critical that this social contract include an absolute government that does not rule by consent (effectively Totalitarianism), because people, in his opinion, cannot be trusted. Hobbes portrays the situation of free individuals in nature as so dire (a life that is «solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”) that they are willing to contract to submit all but their actual lives to the will of a sovereign who thus wields nearly absolute political authority.

 

•    The theory was further developed by John Locke, who argued that a contract is only legitimate if it serves the general interest. 

 

•    As a result, when flaws in the contract are discovered, we effectively renegotiate it to change the terms, employing techniques such as elections and legislation. Because rights are obtained by agreeing to the contract and accepting responsibility for adhering to its rules, those who simply refuse to fulfil their contractual obligations (for example, by committing crimes) deserve to lose their rights, and the rest of society can be expected to protect itself against them by threatening punishment.

 

•    In practice, society operates on the basis of "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon." Locke saw the right of rebellion as a justifiable response in the event of a contract leading to tyranny (the exercise of prerogative power to the detriment of the people's ends).

 

•    Locke's conception of the social contract was based on individualism and was influential in the development of classical liberalism and modern democracy, as well as the theoretical foundations of the American Revolution of 1775-1783.

 

•    In his 1762 treatise "Du contrat social" ("The Social Contract"), Jean-Jacques Rousseau outlined a much less individualist (and much more collectivist) version of contract theory, based on his advocacy of direct democracy and his conception of popular sovereignty (the belief that the legitimacy of the state is created by the will or consent of its people, who are the source of all political power).

 

•    He argued that the subject can be egoistic and decide that his personal interests should take precedence over the collective's. As part of a collective body, the individual subject, on the other hand, sets aside his egoism in order to create a "general will" (the persistence of equality and freedom in the society).

 

•    People who do not obey the general will should be "forced to be free," according to Rousseau. Rousseau's version of the social contract is the one that is most closely associated with the term "social contract." His ideas influenced the French Revolution of 1789 as well as the formation of the Socialist movement that followed.

 

•    Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809 - 1865):- He argued for a social contract that did not require an individual to relinquish control to others. Individuals refraining from coercing or governing one another while maintaining complete individual sovereignty, resulting in a non-aggressive, utopian state of Anarchism, he argued.

 

•    John Rawls (1921 - 2002), the most important contemporary political social contract theorist, effectively resurrected social contract theory in the second half of the twentieth century. Rawls attempts to reconcile liberty and equality in a principled way in his "A Theory of Justice," and he does so by appealing to the old concept of the social contract.