The Social Contract Theory: Hobbes, Locke & Rousseau

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The Social Contract is an attempt to explain the reason why individuals agree to form organized governments. The idea that a person is willing to abandon the freedoms previously enjoyed under the State of Nature in which no government interfered with their pursuits, are believed to correspond to the individual’s attempt to protect what is on their best interest.

Under this condition, moral and political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement among the people to form the society in which they live. Philosophers who advocated the Social Contract Theory believed that because individuals existed before the government did, governments arose exclusively to meet and satisfy the social and economic needs of the public. Men such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke & Jean-Jacques Rousseau were prominent proponents of this theory. Particularly influenced by specific events taking place during their lifetime, each one of them perceived human nature differently and therefore had variant opinions about the role of government under the Social Contract.

For instance, Thomas Hobbes saw humans exclusively as self-interested creatures. He believed that everything we do is frivolously premeditated and rationalized in order to accomplish our objectives and satisfy as many of our desires as possible.

From these pessimistic views of human nature, Hobbes goes on to suggest why we would be willing to submit ourselves to political authority.

According to Hobbes’ hypothesis, life in the state of nature is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." And given the reasonable assumption that most people want first and foremost to pursuit what’s on their best interest, Hobbes concludes that men will seek their way out of such state by recog...

... middle of paper ...

...s way, the entire community will come together periodically to decide collectively and unanimity, how to coexist.

The down side to this approach is that a strong democracy is only possible in small states. This is because in order to make agreements, people must be able to identify with one another; otherwise, no agreements will be achieve and abiding under the same law will be nearly impossible.

Works Cited

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Trans. C. B. Macpherson. Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1986. Print.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Alan Ritter, and Julia Conaway. Bondanella. Rousseau's Political Writings: Discourse on Inequality, Discourse on Political Economy, On Social Contract. New York, NY.: W. W. Norton, 1988. Print

Smith, Alexis. The Selected Political Writings of John Locke : Texts, Background Selections, Sources, Interpretations. W.W. Norton, 2005. Print.

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