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SOCIAL See also:CONTRACT , in See also:political See also:philosophy, a See also:term applied to the theory of the origin of society associated chiefly with the names of See also:Hobbes, See also:Locke and See also:Rousseau, though it can be traced back to the See also:Greek See also:Sophists. According to Hobbes (See also:Leviathan), men lived originally in a See also:state of nature in which there were no recognized criteria of right and wrong, no distinction of meum and tuum. Each See also:person took for himself all that he could; See also:man's See also:life was " solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and See also:short." The state of nature was therefore a state of See also:war, which was ended by men agreeing to give their See also:liberty into the hands of a See also:sovereign, who thenceforward was See also:absolute. Locke (See also:Treatise on See also:Government) differed from Hobbes in so far as he described the pre-social state as one of freedom, and held that private See also:property must have been recognized, though there was no See also:security. Rousseau (Contrat social) held that in the pre-social state man was unwarlike and even timid. See also:Laws resulted from the See also:combination of men who agreed for mutual See also:protection to surrender individual freedom of See also:action. Government must therefore See also:rest on the consent of the governed, the volonte generale. Though it is quite obvious that the theory of a social contract (or compact,
as it is also called) contains a considerable See also:element of truth—that loose associations for mutual protection preceded any elaborate See also:idea or structure of See also:law, and that government cannot be based exclusively on force—yet it is .open to the equally obvious objection that the very idea of contract belongs to a more advanced See also:stage in human development than the See also:hypothesis itself demands. Thus the See also:doctrine, yielding as a definite theory of the origin of society to the See also:evidence of See also:history and See also:anthropology, becomes interesting primarily as revolt against See also:medieval and theocratic theories of the state.
End of Article: SOCIAL CONTRACT
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