The social contract
The social contract is the idea that political authority rests on an agreement among the governed rather than on divine right, conquest, or natural hierarchy. Writers in this line ask what life would be like without a common power - the state of nature - and then ask what terms free people would accept in order to leave it. The agreement is usually hypothetical: the test is not whether anyone signed anything but whether the resulting arrangement is one that reasonable people could accept. Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau start from the same device and reach very different conclusions, which is part of what makes it worth learning.
Why it matters
It is the standard way of arguing that a government owes its power to the people it governs, and most modern constitutions are written in its vocabulary.
Also written: social contract theory, state of nature
Where it comes up
Read about The social contract on Wikipedia
Sources
- Contractarianism Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Social Contract Theory Internet Encyclopedia of PhilosophyA more approachable first pass covering Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau side by side.
- Social contract Wikipedia
