SOCIAL CONTRACT IS BENEFICIAL CONTRACT JUSTIFIES LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.156.  But, by hypothesis (the hypothesis of modest contractarianism), we assume that our contractors value security (otherwise they wouldn't want government at all). Hence we have a contractarian argument for the usual liberal-democratic safeguards against abuse of power, and for a share in its exercise by ordinary citizens, for example, through representative institutions.    THE SOCIAL CONTRACT WAS A HUGE ADVANCE IN HUMAN EQUALITY  MURRAY FORSYTH, PROFESSOR OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, EDS., 1994, P.37.  But such criticism should not be allowed to obscure the main point, which is that the notion of a social contract implied and embodied a huge advance in the idea of human equality, and that the very ambiguity in the words 'men' and 'man', their simultaneous connotation of males and humanity, made it possible for the theory to be expanded beyond the limited assumptions of its founders. The emergence of the notion of the social contract is hence linked intimately with the emergence of the idea of the equality of human beings. It is the political expression of this idea, developing alongside, and interweaving with, the religious and economic expressions of it.  THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FOLLOWS FROM THE CONCEPT OF HUMAN RIGHTS  JOHN CHARVET, READER IN POLITICS, LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, EDS., 1994, P.178.  Let us suppose, then, that after entering upon the process of abstraction through which we arrive at the idea of our general human interests we also come to hold that we possess natural or human rights in respect of them; in other words, that persons as such, in virtue of being ends in themselves independently of their membership of particular communities, can claim rights to life and liberty and rights of access to resources. In that case we must believe ourselves to be immediately part of a universal ethical order the basic units of which are individual human beings with rights. The idea of such a universal order is given an initial elaboration in classic contractarian theory in the form of the notion of a state of nature. This notion has subsequently been much ridiculed, not least by those writers in the communitarian tradition. But it has been given powerful contemporary reformulations by Nozick and Gauthier, and can, I think, be shown to be a necessary implication of the idea of a world of natural or human rights.  THE SOCIAL CONTRACT EXISTS TO PROMOTE INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS  GEORGE KATEB, AMHERST POLITICAL SCIENTIST, DISSENT, SPRING 1986, P.169.  The agreement, the social contract, is made and sustained for the sake of individual rights. We do not exist for each other, that truly means that we do not exist for the sake of a mystique. we owe each other respect for rights, with all the duties attaching to such respect. If one gives up everything, it is not for the people, but for the rights of other individuals, including the unborn.  CONTRACTARIANISM IS WORKABLE  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.155.  Thus, a modest contractarianism incorporating a modified veil of ignorance seems workable. It can, perhaps, be taken further. It might be used, for example, to ground the Rawlsian basic liberties (though not necessarily their priority); that is, a hypothetical contract can be used to ground protection of these liberties, for societies which value them. This may sound like arguing in a circle - basic liberties should be safeguarded for those who value them, because they value them; but it is not. The argument escapes circularity through the distinction between values and the distribution of what is valued. Where members of a society, by and large, value liberty, the device of hypothetical contract plus (or including) a veil of ignorance yields the conclusion that (other things equal) what is valued should be distributed in a particular way. Whoever wants liberty is forced by the veil of ignorance to agree that everyone ought to have it.  CONTRACTARIANISM IS USEFUL & JUSTIFIES BASIC INSTITUTIONS  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.157.  If the foregoing argument has any merit, it suggests that a modest hypothetical contractualism is not useless. We may use it to think about our own society, at least if our society exhibits a significant degree of consensus on values. I suggest that it does. Our attitudes to security, both physical and economic, to liberty and to the exercise of power are sufficiently similar to ground certain, rather general conclusions about their distribution. If it is permissible, as suggested by Mueller et al., to base a contractualist argument on the average attitude of our society in these matters, more specific conclusions can be derived. Broadly speaking, these conclusions constitute a justification of the political institutions of liberal democracy, the free market, and the welfare state.  CONTRACT THEORY SUPPORTS RULE OF LAW  ALLAN BLOOM, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, THE CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND, 1987, P.319.  The contract theorists (from whose teachings the American form of government was derived) all taught that the law must never be broken, that the strength of the law is the only thing that keeps us away from the state of nature, therefore that risks and dangers must be accepted for the sake of the law. Once the law is broken with impunity, each man regains the right to any means he deems proper or necessary in order to defend himself against the new tyrant, the one who can break the law.  CONTRACTUALISM AIDS IN UNDERSTANDING OPPRESSION  JEREMY WALDRON, PROFESSOR OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, EDS., 1994, P.70.  Contractarianism has critical as well as legitimizing resources. The strength of the theory is that it provides a set of categories by which events like oppression and subjugation can be evaluated negatively, and with which attempts to draw doctrines of obligation, allegiance and legitimacy out of such a history can be resisted. It is explicit in the moral categories of contractarianism that, as Locke puts it, 'no-one can be . . . subjected to the Political Power of another, without his own Consent'. The setting up of political institutions by force, or the setting up or altering of institutions in a way that everyone could not possibly agree to, has no effect whatever so far as the establishment of obligation or political legitimacy are concerned.    GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF GOVT. STILL SUBJECT TO CONTRACT STANDARDS  JEREMY WALDRON, PROFESSOR OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, EDS., 1994, P.69.  A set of institutional arrangements may evolve by gradual steps over a period of time; but if each step involves elements of choice, deliberation and purpose, then the whole process takes on an intentional flavor, becomes susceptible to intentionalist categories, and may be evaluated in terms of human purposes in the way that contract theory requires. This remains the case even if it is true - which it usually is - that the whole process was not the subject of anyone's intentions and that the overall direction of the development was unforeseen. That is not a reason to withhold intentional evaluation from each - and therefore all - of the steps in the process, since each step can at least be seen as the upshot of intentional human action, and all subsequent steps remain an open subject for our choice.  THE CONTRACT IS AN IDEAL, NOT A HISTORICAL REALITY  JEREMY WALDRON, PROFESSOR OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, EDS., 1994, P.51.  Modern contractarians accept without question that most of the social and political institutions which interest them are not in fact the upshot of any contract or agreement among those whose lives they affect. They are happy to repudiate ideas like the state of nature and the original contract as historical hypotheses, to regard them, in Robert Nozick's phrase, as 'fact-defective' characterizations, and to accept that the actual evolution of political society probably took an entirely different course from the one the contract image suggests. Many accept also that the legitimacy of the modern state and our obligations to it do not depend on the reality of our consent or voluntary submission. For example, John Rawls concedes, 'No society can . . . be a scheme of cooperation which men enter voluntarily in a literal sense; each finds himself placed at birth in some particular position in some particular society'. To the extent that it is used at all, the social contract is understood as a purely hypothetical construction: not an assumption of fact but, as Kant described it, 'merely an idea of reason' that generates the basis of a normative standard for testing laws and social arrangements. We do not ask whether the arrangements were in fact agreed to; we ask instead whether they could have been agreed to by people working out the basis of a life together under conditions of initial freedom and equality. If the answer is 'No', then we have a basis for condemning the institutions in question as incompatible with the very ideas of freedom and equality, quite apart from their actual origin or purpose.  CONTRACT IS FOR MORAL EVALUATION, NOT HISTORICAL DESCRIPTION  JEREMY WALDRON, PROFESSOR OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, EDS., 1994, P.63.  The contract story is not intended as a historical description; it is intended rather as a moral tool for historical understanding. It is the function of the political anthropology to offer us an account of what actually happened; while the contract story offers us the moral categories in terms of which what actually happened is to be understood.  STATE OF NATURE NEED NEVER HAVE EXISTED TO BE USEFUL  JOHN CHARVET, READER IN POLITICS, LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, EDS., 1994, P.179.  Nevertheless, given the cosmopolitan's adherence to a system of universal individual rights the idea of the state of nature without political divisions must have logical priority over the reconstitution of the state within cosmopolitan theory. This does not involve the belief that the state of nature ever existed, or even could exist without complete disaster for the human race. Yet it is necessary to entertain this idea in its social form as described above in order to see whether the system of universal rights is compatible with the existence of a world divided into formal complete associations. We may immediately conclude from the contemplation of the idea that such associations are justified.  CONTRACT IS A METAPHOR, NOT A LITERAL DESCRIPTION  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.2.  Before that, however, we need some sharper analysis of the concept of contract. Contract is a legal term, and the notion of the social or political contract postulates that political obligation is analogous to the legal obligation of a party to a contract. It must be stressed that this is an analogy, not an identity - it is not postulated by contract theorists that political obligation is a legal obligation. Indeed, since the function of social contract theory is to give an account of politically organized society ('civil society', as many theorists have called it), and civil law is itself one aspect of the latter, it would be manifestly absurd to base political obligation on law in this sense. Clearly it must rest on something prior to civil law; and the typical understanding of contract theorists has been that the contractual obligation they postulate is founded on natural law.  CONTRACTUALISM CALLS FOR MUTUAL TOLERANCE AND LIMITS COERCION  DAVID WONG, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, BRANDEIS, DEFENDING DIVERSITY, LAWRENCE FOSTER AND PATRICIA HERZOG, EDS., 1994, P.13.  Thomas Nagel has argued for restraint in the coercive exercise of political power when one is engaged in a particular kind of intractable moral conflict. This liberal principle of tolerance gains support from the contractualist idea that one should not impose arrangements, institutions, and requirements on grounds that people could reasonably reject, that is, when the disagreement comes down to a "bare confrontation between personal points of view."  ALL CONTRACT THEORIES ASSUME NATURAL FREEDOM  MURRAY FORSYTH, PROFESSOR OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, EDS., 1994, P.38.  The core of the idea of equality which is embodied in the contract theory is not, however, man's power to kill, but rather the principle that all men are equally free. While - as we shall see - not all the classical writers agreed exactly on the meaning of this principle, they did agree on this: that each man, by right of nature, that is, by right of his human character, rather than through the mediation of other men, possessed the quality of freedom. Even Hobbes, who spoke of equality in the grimly physical terms alluded to, also spoke of man's inherent right to 'use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature'. More concisely and trenchantly, he wrote that 'all men equally, are by nature free'.  THE CONTRACTUAL STATE ISN'T TOTALITARIAN OR MILITARISTIC  DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, PROFESSORS OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF WALES, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, 1994, P.16.  It would be anachronistic to attribute to the contractarians who personified the state the totalitarian and militaristic implications that have become associated with the German realists Trietscke and Bernhardt. The person of the state for Pufendorf, to take just one instance, had the modest objective of ensuring the security of its citizens, and could have no justifiable expansionist ambitions. It was purportedly subject to natural law and should always be motivated by the general rule: 'Let the safety of the people be the supreme law".  GOVERNMENTS ESTABLISHED BY FORCE CAN BE UNDERSTOOD IN THE CONTRACT  JEREMY WALDRON, PROFESSOR OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, EDS., 1994, P.70.  Thus, viewing events through the template of the social contract story does not mean that we must view every stage in the history of our political development as a legitimate contractual step. It means simply that we should view it using contractarian categories, and that means treating each step either as though it involved elements of choice, consent and obligation, or as though it were an incident of force, oppression and the persistence of a right to resist) and drawing the appropriate conclusions. That is the choice that the contract approach gives us for each stage in the process of our political development. We make judgments, and the upshot of those judgments will contribute towards an estimation of our moral position in relation to the political system which is currently claiming our allegiance. No doubt this estimation will be very complicated, but of course it is no part of the contractarian philosophy to commit us to the view that political obligation and political legitimacy are simple and straightforward issues.  CONSENSUAL STATES ARE CLEARLY MORE LEGITIMATE  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.88-9.  Hume is clearly right that no existing state is directly founded on an original contract; nevertheless, one should consider separately the problems arising from 'usurpation and conquest' on the one hand, and from the peaceful continuation of states through successive generations on the other. It is, after all, open to the contract theorist to deny the legitimacy of states founded immediately or ultimately on violence, precisely on the ground that such states are not based on consent (Locke did just this)and while to Hume this leads to absurd (indeed dangerous) results, everyone is not compelled to agree with him. This remains an open question. It would be more difficult to deny the legitimacy of states which, at first founded on an original contract, continue peacefully through successive generations.  CONTRACTUALISM JUSTIFIES A STATE GUARANTEED MINIMUM  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.152-3.  Is it then simply rational for everyone to agree to a state-guaranteed social minimum? Not exactly-this still depends on attitudes to risk, as does the level of the minimum (and concomitant redistribution) that it would be rational to choose. These attitudes vary from person to person, and from society to society. Nevertheless, we can still defend a modest hypothetical contractualism; a contractualism much more modest than traditional contract theory in the following ways. Firstly, in so far as it derives specific conclusions, it must be admitted that these will be applicable only to particular societies, not universally. For example, only for societies where economic security is relatively highly valued will the contractarian argument yield support for a social minimum. Secondly, the conclusions cannot be too specific - thus, even in a society in which people value economic security, not everyone puts the same value on it, and so there is no single level of social minimum that can reflect everyone's attitude. And thirdly, there are likely to be some people, even in such a security-minded society, whose attitudes to risk are so positive that, for them, acceptance of a social minimum is not rational at all. In sum, this modest contractualism can hope to be persuasive only to the great bulk of members of particular societies (not to all members of all societies), and can only lay down rather general prescriptions. Thus, a social contract argument applied to the countries of Western Europe in the late twentieth century - societies where economic security is highly valued - can be used to justify a relatively generous social minimum, but not at any specific level, and certainly not the 'maximum minimum' prescribed by Rawls. In the USA, perhaps, attitudes to risk are more positive, the desire for security less strong and widespread, and for that country 'modest' contractarianism prescribes a less generous minimum, or even conceivably none at all.  CONTRACTARIANISM NEED NOT BE LIMITED TO WESTERN SOCIETIES  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.160.  Yet, in principle, the application of even modest contractarianism need not be confined to modern western society; it should be applicable to any society that recognises the need for a just resolution of conflicting individual interests. And if this is not quite a universal applicability, perhaps it ought to be.  SOCIAL CONTRACT SEEKS WELFARE OF ALL, NOT JUST SELF-INTERESTED  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.121-2.  In summary, so far as the issue of self-interest is concerned, social contract theory occupies what might be called a middle-of-the-road position. Up to a point, it appeals to the self-interest of the individual (and certainly does not call fat self-abnegation), in so far as self-interest is assumed to be the motive for contracting. But the standard of legitimacy that it proposes is not the self-interest of any individual, but rather a (hypothetical) contract that promotes or reconciles the interests of all concerned. Thus the theory appeals not only to self-interest, but also to a due concern for the interests of one's fellows. It seeks to balance the equally legitimate interests of all. This fact, no doubt, accounts for the continuing popularity of the idea in present-day political discourse; and also makes intelligible the fact that the modern philosophical revival of contract theory has been, above all, as a theory of justice.  CONTRACT THEORY DOESN'T STRESS HUMAN SELFISHNESS  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.119.  Reformulation of social contract theory in the hypothetical mode alters the picture in details, but not in essentials. It is true that there can then no longer be any reliance on the moral obligation to keep promises; rather, the obligation postulated is to accept, support or obey institutions that are in one's interest, as well as in the interests of all others affected. Thus interpreted, Hobbes's argument is that there is an (almost absolute) moral obligation to obey the sovereign, because it is on balance in one's interest (and in everyone's interest) to be ruled by a nearly absolute sovereign: the argument is not that obedience to the sovereign is always in one's own selfish interest, which would be manifestly absurd. Admittedly, Hobbes's version of social contract theory is problematic, precisely because he does appear to postulate (though this has been disputed by some commentators) that all human action is selfishly motivated. It then becomes dubious whether such purely selfish individuals are capable of adhering to the moral obligation that Hobbes prescribes to them (cf. Gauthier above). But the important point is that Hobbes is in this respect untypical of social contract theory; that, indeed, the postulate of purely selfish human nature, far from being congruent with contract theory, threatens to undermine it.  POLITICAL OBLIGATION NOT NEEDED; MORAL OBLIGATION IS SUFFICIENT  VICENTE MEDINA, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, BERGEN COMMUNITY COLLEGE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES: POLITICAL OBLIGATION OR ANARCHY?, 1990, P.151-2.  The fact that both contractarians and anticontractarians fail to justify political obligation (understood as a self-assumed obligation) is nothing new; the anarchists have argued similarly for a long time. But from this conclusion nothing really dramatic follows. From the fact that we generally do not have political obligations, it does not follow that we can disobey the laws of the land as we please. Most of the time there are legitimate moral reasons for compliance. If this is true, we ought to respect the law, not because we have a political obligation to do so but because there are important moral reasons for doing so. As free moral agents (autonomous persons), we have natural obligations that must be taken into consideration before we obey or disobey any law or regulation.	THE SOCIAL CONTRACT IS FLAWED CONTRACTARIANISM IS OVERLY ABSTRACT  VICENTE MEDINA, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, BERGEN COMMUNITY COLLEGE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES: POLITICAL OBLIGATION OR ANARCHY?, 1990, P.153.  To sum up, the critics of contractarianism have successfully demonstrated the futile abstractness of this approach to political philosophy. From a hypothetical contract in a hypothetical situation one can only derive hypothetical obligations. Hypothetical obligations are not actual obligations, and a hypothetical contract is not a real contract. If the main idea behind the social contract tradition is to justify political authority, then contractarianism fails in achieving this objective. If political authority can indeed be morally justified, it must be justified either on utilitarian grounds, or on concrete considerations of justice, or on both, but not on hypothetical considerations.  SOCIAL CONTRACT PRODUCES AN ARROGANT ABSTRACT IDEA OF JUSTICE  ROBERT SOLOMON, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, A PASSION FOR JUSTICE, 1990, P.61-2.  Nevertheless, it does not take much critical imagination to realize how much the subject of justice has been distorted and overidealized by these philosophers. The very idea of founding a society (much less society as such) is so arrogant, so abstract and so distracting from the actual problems of justice and injustice that we should from the start be extremely suspicious of any theory of justice that starts by suggesting not a better but a different society or begins by pretending that society is unnatural and was formed by the rational agreement (for whatever reasons) of presocial individuals, as if we could, even in theory, momentarily retreat to that original position and renegotiate the basic terms under which we live.  THE SOCIAL CONTRACT IS MYTHICAL  BERTRAND RUSSELL, A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY, 1945, P.633.  The social contract, in the sense required, is mythical even when, at some former period, there actually was a contract creating the government in question. The United States is a case in point. At the time when the Constitution was adopted, men had liberty of choice. Even then, many voted against it, and were therefore not parties to the contract. They could, of course, have left the country, and by remaining were deemed to have become bound by a contract to which they had not assented. But in practice it is usually difficult to leave one's country. And in the case of men born after the adoption of the Constitution their consent is even more shadowy.  THE CONTRACT DOESN'T JUSTIFY OBEDIENCE TO THE STATE  VICENTE MEDINA, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, BERGEN COMMUNITY COLLEGE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES: POLITICAL OBLIGATION OR ANARCHY?, 1990, P.143-4.  And, finally, I will question whether contractarianism in any of its forms, can provide an adequate answer to a third important question: Is the concept of the social contract necessary or sufficient to justify a general prima facie moral obligation to obey the state and its institutions? We may agree that we have a moral obligation to promote a "just" government (what Rawls understands as a natural duly of justice) but consistently deny that we have a political obligation (understood as a self-assumed obligation) to obey all or most of the laws emanating from such an authority.  MOST PEOPLE NEVER CONSENT TO THE STATE'S AUTHORITY  VICENTE MEDINA, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, BERGEN COMMUNITY COLLEGE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES: POLITICAL OBLIGATION OR ANARCHY?, 1990, P.150.  If my analysis of political obligation is correct, then the large majority of people are not bound by it, although they may be bound to their community by their patriotic sentiments and their natural moral obligations. Most people are born as members of a particular political society (state), and they are never or hardly ever asked whether they voluntarily accept the state's authority and its benefits. Even those who argue that political obligations are generated through the "principle of fair play" fail in their quest for justification.  RECEIVING BENEFITS FROM SOCIETY DOESN'T MANDATE OBEDIENCE  VICENTE MEDINA, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, BERGEN COMMUNITY COLLEGE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES: POLITICAL OBLIGATION OR ANARCHY?, 1990, P.148.  But as I have already argued, a promise as such can never be sufficient to generate a general prima facie obligation to obey the law. And although it is true, generally speaking, that citizens have acquired benefits by residing in a particular political community, it is also true that, if they have been good citizens, they have provided benefits to others by contributing to the well-being and stability of the community. This is not a one-way relationship in which one of the parties involved receives benefits at the expense of others. Instead this is a quid pro quo situation in which all parties benefit to some degree.  PEOPLE ARE ONLY OBLIGATED TO OBEY JUST LAWS  VICENTE MEDINA, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, BERGEN COMMUNITY COLLEGE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES: POLITICAL OBLIGATION OR ANARCHY?, 1990, P.147-8.  We need to keep in mind that a naturalized citizen is, before anything else, an autonomous person and, as such, is only morally obligated to obey just laws. It might be argued that naturalized citizens acquire a prima facie political obligation to obey the law of the land by virtue of their oath of citizenship. However, even in the case of naturalized citizens it is not clear that this oath is always performed voluntarily, since, for example, there might be social pressures compelling them to become citizens. And even if there were no social or any other kind of pressure, the oath of citizenship, from the perspective of moral agency, does not have any significant moral weight. We simply promise faithful allegiance to those rules and regulations that are morally right; but one ought to respect these rules and regulations by virtue of their being morally right, regardless of what one has promised. Thus it follows that an oath of allegiance is virtually otiose from a moral point of view, although important from a legal perspective.  HYPOTHETICAL CONTRACTS LACK BINDING FORCE  ROBERT SOLOMON, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, A PASSION FOR JUSTICE, 1990, P.60.  Of course, virtually every author on the subject insists that there was in fact no such state of nature. (Rousseau boldly announces, "Let's begin by ignoring all the facts.") But these authors clearly do believe that, prehistory aside, we are independent, autonomous beings by nature, concerned primarily with calculating our own interests, living together only grudgingly. So, too, the authors who defend the idea of a social contract virtually never suggest that there was, in fact, such a historical agreement. But, then, it is not easy to understand what sort of binding force this fiction is supposed to have on us.  IDEAL CONTRACTS ARE CIRCULAR  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.94.  The distinction between a hypothetical and an ideal social contract is an important one, and in one respect the former seems to be much the more valid concept of the two (we are now assuming that the idea of an actual social contract is discredited). To invoke an ideal contract is to appeal to what individuals, ideally, ought to agree to, or what they would agree to if they were ideally moral beings. As a way of arguing for or against particular political institutions, this seems needlessly circuitous. In brief, morally good beings would agree to morally good institutions, and whatever arguments might be deployed to show that institutions are such that morally good beings would (or would not) agree to them, could be deployed directly in defense of (or against) the institutions themselves, without reference to agreement, contract, or consent.  HYPOTHETICAL CONTRACT ARGUMENTS ARE OVERLY SPECULATIVE  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.94-5.  The notion of deriving political obligation from what men would agree to in a state of nature, while avoiding some of the difficulties of the actual and the ideal social contracts, still faces some old problems as well as some new ones. One problem is that such an argument is inevitably speculative (though no more so than arguments about supposedly actual contracts of which no record remains). Both this hypothetical contract, and the supposedly actual but unrecorded contract, in effect depend on postulates about human nature- a universal human nature which motivates a universal contract and so generates universal principles of political obligation. Arguments on this score are liable to be somewhat treacherous.  THE SOCIAL CONTRACT ISN'T NEEDED FOR A THEORY OF RIGHTS  VICENTE MEDINA, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, BERGEN COMMUNITY COLLEGE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES: POLITICAL OBLIGATION OR ANARCHY?, 1990, P.143.  A second important question can now be taken up briefly. Is the concept of the social contract necessary for the development of a general theory of rights that accounts for natural or moral rights? The answer is clear. The idea of the social contract is superfluous to our understanding of natural or moral rights. This can be seen clearly in Locke's political philosophy. Locke, in his Second Treatise of Government, develops his theory of natural rights before even mentioning any sort of contract. Natural rights, according to Locke, are rights we possess by virtue of our nature. Thus a contract can neither confer these rights (natural or moral) nor take them away. If so, then we can develop a general theory of rights or talk meaningfully about rights without any reference to the social contract.  NATURAL RIGHTS AND THE SOCIAL CONTRACT ARE LOGICALLY NOT THE SAME THING  VICENTE MEDINA, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, BERGEN COMMUNITY COLLEGE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES: POLITICAL OBLIGATION OR ANARCHY?, 1990, P.143.  The concept of the social contract is neither necessary nor sufficient to explain natural or moral rights. The fact that most advocates of contractarianism also talk about natural rights is a matter of a contingent historical situation rather than the result of any logical connection between the social contract and natural rights. These are two radically different concepts. Consequently, we can talk about one without necessarily talking about the other. The notion of natural rights is a more fundamental notion than that of a social contract. In fact, most contractarian philosophers use the metaphor of the social contract partly as a way of explaining why we ought to protect natural rights. But if natural rights are rights we possess by virtue of our nature, then we ought to respect them regardless of any contract or agreement. Such respect is necessary for the development of our moral personality as well as for our personal integrity.  SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY IS ANTHROPOLOGICALLY NAIVE  BERTRAND RUSSELL, A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY, 1945, P.633.  The theory that government was created by a contract is, of course, pre-evolutionary. Government, like measles and whooping-cough, must have grown up gradually, though, like them, it could be introduced suddenly into new regions such as the South Sea Islands. Before men had studied anthropology they had no idea of the psychological mechanisms involved in the beginnings of government, or of the fantastic reasons which lead men to adopt institutions and customs that subsequently prove useful. But as a legal fiction, to justify government, the theory of the social contract has some measure of truth.  THE SOCIAL CONTRACT IS A HISTORICAL ABSURDITY  DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, PROFESSORS OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF WALES, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, 1994, P.16.  J. K. Bluntschli, for example, writing during the mid-nineteenth century, criticized Pufendorf, Locke and Kant (to a lesser extent) for failing to see that the will of the person of the state was not composed of the wills of each individual. For Bluntschli the social contract was both historically and logically absurd. There was no evidence of any such historical event, and a political contract, dealing as it did not with private but public goods, required the prior existence of the community whose common good it aimed to promote. He argued that the state was a developing maturing 'moral and spiritual organism' with 'a personality which, having spirit and body, possesses and manifests a will of its own'.  EVOLUTIONARY THEORY DENIES THE SOCIAL CONTRACT MODEL  ROBERT SOLOMON, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, A PASSION FOR JUSTICE, 1990, P.130.  One dominant metaphor in recent evolutionary theory is the game, which does not, of course, suggest that the animals that are fighting for their survival are having fun. But it is a metaphor that has the virtue of embracing both competition and cooperation within a framework in which the integrity of the group is presupposed. In this, it is both slightly similar to and dramatically different from that "state of nature" model that defines so many theories of justice from Hobbes and Rousseau to Rawls.  THERE'S NO EVIDENCE ON THE EVOLUTION OF A CONTRACT  JEREMY WALDRON, PROFESSOR OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, EDS., 1994, P.55.  As if this were not enough, there is a further difficulty with the historical plausibility of the contractarian account. Not only is there evidence that political society evolved in a non-contractarian way, there is also none of the sort of evidence we should expect to find if contractarian events had been involved in its development. The point is stated clearly by David Hume: It is strange, that an act of mind, which every individual is supposed to have formed, and after he came to the use of reason too, otherwise it could have no authority; that this act, I say, should be so much unknown to all of them, that, over the face of the whole earth, there scarcely remain any traces or memory of it.  THE HISTORICAL CRITICISM OF THE CONTRACT IS RIGHT  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.88.  As an account of the history of states, then, even the Althusian version of the contract theory, and the ancient notion of a contract between people and ruler which it incorporates, are highly imperfect. And the problems on this score are much greater for the 'classical' version of contract theory, which portrays the state as a creation of numerous individuals (or heads of families) contracting together, and supposes that subsequent generations of citizens adhere, one by one, to the original contract. Here the scepticism of Filmer and Hume as to the reality of such contracts seems highly persuasive. In sum, our answer to question (1) must be, Yes, the critics are right.  FICTITIOUS CONTRACT UNDERMINES CLASSICAL SOCIAL CONTRACT  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.89-90.  ln this case the entire notion that government is founded on contract is fictitious; a fact which is indeed fatal to contract theory in its standard form, that is, from Manegold to Locke. It is worth repeating why this is so. The theory of social contract, in its standard form, holds that the political obligation of peoples and individuals, and the limits of that obligation, derive from undertakings that they (and perhaps also their rulers have voluntarily given. If they have not in fact, given any such undertakings, no conclusion about their obligations can be derived in this way.  EVEN MOST PLAUSIBLE HISTORICAL THEORY OF THE CONTRACT HAS FLAWS  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.87-8.  Perhaps the most plausible, as a strictly historical account, is that of Althusius, which envisages the union of individuals into families and other private associations, of private associations into lesser public associations and of the lesser public associations into commonwealths. Althusius also incorporated the ancient concept of a contract between the people and its (future) ruler, both at the institution of the state and at the election of a new prince; and this element is not only plausible, but is even a reasonable interpretation of the constitution of some medieval European kingdoms. Nevertheless, as history, the Althusian theory suffers from several defects. First, the plausibility of the contract between people and ruler depends on one's willingness to allow that the people can act through representatives, and its accuracy as history requires that certain magnates, not delegated by the people, may be considered as occupying this representative role. Here, it is hard not to side with Filmer in rejecting such a notion. Second, it would not be sufficient if the constitutions of some particular medieval states did indeed incorporate a contract between ruler and people - for contract theory claims to be a general theory of legitimate government. And third, a degree of plausibility is not the same thing as actual historicity, and while the Althusian sequence of events may not be too implausible, this is not to say that it actually occurred (the sequence in its Aristotelian version, as a natural progression, may well seem the more plausible of the two).  PEOPLE IN STATE OF NATURE LACK CONTRACT SOPHISTICATION  ROBERT SOLOMON, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, A PASSION FOR JUSTICE, 1990, P.56.  But we are evidently very clever at figuring out what is good for us, and we are capable--according to the theory--of getting together and negotiating our personal and mutual interests and hammering out a contract that spells out the terms of our agreement and provides incentives and sanctions for our compliance. That is asking an awful lot from a first gathering of presumably primitive creatures who probably know very little about one another and certainly do not share even the beginnings of a language, much less the complicated legal concepts that are essential to contracts. Pre-social humanity was both remarkably sophisticated and, it seems, only grudgingly cooperative. The state of nature is one of those grand ancient myths with which people have always proved to themselves both how clever we have always been and how much better off we are now.  AMERICA DOESN'T PROVE THE VIABILITY OF PRIMITIVE SOCIAL CONTRACT  ROBERT SOLOMON, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, A PASSION FOR JUSTICE, 1990, P.57.  We do, of course, have an inspiring example of a society actually formed by virtue of such a contract, and that is our own. The "contract" is our Constitution. But, needless to say, it was not presocial savages who gathered together in Philadelphia two centuries ago. They were well-trained, highly skilled, and well-read lawyers and statesmen. (Some of their favorite reading was precisely the philosophical literature on the social contract.) And the society they "founded" was by no means society as such, society built up from the ground up, but a considerably improved version of the Western European (especially British) type of society that already existed in the colonies, in which property was already established, in which local laws against theft and murder and a thousand other crimes were already in place together with a system of punishment to enforce them. The social contract metaphor, on the other hand, presumes an outrageous pretension, that we can build society from scratch, and may have actually done so. The myth of the state of nature is an analysis of the raw ingredients we used to do this.  ORIGINAL LEGITIMACY DOESN'T ASSURE CONTINUING LEGITIMACY  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.89.  For example, it is widely held that the federal constitution of the United States of America is legitimate today, because it was agreed by legitimate procedures involving the representatives of the people involved in 1787 (and in later years, when other states acceded). No one would dream of questioning the legitimacy of the American government's authority on the grounds that later generations of citizens have been given no opportunity to consent to it; the (indirect) consent of the first generation is acknowledged to be sufficient, as well as (many would hold) necessary for this legitimacy. It takes the penetration of a Hume to show that this kind of thinking is sloppy and untenable.  CONTRACTARIANS CAN'T AGREE ON CONSISTENT FORM FOR IDEAL STATE  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.95-6.  What is essentially the same problem can be put in a different way. It is perhaps not hard to show that a given form of state is more advantageous for everyone than no state at all (though even this the anarchists, by definition, would deny). But there may be many such forms of state. How, then, can this mode of reasoning show which is the legitimate or best form of state, as contract theory down the centuries has sought to do? Just this difficulty accounts for the huge variety of state forms and constitutions that have been defended by different contract theorists - a variety which has been exemplified in the pages of this book, and is symptomatic of the problematic character of the contractarian idea.  SOCIAL DIVERSITY MAKES CONTRACTUALISM PROBLEMATIC  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.105.  Meanwhile, let us remind ourselves of the real reason why man's social nature raises problems for contract theory. That theory standardly rests on an assumption of a universal human nature, from which a universal contract can be derived. Yet if man is essentially social, and human societies are historically and culturally diverse then human nature will appear to be radically diverse also. The model of man used in social contract theory thus risks, as was said above, being not only unreal but arbitrary - what is taken to be human nature may be only one of innumerable possible human natures, and the temptation is great to construct the model just in such a way as to generate the desired conclusions.  CONTRACTUALISM CAN'T DEAL WITH MULTIPLE VIEWS OF GOOD  DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, PROFESSORS OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF WALES, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, 1994, P.26.  Any political authority which adopts strict neutrality towards the goods that individuals pursue is in danger of seeing the diversity of a plural culture disappear in the face of mass opinion. If, on the other hand, the state adopts a stance of protecting important components of a society's culture then it must necessarily abandon a strict impartiality between individual's choices and forms of life and assert grounds for preferring some ways of life above others. This cannot be done within the terms of contract arguments. Thus critics such as Taylor argue that even political liberalism needs more than the underpinnings of a neutralist contractarianism.  SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY FALSELY ASSUMES INNATE SELFISHNESS  ROBERT SOLOMON, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, A PASSION FOR JUSTICE, 1990, P.71.  Underlying the idea of a social contract to protect us from one another is the uncritical and inadequate notion that we are all basically selfish and competitive. It is as if our selfish desires occur naturally, quite apart from ethics or society, but our sense of justice is not natural at all. Against this, Plato argues that justice cannot be just a social convention but must be found in the nature of the soul of the agent. This means that selfishness cannot be so simply opposed to justice, and justice must be understood in terms of what kind of people we are and should be. Justice does not depend on a contract or on anyone's sense of obligation. Indeed, the ancient Greeks did not even have our overly contractual notion of "obligation." It is simply not true that all of us are basically selfish creatures who need contractual obligations to keep us in line. Indeed, holding simultaneously to the antagonistic concepts of "selfishness" and "obligation" makes any adequate conception of justice impossible.  HUMANS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN SOCIAL BEINGS  ROBERT SOLOMON, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, A PASSION FOR JUSTICE, 1990, P.151.  From the earliest transitional, quasi-human beings, Australopithecus and onward, we have been social animals with social instincts, born into and living in already established groups. We would certainly not have survived otherwise. A group of cooperating men can kill a saber-toothed tiger which could easily kill any of them individually. Our attachments to and dependency on not only our parents but our peers and our neighbors precede by hundreds of thousands of years (or more) our willingness to engage in negotiations and make explicit agreements. Our compassion and affection for one another, however threatened by mutual distrust, envy, and jealousy, and our sense of sociability and mutual cooperation, however threatened by ambition and deviousness, have a far more solid and unshakable basis than a possibly nonbinding rational agreement.  GENERAL SUSPICION OF SOCIETY IS SELF-DESTRUCTIVE  ROBERT SOLOMON, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, A PASSION FOR JUSTICE, 1990, P.151.  It is true that we are often suspicious of governments and rightly distrustful of the state in any form, but it is ultimately self-defeating if not self-destructive to be distrustful of society per se, even if in any particular case it makes perfectly good sense to be reflective and reform-minded about the character of one's own group or culture. We are social creatures, and the illusion of the self against society is no more than one of the dominant but very peculiar rules of reciprocal altruism in a society that has grown much too large and complex to have any simple rules.  HUMANS ARE UNLIKE THE WAY CONTRACT THEORISTS DESCRIBE THEM  ROBERT SOLOMON, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, A PASSION FOR JUSTICE, 1990, P.150-1.  We never were, never could have been, and never wanted to be the independent, autonomous creatures that Jean-Jacques Rousseau, expressing his own paranoia, fantasized about. We never were the selfish, nasty, brutal beings that Thomas Hobbes posited. We never were and never could be the purely rational beings that John Rawls envisions. We are not in any sense the independent and self-interested creatures that smart philosophy and bad biology make us out to be.  NATURAL SOCIABILITY DISPROVES THE CONTRACT  ROBERT SOLOMON, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, A PASSION FOR JUSTICE, 1990, P.149-50.  The prominent foundation of many current theories of justice--the so-called "social contract" and the contrasting "state of nature"--should be reconsidered within the context of this biological picture. It is all well and good to insist that this picture is merely hypothetical and in fact a thought-experiment to bring to light the rationality of certain social arrangements. But the fact is that certain deep assumptions are being made about justice and about human nature before that thought experiment even begins. One need not accept the hard determinist's view of the world and insist that what we are by nature determines what we must be in order to recognize that we are by nature certain sorts of creatures. We are, like wolves and chimps, products not just of our genes but of the conditions in which we find ourselves, which are, first and foremost, social conditions. That is where the state of nature theorists go so wrong; there is no individual in the state of nature, no war of all against all except in a few paranoid or polemical minds and in the self-justifying rhetoric of some Wall Street hostile takeover moguls. It is not just the fact of our sociability that is in question here; it is our natural constitution as social animals, in which reason may play a major role, but only because it becomes instrumental in the management of the increasing complications of our natural reciprocity.  HUMAN NATURE IS MEANINGLESS OUTSIDE A SOCIAL CONTEXT  ROBERT SOLOMON, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, A PASSION FOR JUSTICE, 1990, P.62.  It is against the twin mythology of a "state of nature," according to which we are all independent, autonomous beings, and a "social contract," according to which we are rational, mutually committed individuals, that my argument in this book is directed. My thesis is that it makes no sense to talk about human nature--whether as pure rationality or productivity and possessiveness--apart from those features that we cultivate and acquire in society, and at the same time that there is no need to bring in rationality as a corrective for an essentially selfish human nature. Our affiliations in society and with each other are not rational or a matter of self-interested calculation but a product of natural feelings and affections. It is selfishness and not society that is unnatural, and justice should not be conceived as a rational corrective to our natural human emotions.  SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY DENIES OUR ESSENTIALLY SOCIAL NATURE  ROBERT SOLOMON, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, A PASSION FOR JUSTICE, 1990, P.54-5.  One such grand theory rules our thinking today. It provides the starting point for our thinking and the ground rules for our conceptions and discussions about justice. It has all the intellectual elegance that the smartest philosophers of modern times have contributed, and it has all of the appeal that our most deeply felt political opinions can provide. It is a theory that has become labyrinthine in its development but is almost childishly simple in its basic conception. It is the theory that has come to be known as the theory of "the social contract," and it encompasses not only a theory of justice but a theory of human nature and our basic emotions and motivation as well. In its most basic formulation, it is the view that justice--and the very existence of society as such--is created and justified by the fact that we all agree to its principles because they ultimately serve each of our best interests. In many versions of the theory, justice becomes a matter of reason whose purpose is to counter and control the unruly and usually selfish dictates of our natural passions. I want to argue that such theories rather reduce reason to the mere calculation of self-interest and ignore or even deny our emotional and essentially social nature.  THE ORIGINAL CONTRACT ISN'T GROUNDED ON REASON  DAVID HUME, "OF THE ORIGINAL CONTRACT," IN HUME'S ETHICAL WRITINGS, ALASDAIR MACINTYRE, ED., 1748, P.258-9.  Were you to preach, in most parts of the world, that political connexions are founded altogether on voluntary consent or a mutual promise, the magistrate would soon imprison you, as seditious, for loosening the ties of obedience; if your friends did not before shut you up as delirious, for advancing such absurdities. It is strange, that an act of the mind, which every individual is supposed to have formed, and after he came to the use of reason too, otherwise it could have no authority; that this act, I say, should be so much unknown to all of them, that, over the face of the whole earth, there scarcely remain any traces or memory of it.  THE ORIGINAL CONTRACT LACKS AUTHORITY  DAVID HUME, "OF THE ORIGINAL CONTRACT," IN HUME'S ETHICAL WRITINGS, ALASDAIR MACINTYRE, ED., 1748, P.259.  But the contract, on which government is founded, is said to be the original contract; and consequently may be supposed too old to fall under the knowledge of the present generation. If the agreement, by which savage men first associated and conjoined their force, be here meant, this is acknowledged to be real; but being so ancient, and being obliterated by a thousand changes of government and princes, it cannot now be supposed to retain any authority. If we would say any thing to the purpose, we must assert, that every particular government, which is lawful, and which imposes any duty of allegiance on the subject, was, at first, founded on consent and a voluntary compact. But besides that this supposes the consent of the fathers to bind the children, even to the most remote generations, (which republican writers will never allow) besides this, I say, it is not justified by history or experience, in any age or country of the world.  THE LACK OF A CONTRACT CONCEPT IN ANTIQUITY PROVES IT INVALID  DAVID HUME, "OF THE ORIGINAL CONTRACT," IN HUME'S ETHICAL WRITINGS, ALASDAIR MACINTYRE, ED., 1748, P.273.  The only passage I meet with in antiquity, where the obligation of obedience to government is ascribed to a promise, is in Plato's Crito: where Socrates refuses to escape from prison, because he had tacitly promised to obey the laws. Thus he builds a tory consequence of passive obedience, on a whig foundation of the original contract. New discoveries are not to be expected in these matters. If scarce any man, till very lately, ever imagined that government was founded on compact, it is certain that it cannot, in general, have any such foundation.  FOR HUME, EXPERIENCE DENIES THE CONTRACT  DARIO CASTIGLIONE, LECTURER IN POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF EXETER, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, EDS., 1994, P.106-7.  According to Hume, the consensual theory of political obligation makes nonsense of people's own perception of the relationships in which they engage. What Hume referred to as the 'authority' of received opinion was in his view a forceful argument, not so much because these opinions matter in the courts of reason or philosophy, but because in common life received opinion is part of the very reality which needs to be explained. The apparent prescriptive value which Hume attributes to experience is not absolute, in the sense that there is no fixed record of experience which ought to be applied to our system of values; on the other hand, experience represents the limit of general philosophizing, because philosophy cannot overturn human nature. This kind of argument was of extreme importance in Hume's political philosophy, since he maintained that all sciences dealing with matters of fact - politics being one of them - are entirely based on experience. So, in rejecting experience, contract theorists were doing bad metaphysics. Moreover, by failing to recognize that some form of political obligation was at work in all of those instances where the consent of the people played no part - and, of course, these were by far the greatest number - they were unwittingly maintaining that political experience is only the product of unreason.  LACK OF GENERAL PUBLIC AWARENESS REFUTES THE CONTRACT  DARIO CASTIGLIONE, LECTURER IN POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF EXETER, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, EDS., 1994, P.110.  According to Hume, people's lack of awareness, particularly in the case of posterity, cuts at the root of consensual theories of political obligation because it amounts to a clear proof that no act of the will has taken place: 'A tacit promise is, where the will is signified by other more diffuse signs than those of speech; but a will there must certainly be in the case, and that can never escape the person's notice, who exerted it, however silent or tacit'. Since a necessary condition for an act of the will is to be known to the person who exercises it, according to Hume, people's lack of awareness of having engaged in a covenant is conclusive proof that such an unknown promise is no promise at all.  THE GOOD LIFE ISN'T PRIOR TO OR OPPOSED TO SOCIETY  ROBERT SOLOMON, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, A PASSION FOR JUSTICE, 1990, P.152.  We are bound by our biology, our culture, our circumstances, and our characters. It is no argument against freedom and autonomy to say, against so much of recent philosophy and ideology, that freedom and autonomy have their limits. Nor is it an argument or excuse for excessive government to insist that society is prior to individual rights. The Greeks had it right: to live a good life, live in a good society. The idea that the good life is something prior to and opposed to society as such is a bit of insanity that only the anonymity and agoraphobia of modern urban society could inspire.  CONTRACTUALISM CAN ALIENATE US FROM OUR EMOTIONS  ROBERT SOLOMON, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, A PASSION FOR JUSTICE, 1990, P.31-3.  Throughout this book, I will have much to say about this hardly flattering model of "natural" humanity and the formation of society by way of a mutually agreed-upon contract. It is this model, in its many variations, that forms the foundation for just about every theory of justice now in the books or on the drawing boards. For now, however, I just want to point out the viciousness of the dichotomy it presumes--our natural inclinations (most of them selfish) on the one side, our social and contractual obligations and expectations on the other. It is, to begin with, a dubious distinction--between inclinations and obligations, between our natural existence and our social existence, between the natural disposition of our feelings and the rationality that allows us to form society and then live in it. But it is a vicious dichotomy, emotion versus reason, and these two classic metaphors-- the "state of nature" and "the social contract"--have a dangerous appeal for us. They make us distance ourselves from our emotions (falsely conceived of as "natural" and presocial) and encourage us to entertain the appealing fiction that we live in society by voluntary choice rather than just because we happened to be born and raised here. The metaphors suggest a convenient way of defusing unwanted obligations not of our own choosing and defending the most unreasonable expectations as "rights." They provide a flattering way of fooling ourselves into thinking that we are above nature and smarter than our emotions, rational creatures who have taken our existence--and especially our social existence--into our own hands.  SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY IS BASED ON HATRED AND RESENTMENT  ROBERT SOLOMON, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, A PASSION FOR JUSTICE, 1990, P.61.  I think we should be extremely suspicious of all of those social thinkers who suggest that a theory of justice is an attempt to establish justice by creating society anew. Beginning with Plato's Republic, philosophers have developed theories of justice that try to replace their own society with another, better one, and the social contract is but the latest intellectual device for doing this. But the attempt to replace one's society suggests that the motivation behind these various theories of justice, however couched in the language of rationality, consists largely of such emotions as contempt and resentment. Could it even be that some of the quest is simple self-hatred, as in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's attempt to design a society that would no longer have room for people like himself?  CONTRACTUALISM IS UNDERMINED BY THE REQUIREMENT FOR UNANIMITY  DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, PROFESSORS OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF WALES, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, 1994, P.18-9.  Filmer went to great pains to expose the absurdity of contractarian arguments, and it is this aspect of his thought that is widely considered the most penetrating. If people are naturally free and equal, he argues, and if God granted property in common, then it would require a unanimous agreement to take anything out of the common stock, or to institute an authority over them, a condition, in his view, that was simply impractical.  POLITICAL SOCIETY ISN'T A CLUB WE VOLUNTARILY JOIN  VICENTE MEDINA, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, BERGEN COMMUNITY COLLEGE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES: POLITICAL OBLIGATION OR ANARCHY?, 1990, P.151.  Yet political society is not like a club that we voluntarily join, voluntarily accepting the obligations attached to our membership. Political society is more like a family: we are born into it without any choice. We use the benefits provided by political society without voluntarily accepting them in any real sense; we just take these benefits for granted.  POLITICAL COMMITMENTS DON'T JUSTIFY IMMORAL ACTS  VICENTE MEDINA, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, BERGEN COMMUNITY COLLEGE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES: POLITICAL OBLIGATION OR ANARCHY?, 1990, P.147.  If we agree that political obligation should be understood as a self-assumed obligation that we voluntarily impose on ourselves, as when we promise to do something, or when we enter into a contractual relation, then most people in society do not appear to be bound by this political obligation. Even naturalized citizens do not promise to obey the state and its institutions unconditionally, since they cannot give up moral agency on demand, as if selling themselves into slavery. One should only consent to do that which is morally acceptable. Individuals can always assent to do something morally wrong, but it does not follow that they are morally obliged to do so. On the contrary, once we recognize that we have promised to do something immoral, we ought not to fulfill our promise.  ECOLOGICAL SCARCITY UNDERMINES SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY  WILLIAM OPHULS, FORMER PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, NORTHWESTERN AND A. STEPHEN BOYAN, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, ECOLOGY AND THE POLITICS OF SCARCITY REVISITED, 1992, P.216.  Ecological scarcity thus forces us to confront once again, perhaps in a particularly acute form, the hard realities and cruel dilemmas of classical politics, from which four centuries of abnormal abundance have shielded us. As a result, we shall have to reexamine fundamental political questions in the light of ecology and construct a new steady-state paradigm of politics based on ecological premises instead of on the individualistic, hedonistic, materialistic, and anthropocentric premises of bourgeois "social contract" theory (see Box 22). The alternative is to let the shape of the steady-state paradigm be decided for us by accepting the outcome of current trends toward technocracy.  LIBERAL DEMOCRACY CAN'T COPE WITH ECOLOGICAL SCARCITY  WILLIAM OPHULS, FORMER PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, NORTHWESTERN AND A. STEPHEN BOYAN, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, ECOLOGY AND THE POLITICS OF SCARCITY REVISITED, 1992, P.3.  This book argues, to the contrary, that the external reality of ecological scarcity has cut the ground out from under our own political system, making merely reformist policies of ecological management all but useless. At best, reforms can postpone the inevitable for a few decades at the probable cost of increasing the severity of the eventual day of reckoning. In brief, liberal democracy as we know it-that is, our theory or "paradigm'' of politics (see Box 1)-is doomed by ecological scarcity; we need a completely new political philosophy and set of political institutions. Moreover, it appears that the basic principles of modern industrial civilization are also incompatible with ecological scarcity and that the whole ideology of modernity growing out of the Enlightenment, especially such central tenets as individualism, may no longer be viable.
HOBBES WAS RIGHT! GOVERNMENT IS INITIATED BY AN ORIGINAL CONTRACT  THOMAS HOBBES, LEVIATHAN (PENGUIN EDITION), 1651, P.228-9.  A Common-wealth is said to be Instituted, when a Multitude of men do Agree, and Covenant, every one, with every one, that to whatsoever Man, or Assembly of Men, shall be given by the major part, the Right to Present the Person of them all, (that is to say, to be their Representative ;) every one, as well he that Voted for it, as he that Voted against it, shall Authorise all the Actions and Judgments, of that Man, or Assembly of men, in the same manner, as if they were his own, to the end, to live peaceably amongst themselves, and be protected against other men.  THE HOBBESIAN CONTRACT PROVIDES THE BASIS FOR LEGITIMATE POLITIC  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.10-1.  The elements of the Hobbesian theory are, briefly, these. Men are exhibited in what has come to be called the state of nature (Hobbes himself in the Leviathan calls it the estate of nature, or the natural condition of mankind). This is a definition of what men and their relations are naturally like, that is, in the absence of any deliberately contrived institutions. Contrary to the Aristotelian view, it is a non-political condition, devoid of any political authority. In it all men have a natural right of liberty, but it is none the less a patently unsatisfactory state of affairs, and reason clearly demonstrates the preferability of political society under an effective authority. This must therefore be established by general agreement, by what Hobbes calls a covenant of every man with every man, or, in other words, a social contract. This contract is, then, the basis of legitimate political authority and of political obligation. In making it and abiding by it, Hobbes says, men obey the law of nature, the true moral law. Hobbes' theory thus combines with the idea of social contract the ideas of state of nature, natural right, and law of nature.  HOBBES WAS RIGHT - LACK OF FORMALIZED RULES MEANS ANARCHY  JAMES BUCHANAN, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC, ANARCHISM, J. ROWLAND PENNOCK AND JOHN CHAPMAN, EDS., 1978, P.39.  The only alternative seems to be found in the distribution of limits on individuals, spheres of action that would be found in the total absence of formalized rules, that is, in genuine Hobbesian anarchy. In this setting, some "equilibrium," some sustainable distribution of allowable activities would emerge. This distribution would depend on the relative strengths and abilities of persons to acquire and to maintain desirable goods and assets. The "law of the jungle" would be controlling, and no serious effort could be made to attribute moral legitimacy to the relative holdings of persons.  POLITICAL OBLIGATION IS OWED TO WHOEVER HAS POWER  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.56.  All obligation of obedience, indeed, depends on the sovereign's power, and when he loses it, he loses his authority also. Our obligation is always to the ruler with effective power (on which peace depends). A sovereign who acquires power by force, possibly by overthrowing a previous government, has exactly the same authority, and is owed the same obligation, as a sovereign established by an original or other contract (HL, 272,252). The rationale of his authority is exactly the same, and the fact that he may have acquired his power by illegal and unjust means - means which Hobbes unreservedly condemns - is irrelevant. It was doctrines such as these that permitted Hobbes to rally to Cromwell in 1651, and made him so suspect to royalists and political traditionalists generally.  REASON REQUIRES SACRIFICING THE RIGHT TO AGGRESS  THOMAS HOBBES, LEVIATHAN (PENGUIN EDITION), 1651, P.190.  From this Fundamentall Law of Nature, by which men are commanded to endeavour Peace, is derived this second Law; That a man be willing, when others are so too, as farre-forth, as for Peace, and (65) defence of himselfe he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himselfe. For as long as every man holdeth this Right, of doing any thing he liketh; so long are all men in the condition of Warre. But if other men will not lay down their Right, as well as he; then there is no Reason for any one, to devest himselfe of his: For that were to expose himselfe to Prey, (which no man is bound to) rather than to dispose himselfe to Peace.  HOBBES' THEORY WAS A MAJOR ADVANCE  BERTRAND RUSSELL, A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY, 1945, P.556.  The merits of Hobbes appear most clearly when he is contrasted with earlier political theorists. He is completely free from superstition; he does not argue from what happened to Adam and Eve at the of the Fall. He is clear and logical; his ethics, right or wrong, is completely intelligible, and does not involve the use of any dubious concepts. Apart from Machiavelli, who is much more limited, he is the first really modern writer on political theory. Where he is wrong, he is wrong from over-simplification, not because the basis of his thought is unreal and fantastic. For this reason, he is still worth refuting.  HOBBES THEORY WAS ORIGINAL AND IMPRESSIVE  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.46.  Hobbes's version of the social contract theory is philosophically the most impressive of all. It is also the most innovative, both philosophically and politically. Politically, it is highly unusual in that it used contract theory to defend and uphold the authority of rulers, indeed a (nearly) absolute authority. Of all the many previous contract theorists we have surveyed, only one - Engelbert of Volkersdorf - was also a supporter of secular authority (that of the Emperor), and even he can hardly he said to have used contract theory much or very convincingly to that end. Philosophically, Hobbes was just as original, and in too many ways to yield to easy summary.	HOBBES WAS WRONG! HOBBES MISUNDERSTOOD HUMAN NATURE  ROBERT SOLOMON, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, A PASSION FOR JUSTICE, 1990, P.106.  But, of course, it was not stones, volcanoes, and monsoons that Hobbes had in mind. He was referring to people, or whatever creatures immediately preceded people, in the so-called "state of nature," humanity before it was socialized and civilized, humanity not yet fully human. His thesis was that there is nothing in either nature or human nature that makes us just, except for the conventions and laws of society. In nature, as opposed to society, there is only unceasing competition and brutality, "red in tooth and claw." But I want to argue that this is an inadequate vision of nature as well as an inaccurate view of human nature. Ever since the Greeks and before (for instance, in much of the Old Testament), "nature"--and in particular the notion of the "bestial"--has gotten a raw deal. If, as Rousseau charges, we err by projecting back onto nature vices that have only been cultivated by society so, too, I would argue, we flatter ourselves by supposing that such virtues as a sense of justice are unique to us and wholly foreign to nature.  HOBBES WAS WRONG--PEOPLE AREN'T NATURALLY VIOLENT AND SELFISH  ROBERT SOLOMON, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, A PASSION FOR JUSTICE, 1990, P.108.  On the other hand, it is too easy to move from the natural violence of tooth and claw to the conclusion that we too are by nature part of that Darwinian panorama, except for the conventions of society and the rational control cultivated by society. But this seems wrong on at least two counts: First of all, it presumes a view of human nature that is as dubious as it is unflattering. I have already argued at length that we are not--contra Hobbes--naturally violent and selfish creatures who abstain from attacking one another only because of legal restraint and awe for the power of the state.  HOBBES AND ROUSSEAU OVEREMPHASIZE THE SURVIVAL MOTIVE  ROBERT SOLOMON, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, A PASSION FOR JUSTICE, 1990, P.117.  But the question is based on the obviously fraudulent presupposition that every individual strives first and foremost for its own interests and survival. Hobbes marked this off as the one natural right that no state or power could abridge, and even Rousseau took individual self-preservation to be the preeminent natural sentiment. Moral philosophers have long struggled against the presumption that every human action--moral or not--is ultimately motivated by self-interest, and evolutionists used to take it as a matter of course that the struggle for individual survival and self-preservation is the first principle of biology. But moral philosophers have come to the conclusion, in various ways, that not all motivation is self-interested and that moral motivation, in particular, is not and perhaps must not be self-interested. Evolutionary biologists have similarly come to the conclusion that the struggle for survival and self-preservation, even if primary, does not take place on the level of the individual organism.  HOBBES CHARACTERISTICS DESCRIBED AS NATURAL WERE LEARNED VICES  ROBERT SOLOMON, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, A PASSION FOR JUSTICE, 1990, P.151-2.  Our so-called autonomy and individuality are not natural endowments at all but, quite the contrary, characteristics learned and cultivated in a particular kind of society, as are our rationality and our ability to negotiate contracts and other agreements with other people. Hobbesian greed and selfishness are not so much aspects of "human nature" as they are learned and cultivated social vices. (Rousseau was quite right when he diagnosed the Hobbesian "state of nature" as in fact a pathological projection of a certain sort of society, ascribing to nature the vices of Hobbes's own society.) If only Rousseau had followed through with his own observation and not himself ascribed so much to "natural man" that could only have been given him by society. It is true that we are naturally benign, as Rousseau so happily argued, but we are so not because we are indifferent to our fellow creatures but because we are already beholden to them and responsive to their behavior. Our "natural goodness" is nothing but reciprocal altruism in circumstances of plenty and in the absence of the more vicious status-games of the world Rousseau rightly so despised.  HOBBES VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE ENCOURAGES A PASSION FOR VENGEANCE  ROBERT SOLOMON, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, A PASSION FOR JUSTICE, 1990, P.278.  How did our passion for retribution--our need for vengeance--come about? I think that my evolutionary speculations in Chapter 3 go a long way in answering this question. In that chapter, I was primarily concerned to account for our "natural" sympathies and our sense of fellowship with others, as opposed to the antagonistic, competitive view of the "state of nature" described by writers like Hobbes.  THE FEAR OF DEATH ISN'T EVERYONE'S DOMINANT MOTIVE  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.57.  Hobbes's intellectual audacity is remarkable, but in several respects problematic. He wished to demonstrate that for every human being, obedience to the sovereign is a necessary deduction from his (or her) very nature. For this he relies, crucially, on the postulate that every human being's strongest passion is necessarily aversion to death. But must it be? Was the Civil War due purely to men's failure to appreciate their true interest? What of those who might have claimed that their strongest passion was a desire for eternal bliss in a life after death, or to glorify God? Hobbes's answer is that God commands the laws of nature, and thereby obedience to the sovereign (HL, 217). But this really introduces into the argument an extraneous element out of keeping with its general tenor.  HOBBES' ONE-SIDED VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE UNDERMINES HIS POLITICS  VICENTE MEDINA, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, BERGEN COMMUNITY COLLEGE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES: POLITICAL OBLIGATION OR ANARCHY?, 1990, P.13.  One of the basic problems of Hobbes's political philosophy is precisely his one-sided characterization of human nature as essentially antisocial. It is true that people sometimes struggle for what they want or need by using violence. It is also true that some people distrust others and that some are concerned with their reputations. Yet, from this it does not follow that these are the essential characteristics of human nature. What does follow is that various individuals act from various motives and various reasons in their everyday life. We cannot encapsulate human nature, as Hobbes tries to do' by reducing it to a certain number of antisocial traits and leaving out other traits.  HOBBES NEGLECTS HUMANS' SOCIAL NATURE  DAVID GAUTHIER, PROFESSOR OF PHILSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH, MORALS BY AGREEMENT, 1986, P.319-20.  Hobbes offers the most unified and compelling psychological portrayal of economic man. But the society that with matchless consistency he generates from purely asocial motivations, is primarily an instrument for cutting the costs of human interaction, for eliminating the hostility found in the natural condition of humankind. It is true that when Hobbes catalogues the ills of this natural condition, he refers to the lack of arts, letters and society (that is social intercourse), of commodious building, navigation, and mechanical contrivances, but the emphasis is on the shortness and nastiness of life. Hobbes had little sense of the positive benefits of interaction, and no sense at all, or so it would seem, of the progressive benefits-of the prospect of, not merely an improved lot, but a continually improving lot, for human beings in a condition of society. The psychological grasp of asociality implicit in Hobbes's argument is thus not matched by a comparable degree of social or economic insight.  HOBBES' THEORY FAILS - IT'S BASED ON EXTREME CASE CIVIL WAR  LEO STRAUSS, POLITICAL THEORIST, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, NATURAL RIGHT AND HISTORY, 1953, P.196.  Hobbes's political doctrine is meant to be universally applicable and hence to be applicable also and especially in extreme cases. This indeed may be said to be the boast of the classic doctrine of sovereignty: that it gives its due to the extreme case, to what holds good in emergency situations, whereas those who question that doctrine are accused of not looking beyond the pale of normality. Accordingly, Hobbes built his whole moral and political doctrine on observations regarding the extreme case; for the experience on which his doctrine of the state of nature is based is the experience of civil war. It is in the extreme situation, when the social fabric has completely broken down, that there comes to sight the solid foundation on which every social order must ultimately rest: the fear of violent death, which is the strongest force in human life. Yet Hobbes was forced to concede that the fear of violent death is only "commonly'' or in most cases the most powerful force. The principle which was supposed to make possible a political doctrine of universal applicability, then, is not universally valid and therefore is useless in what, from Hobbes's point of view, is the most important case-the extreme case. For how can one exclude the possibility that precisely in the extreme situation the exception will prevail?
JOHN LOCKE WAS RIGHT! THE CONTRACT IS JUSTIFIED BY NATURAL FREEDOM AND EQUALITY  JOHN LOCKE, SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT, (HACKETT EDITION), 1690, P.52.  Men being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent. The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against any, that are not of it. This any number of men may do, because it injures not the freedom of the rest; they are left as they were in the liberty of the state of nature. When any number of men have so consented to make one community or government, they are thereby presently incorporated, and make one body politic, wherein the majority have a right to act and conclude the rest. THE STATE OF NATURE IS A STATE OF FREEDOM AND EQUALITY  JOHN LOCKE, SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT, (HACKETT EDITION), 1690, P.8.  To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man. A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.  THE STRONGEST RULE IN THE STATE OF NATURE  JOHN LOCKE, SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT, (HACKETT EDITION), 1690, P.66.  Thirdly, In the state of nature there often wants power to back and support the sentence when right, and to give it due execution. They who by any injustice offended, will seldom fail, where they are able, by force to make good their injustice; such resistance many times makes the punishment dangerous, and frequently destructive, to those who attempt it.  REASON SUPPORTS THE SANCTITY OF LIFE, LIBERTY, AND PROPERTY  JOHN LOCKE, SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT, (HACKETT EDITION), 1690, P.9.  The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another's pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another's uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our's.  PEOPLE MUST PRESERVE LIFE, LIBERTY, AND PROPERTY OF OTHERS  JOHN LOCKE, SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT, (HACKETT EDITION), 1690, P.9.  Every one, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station wilfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.  LOCKE OPPOSES ARBITRARY GOVERNMENT  C.B. MACPHERSON, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, INTRODUCTION TO LOCKE'S SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT, 1980, P.XX.  His argument against arbitrary government has attracted most attention, and it is indeed important. Men, being so appetitive and contentious, have no choice but to hand over all their natural rights and powers, including their jurisdiction over their own properties, to a sovereign civil society ( 120), but it would contradict the purpose for which they did so if they were to authorize an absolute or arbitrary government ( 137). Hence Locke's insistence that the right of taxation must rest with the majority of the people, or with the majority of their elected representatives (which means, as we have seen, the majority of those elected by the property owners). Apart from this right of taxation, which only the majority of their representatives may exercise, no government can ever have any right to take any part of any man's property without his own consent ( 138). Even absolute power, which must sometimes be granted (as to military commanders over their subordinates), is not arbitrary power: it gives the power of life and death but not a power over a soldier's property ( 139).  GOVERNMENT POWER IS LIMITED  C.B. Macpherson, Professor of Political Economy, University of Toronto, introduction to Locke's SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT, 1980, p.xx.  Not only are the powers of any government thus limited: the whole power of any constituted legislature, and therefore of any other part of a government, is revocable: the legislative power (which must be supreme within any frame of government) "being only a fiduciary power to act for certain ends, there remains still in the people a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative, when they find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them" ( 149, cf. 222). The authority of any government is conditional on its performing the functions for which it was entrusted with power.  ABSOLUTE MONARCHY IS INCONSISTENT WITH CIVIL SOCIETY  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.62-3.  'Absolute monarchs are but men', Locke reminds us, and great as are the inconveniences of the state of nature due to men's being judges in their own case, yet they would have done better to remain in that state than, when quitting it, to agree 'that all of them but one should be under the restraint of laws, but that he should still retain all the liberty of the state of nature, increased with power, and made licentious by impunity. This is to think that men are so foolish that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by polecats or foxes, but are content, nay think it safely, to be devoured by lions.' This is a deservedly famous piece of rhetoric. But Locke has a subtler and no less effective argument: absolute monarchy is actually inconsistent with civil society, for the absolute ruler remains judge in his own case - between him and his subjects there is no common, impartial judge, and a common impartial judge is precisely the institution that distinguishes civil society from the state of nature (L, 9,47,45).  EVEN IN THE STATE OF NATURE, FAIR PUNISHMENT IS PROPORTIONATE  JOHN LOCKE, SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT, (HACKETT EDITION), 1690, P.10.  And thus, in the state of nature, one man comes by a power over another; but yet no absolute or arbitrary power, to use a criminal, when he has got him in his hands, according to the passionate heats, or boundless extravagancy of his own will; but only to retribute to him, so far as calm reason and conscience dictate, what is proportionate to his transgression, which is so much as may serve for reparation and restraint: for these two are the only reasons, why one man may lawfully do harm to another, which is that we call punishment.    THE LOCKEAN APPROACH TO GOVERNMENT HAS MOST BENEFITED HUMANITY  BERTRAND RUSSELL, A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY, 1945, P.647.  Enlightened self-interest is, of course, not the loftiest of motives, but those who decry it often substitute, by accident or design, motives which are much worse, such as hatred, envy, and love of power. On the whole, the school which owed its origin to Locke, and which preached enlightened self-interest, did more to increase human happiness, and less to increase human misery, than was done by the schools which despised it in the name of heroism and self-sacrifice. I do not forget the horrors of early industrialism, but these, after all, were mitigated within the system. And I set against them Russian serfdom, the evils of war and its aftermath of fear and hatred, and the inevitable obscurantism of those who attempt to preserve ancient systems when they have lost their vitality.	JOHN LOCKE WAS WRONG! LOCKE'S DEPICTION OF THE STATE OF NATURE IS CONTRADICTORY  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.60.  Locke thus denies that the state of nature is a state of war. What defines the state of nature, he says, is that men live together without a 'common judge with authority' over them; but this state is (or at least should be) a state of 'peace, good will, mutual assistance and preservation'. Yet Locke admits that, given the lack of a common judge, 'the state of war once begun continues' and that escaping from 'this state of war...is one great reason of men's putting themselves into society and quitting the state of nature' (L, 11-12). Locke has here attempted an impossible amalgam of the Hobbesian account with a contrary stoic-derived 'golden age' conception of the state of nature - the latter being quite unsuited to a contract theory of government. In the end, therefore, he has not succeeded in disagreeing with Hobbes on this point.  LOCKE FAILS TO EFFECTIVELY JUSTIFY A NATURAL LAW  JAN NARVESON, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO, THE LIBERTARIAN IDEA, 1988, P.148-9.  Many philosophers, such as Aquinas and John Locke, have held that there is a "natural law". This idea was not clarified by these philosophers, although that they had fairly explicit ideas about its content. Aquinas, for example, held that natural law (like all law) had to be for the "common good". And Locke in particular held that the natural law forbids all to refrain from injuring others in their "life, health, liberty, and possessions". Their lack of articulation of the concept of natural law, however, has left them short of adherents among contemporary philosophers trained in the analytic tradition. Insofar as they simply appeal to natural law without further explication or defense, they are liable to all of the charges I have laid to the door of intuitionism in all its forms.  LOCKE'S VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE WAS FUNDAMENTALLY AMBIGUOUS  C.B. MACPHERSON, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, INTRODUCTION TO LOCKE'S SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT, 1980, P.XIV.  This ambiguity about the state of nature simply reflects Locke's fundamental ambiguity about human nature. In the first picture men generally are naturally reasonable enough to impose on themselves individually the moral rules needed to curb their contentious appetites. In the second picture they are not: the greater part are "no strict observers of equity and justice" ( 123), and none can secure themselves individually. Locke needed both these inconsistent assumptions about human nature in order to make his case, which was that individuals must be understood to have agreed to give up their natural rights and powers to an all-powerful civil society, but that the civil society (themselves when so united) could not conceivably have delegated absolute or arbitrary power to any government, but must be understood to have retained the right to alter the frame of government whenever they (acting by a majority of themselves) so desired.  LOCKE ENTRENCHED CLASS DISTINCTIONS TO UPHOLD PRIVATE PROPERTY  C.B. MACPHERSON, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, INTRODUCTION TO LOCKE'S SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT, 1980, P.XVIII-XIX.  This creates a further problem. If there was the class-division be ore the institution of civil society and government, and if the purpose of instituting them was the protection of this unequal property, why would those without property agree to enter civil society and thus give up their natural right of protecting themselves) They would have good reason to do so if they were to become full members of civil society, for then they would be the majority. But if they were full members they might use their majority power to legislate a levelling of property. Locke did not see this as a problem for he never intended them to be full members. He took for granted that the right to vote in elections to the legislature was to be confined to the propertied class. Representation of cities and counties should be in proportion to the amount they contributed in taxes (they were to be fully bound by the laws: everyone is obliged, whether "his possession be of land, to him and his heirs for ever, or a lodging only for a week; or whether it be barely travelling freely on the highway" ( 119). Both the exclusion of those without estate from the law-making process, and their subjection to the law, were required by the very purpose of civil government, the protection of life, liberty and estate.  LOCKE FAILS TO JUSTIFY MAJORITY RULE  Bertrand Russell, A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY, 1945, p.632-3.  The question of taxation might be supposed to raise difficulties for Locke, but he perceives none. The expense of government, he says, must be borne by the citizens, but with their consent, i.e., with that of the majority. But why, one asks, should the consent of the majority suffice? Every man's consent, we were told, is necessary to justify the government in taking any part of his property. I suppose his tacit consent to taxation in accordance with majority decision is presumed to be involved in his citizenship, which, in turn, is presumed to be voluntary. All this is, of course, sometimes quite contrary to the facts. Most men have no effective liberty of choice as to the State to which they shall belong, and very few have liberty, nowadays, to belong to no State. Suppose, for example, you are a pacifist, and disapprove of war. Wherever you live, the government will take some of your property for warlike purposes. With what justice can you be compelled to submit to this? I can imagine many answers, but I do not think any of them are consistent with Locke's principles. He thrusts in the maxim of majority rule without adequate consideration, and offers no transition to it from his individualistic premisses, except the mythical social contract.  LOCKE'S HISTORICAL EXAMPLES DON'T EXPLAIN THE ORIGIN GOVERNMENT  JEREMY WALDRON, PROFESSOR OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, EDS., 1994, P.58.  Much the same is true of the instances that Locke cites of contractualist foundation. For the deliberate institution of government by free and equal individuals, we are given the classical stories of the origins of Rome and Venice, and the founding of the Italian city of Terentum by a group of Spartan exiles under Palantus in the eighth century BC. And we are told that 'no Examples are so frequent in History. . . as those of Men withdrawing themselves . . . from the Jurisdiction they were born under, and the Family or Community they were bred up in, and setting up new Governments in other places'. But these cases are just not particularly telling, since they involve, not the foundation of a state by people who till then had had no experience of the political, but the foundation of a new state by exiles from an old one. As an account of the original development of the political, they tell us nothing at all.  LOCKE'S HISTORICAL SUPPORT FOR THE CONTRACT ISN'T COMPELLING  JEREMY WALDRON, PROFESSOR OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, EDS., 1994, P.57-8.  We have seen already how sensitive Locke was to the historical implausibility of the contract account, to the 'mighty objection' often raised that history reveals no instances of 'a Company of Men, independent and equal one amongst another, that met together, and in this way began and set up a government'. He responds to the difficulty in a number of ways. Sometimes he writes as though the challenge was purely and simply to produce 'instances' of people in the state of nature, or 'instances' of the explicit contractual founding of a political society. Thus, he writes sometimes as though the production of a single counter-example would suffice to refute the objection, as though he were trying to establish nothing more than the bare logical possibility of the contractarian hypothesis. 'To those that say there were never any men in the State of Nature', he responds by adducing Garcilaso de la Vega's account of the two men of different nationalities who found it necessary to bargain together for subsistence goods after they had been shipwrecked fortuitously on the same desert island. But of course no example could be less apt if Locke's intention here is to offer a historical instance of what things were like in the first great era of human history or pre-history. Pedro Serrano and the other shipwreck victim are not merely stuck in the most bizarre and exceptional circumstances, but they are themselves castaways from civilization and their ability to contract with one another, as much as their ability to survive in these peculiar circumstances, arguably derives from their previous socialization. If anything, the Garcilaso case favours something like a Filmerian anthropology - as a classic example of the exception that proves the rule.  LOCKE DEFINITELY BELIEVED IN A HISTORICAL CONTRACT  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.60.  In Locke's case there is no room for doubt that he believed the state of nature to be a historical phase however brief - prior to government (L, 9,51-2 and passim). That apart, his account of the contrast gives every appearance of aiming to correct Hobbes's version.  LOCKE ASSUMES AN ACTUAL, HISTORICAL CONTRACT  VICENTE MEDINA, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, BERGEN COMMUNITY COLLEGE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES: POLITICAL OBLIGATION OR ANARCHY?, 1990, P.29.  Locke, unlike Hobbes, Rousseau, and Kant, uses the concept of the state of nature in a historical sense. He thinks of it as a historical fact set at some point in the distant past. Like Hobbes, he argues that the concept of the state of nature amounts to the absence of any political society; however, he does not think that the absence of a political society precludes all other forms of social relations.  RESIDENCE DOESN'T CREATE A DUTY OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION  VICENTE MEDINA, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, BERGEN COMMUNITY COLLEGE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES: POLITICAL OBLIGATION OR ANARCHY?, 1990, P.38.  According to Locke, a legitimate government is any government that respects natural rights. If this is the case, then there is a general obligation to obey such a government as long as we openly or tacitly consent to it, provided it does not violate natural rights. It does not seem to follow, however, that because we live in a particular community we consent to all the rules and norms of this community. What follows is that we should, as a matter of prudential consideration (self-interest), consent to at least some of its rules and norms. Otherwise, we would not be able to live in such a community because we would be permanently ostracized by the rest of its members, or we would be physically eliminated either by being jailed or executed. If we do not follow certain rules of survival, such as not killing innocent people or not stealing from them, we would not last long as members of a community. But, I would argue against Locke, even if we were to live under a legitimate government (one that respects important natural or moral rights) we would not have a general obligation to obey it. The reason is that even a legitimate government is not infallible and can sometimes make unjust rules. Thus, the fact that we live under its jurisdiction is not morally sufficient to obligate us to consent to all of its rules. We, as moral agents, have a greater obligation not to consent to unjust rules.  FOR LOCKE, THE ONLY WAY TO REFUSE CONSENT IS VOLUNTARY EXILE  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.66-7.  These confusions aside, Locke's extension of the concept of consent to include 'the very being of any one within the territories' of a government has attracted much criticism. If consent is understood as broadly as this, is there any way in which a person could withhold his consent? Is Locke really allowing individuals any freedom of choice in the matter, after all? The answer is that, for Locke, there is only one way to refuse consent to an established government's authority and that is, to keep out of its territory, or if in it, to leave it.  LOCKE LACKS AN EFFECTIVE MEANS FOR RESOLVING DISPUTES OF PEOPLE  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.84.  For his part, Locke argued that the judge of whether a ruler had breached his trust should be 'the people', but without specifying any possible way in which it could exercise this role. So Locke's solution to the problem of adjudication is scarcely satisfactory, while those of the papalists and Calvinists seem too much like special pleading.  LOCKE FAILS TO ESTABLISH FAIR PROCESS FOR DETERMINING GENERAL GOOD  BERTRAND RUSSELL, A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY, 1945, P.631-2.  The power of the government by contract, we are told, never extends beyond the common good. A moment ago I quoted a sentence as to the powers of government, ending "and all this only for the public good." It seems not to have occurred to Locke to ask who was to be the judge of the common good. Obviously if the government is the judge it will always decide in its own favour. Presumably Locke would say that the majority of the citizens is to be the judge, But many questions have to be decided too quickly for it to be possible to ascertain the opinion of the electorate; of these peace and war are perhaps the most important. The only remedy in such cases is to allow to public opinion or its representatives some power--such as impeachment--of subsequently punishing executive officers for acts that are found to have been unpopular. But often this is a very inadequate remedy.  LOCKE'S PHILOSOPHY IS ANTIQUATED  BERTRAND RUSSELL, A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY, 1945, P.640.  Locke's political philosophy was, on the whole, adequate and useful until the industrial revolution. Since then, it has been increasingly unable to tackle the important problems. The power of property, as embodied in vast corporations, grew beyond anything imagined by Locke. The necessary functions of the State--for example, in education--increased enormously. Nationalism brought about an alliance, sometimes an amalgamation, of economic and political power, making war the principal means of competition. The single separate citizen has no longer the power and independence that he had in Locke's speculations. Our age is one of organization, and its conflicts are between organizations, not between separate individuals. The state of nature, as Locke says, still exists as between States. A new international Social Contract is necessary before we can enjoy the promised benefits of government. When once an international government has been created, much of Locke's political philosophy will again become applicable, though not the part of it that deals with private property.  THE CONDITIONS FOR LOCKEAN LIBERALISM NO LONGER EXIST  WILLIAM OPHULS, FORMER PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, NORTHWESTERN AND A. STEPHEN BOYAN, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, ECOLOGY AND THE POLITICS OF SCARCITY REVISITED, 1992, P.204.  Thanks to the Great Frontier, Locke and Smith found that there was so much abundance in the state of nature that a Hobbesian war of all against all was unlikely; every person could take away some kind of prize, and competition would be socially constructive rather than destructive, with the "invisible hand" producing the greatest good for the society as a whole. Thus government was required only to keep the game honest-a mere referee, needing only modest powers and minimal institutional machinery-and individuals could be left alone to pursue happiness as they defined it without hindrance by society or the state. The frontier is gone now, and we have encountered the limits of the commons. However, the physical disappearance of the frontier was for a long time mitigated by technology, which allowed us to graze more cows on the same amount of pasture. Now we have reached the limits of technology: The cows are standing almost shoulder to shoulder, many are starving, and the manure is piling up faster than the commons can absorb it. All that remains is to alter the rational, self-seeking behavior of the individuals and groups that use the commons. This must be done by collective means, for the dynamic of the tragedy of the commons is so powerful that individuals are virtually powerless to extricate themselves unaided from its remorseless working. Our political institutions must indeed force us to be free.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU IS RIGHT!  THE SOCIAL CONTRACT ENHANCES INDIVIDUAL SECURITY  JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT (PENGUIN EDITION), 1762, P.77-8.  Granted these distinctions, it becomes manifestly false to assert that individuals make any real renunciation by the social contract; indeed, as a result of the contract they find themselves in a situation preferable in real terms to that which prevailed before; instead of an alienation, they have profitably exchanged an uncertain and precarious life for a better and more secure one; they have exchanged natural independence for freedom, the power to destroy others for the enjoyment of their own security; they have exchanged their own strength which others might overcome for a right which the social union makes invincible. Their very lives, which they have pledged to the state, are always protected by it; and even when they risk their lives to defend the state, what more are they doing but giving back what they have received from the state? What are they doing that they would not do more often, and at greater peril, in the state of nature, where every man is inevitably at war and at the risk of his life, defends whatever serves him to maintain life? Assuredly, all must now fight in case of need for their country, but at least no one has any longer to fight for himself. And is there not something to be gained by running, for the sake of the guarantee of safety, a few of those risks we should each have to face alone if we were deprived of that assurance?  FREEDOM IS THE ESSENCE OF HUMANITY  JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT (PENGUIN EDITION), 1762, P.55.  To renounce freedom is to renounce one's humanity, one's rights as a man and equally one's duties. There is no possible quid, pro quo for one who renounces everything; indeed such renunciation is contrary to man's very nature; for if you take away all freedom of the will, you strip a man's actions of all moral significance.  THE SOCIAL CONTRACT ABOLISHES INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS  JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT (PENGUIN EDITION), 1762, P.60-1.  These articles of association, rightly understood, are reducible to a single one, namely the total alienation by each associate of himself and all his rights to the whole community. Thus, in the first place, as every individual gives himself absolutely, the conditions are the same for all, and precisely because they are the same for all, it is in no one's interest to make the conditions onerous for others. Secondly, since the alienation is unconditional, the union is as perfect as it could be, and no individual associate has any longer any rights to claim; for if rights were left to individuals, in the absence of any higher authority to judge between them and the public, each individual, being his own judge in some causes, would soon demand to be his own judge in all; and in this way the state of nature would be kept in being, and the association inevitably become either tyrannical or void.  THE SOCIAL CONTRACT INVOLVES SUBMISSION TO THE GENERAL WILL  JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT (PENGUIN EDITION), 1762, P.61.  Finally, since each man gives himself to all, he gives himself to no one; and since there is no associate over whom he does not gain the same rights as others gain over him, each man recovers the equivalent of everything he loses, and in the bargain he acquires more power to preserve what he has. If, then, we eliminate from the social pact everything that is not essential to it, we find it comes down to this: 'Each one of us puts into the community his person and all his powers under the supreme direction of the general will; and as a body, we incorporate every member as an indivisible part of the whole.'    UNLIKE HOBBES, ROUSSEAU SOUGHT TO PRESERVE LIBERTY  JEREMY JENNINGS, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF WALES, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, EDS., 1994, P.117.  The implications of these ideas upon Rousseau's conception of contract were necessarily profound, and this because the 'fundamental problem' he thus set himself was nothing less than that of squaring the circle: how to find a form of association which will defend the person and goods of each member with the collective force of all and under which each individual, while uniting himself with the others, obeys no one but himself and remains as free as before. The contrast with the position endorsed by Hobbes could not have been more stark. As Hobbes perceived it, the human condition was so bleak that men could escape from the war of all against all only by agreeing to transfer lock, stock and barrel their natural right to govern and to arbitrate in disputes to the single sovereign power of Leviathan, preserving only their right to self-preservation. The trade-off was a straightforward one: life and an element of liberty in exchange for obedience to the sword. For Rousseau there was to be no trade-off, there were to be no losses, only gains. Men, he believed, could have both liberty and law if they were able to construct a society where they ruled themselves.  ROUSSEAU UPHOLDS THE BASIC RIGHTS TO LIFE AND LIBERTY  VICENTE MEDINA, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, BERGEN COMMUNITY COLLEGE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES: POLITICAL OBLIGATION OR ANARCHY?, 1990, P.57.  He defends the natural rights to life and liberty, although, unlike Locke, he considers the right to property to be a conventional rather than a natural right. Moreover, in The Social Contract he argues against the institution of slavery and defends the natural right to liberty on these grounds: To renounce one's liberty is to renounce one's quality as a man. the rights and also the duties of humanity.... Such a renunciation is incompatible with man's nature, for to take away all freedom from his will is to take away all morality from his action. Rousseau's contract is intended to guarantee both the enjoyment of civil and political freedom and the right to private property. It guarantees, among other things, the right to have an equal voice in the making of laws and hence the right to vote. Moreover, the right to political freedom derives from the natural right to liberty.  SOVEREIGNTY REMAINS WITH THE PEOPLE, TYRANNY IS IMPOSSIBLE  VICENTE MEDINA, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, BERGEN COMMUNITY COLLEGE, SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORIES: POLITICAL OBLIGATION OR ANARCHY?, 1990, P.59.  Thus Rousseau unlike Locke, does not postulate a right to revolution against tyranny. He does not need this right because sovereignty remains always with the people. In Rousseau's Republic, tyranny or any sort of gross injustice on the part of the sovereign would be impossible. The general will of the people can never be unjust, "since no one is unjust to himself." The sovereign therefore is always what "it ought lo be."  ROUSSEAU EFFECTIVELY PRESERVES EQUALITY  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.81-2.  A noteworthy feature of Rousseau's theory is that it shows him to be unique among the many social contract theorists who have postulated man's liberty and equality in a state of nature in that he wishes to preserve both their liberty and their equality in the civil state. His ideal constitution does indeed preserve this equality, thus making Rousseau the great exponent of what may be called the 'democratic' social contract (though he himself uses the term 'democracy' in a different sense.  ROUSSEAU'S MADE SOVEREIGNTY A PERMANENT POSSESSION  JEREMY JENNINGS, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF WALES, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, EDS., 1994, P.117.  What marked Rousseau out from his predecessors was that they, unlike him, saw active sovereignty as being only the people's temporary possession, as something that was to be handed over to the appropriate authority as soon as possible, only rarely (and in some cases never) to be reclaimed. Pufendorf, for example, even went so far as to define the handing over of the right to govern by a defeated people as a meaningful form of consent. Not only was Rousseau unwilling to grant that sovereignty could be given away either under duress or by tacit agreement but also he even opposed its voluntary and unforced transfer. Sovereignty, in short, was not like a piece of property that could be freely disposed of: it was an inalienable possession, part of the individual's very humanity. Rousseau's contribution, as Robert Derathe has argued, was therefore to attribute not only the origin but also the exercise of sovereignty to the people.	JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU IS WRONG!  ROUSSEAU'S THEORIES TEND TO JUSTIFY THE TOTALITARIAN STATE  BERTRAND RUSSELL, A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY, 1945, P.694.  Rousseau's political theory is set forth in his Social Contract, published in 1762. This book is very different in character from most of his writing; it contains little sentimentality and much close intellectual reasoning. Its doctrines, though they pay lip-service to democracy, tend to the justification of the totalitarian State.  ROUSSEAU PRIORITIZED EQUALITY AT THE EXPENSE OF LIBERTY  BERTRAND RUSSELL, A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY, 1945, P.695.  Although the book as a whole is much less rhetorical than most of Rousseau's writing, the first chapter opens with a very forceful piece of rhetoric: "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they are." Liberty is the nominal goal of Rousseau's thought, but in fact it is equality that he values, and that he seeks to secure even at the expense of liberty.  ROUSSEAU'S CONTRACT IS ESSENTIALLY HOBBESIAN  BERTRAND RUSSELL, A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY, 1945, P.695.  His conception of the Social Contract seems, at first, analogous to Locke's, but soon shows itself more akin to that of Hobbes. In the development from the state of nature, there comes a time when individuals can no longer maintain themselves in primitive independence; it then becomes necessary to self-preservation that they should unite to form a society. But how can I pledge my liberty without harming my interests? "The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before. This is the fundamental problem of which the Social Contract provides the solution."  ROUSSEAU CALLS FOR THE COMPLETE ABROGATION OF LIBERTY  BERTRAND RUSSELL, A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY, 1945, P.695-6.  The Contract consists in "the total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole community; for, in the first place, as each gives himself absolutely, the conditions are the same for all; and this being so, no one has any interest in making them burdensome to others." The alienation is to be without reserve: "If individuals retained certain rights, as there would be no common superior to decide between them and the public, each, being on one point his own judge, would ask to be so on all; the state of nature would thus continue, and the association would necessarily become inoperative or tyrannical." This implies a complete abrogation of liberty and a complete rejection of the doctrine of the rights of man. It is true that, in a later chapter, there is some softening of this theory. It is there said that, although the social contract gives the body politic absolute power over all its members, nevertheless human beings have natural rights as men. The sovereign cannot impose upon its subjects any fetters that are useless to the community, nor can it even wish to do so." But the sovereign is the sole judge of what is useful or useless to the community. It is clear that only a very feeble obstacle is thus opposed to collective tyranny. It should be observed that the "sovereign" means, in Rousseau, not the monarch or the government, but the community in its collective and legislative capacity.  ROUSSEAU'S CONCEPT OF FREEDOM IS ORWELLIAN  BERTRAND RUSSELL, A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY, 1945, P.697.  This conception of being "forced to be free" is very metaphysical. The general will in the time of Galileo was certainly anti-Copernican; was Galileo "forced to be free" when the Inquisition compelled him to recant? Is even a malefactor "forced to be free" when he is put in prison? Think of Byron's Corsair: "O'er the glad waters of the deep blue sea, Our thoughts as boundless and our hearts as free." Would this man be more "free" in a dungeon? The odd thing is that Byron's noble pirates are a direct outcome of Rousseau, and yet, in the above passage, Rousseau forgets his romanticism and speaks like a sophistical policeman. Hegel, who owed much to Rousseau, adopted his misuse of the word "freedom," and defined it as the right to obey the police, or something not very different.  ROUSSEAU SUPPORTS RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION  MAURICE CRANSTON, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS, INTRODUCTION TO ROUSSEAU'S THE SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1968, P.40.  In the Social Contract, however, his attitude is very much closer to that of Machiavelli than it is to that of Locke. What the state needs, Rousseau says in his chapter on the civil religion, is a religion subordinate to the state and designed to teach patriotic, civic and martial virtues. And Christianity, he says, quite as boldly as Machiavelli, is no good for this purpose; it teaches men to love the kingdom of heaven instead of their own republic on earth, and it teaches them to suffer but not to fight. It teaches the wrong virtues. Assuredly, Rousseau makes clear that he is talking here about civil religion, not private religion, and he admits that 'the religion of the Gospel' is the word of God for the private person. But the state religion is the more important, and the state religion must be supreme; Rousseau even goes so far as to propose a death penalty for those whose conduct is at variance with the religious principles they proclaim.  ROUSSEAU WOULD PROHIBIT PRIVATE ASSOC TO UPHOLD THE GENERAL WILL  BERTRAND RUSSELL, A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY, 1945, P.699.  In Rousseau's opinion, what interferes in practice with the expression of the general will is the existence of subordinate associations within the State. Each of these will have its own general will, which may conflict with that of the community as a whole. "It may then be said that there are no longer as many votes as there are men, but only as many as there are associations." This leads to an important consequence: "It is therefore essential, if the general will is to be able to express itself, that there should be no partial society within the State, and that each citizen should think only his own thoughts: which was indeed the sublime and unique system established by the great Lycurgus." In a footnote, Rousseau supports his opinion with the authority of Machiavelli. Consider what such a system would involve in practice. The State would have to prohibit churches (except a State Church), political parties, trade-unions, and all other organizations of men with similar economic interests. The result is obviously the Corporate or Totalitarian State, in which the individual citizen is powerless.  ROUSSEAU'S INFLUENCE LED TO DICTATORSHIP  BERTRAND RUSSELL, A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY, 1945, P.700-1.  The Social Contract became the Bible of most of the leaders in the French Revolution, but no doubt, as is the fate of Bibles, it was not carefully read and was still less understood by many of its disciples. It reintroduced the habit of metaphysical abstractions among the theorists of democracy, and by its doctrine of the general will it made possible the mystic identification of a leader with his people, which has no need of confirmation by so mundane an apparatus as the ballot-box. Much of its philosophy could be appropriated by Hegel in his defence of the Prussian autocracy. Its first-fruits in practice was the reign of Robespierre; the dictatorships of Russia and Germany (especially the latter) are in part an outcome of Rousseau's teaching. What further triumphs the future has to offer to his ghost I do not venture to predict.  ROUSSEAU SUCCESSORS SAW HIS WORK AS ABSOLUTIST  JEREMY JENNINGS, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF WALES, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, EDS., 1994, P.129.  A contemporary writer as perceptive and gifted as Carole Pateman has drawn attention to Rousseau as a critic of what she describes as 'the fraudulent liberal social contract'. The liberal contract, she argues, serves to justify social relationships and political institutions that already exist whilst Rousseau's contract provides 'an actual foundation for a participatory political order of the future'. The latter's democratic social contract, she goes on, is one of association based on self-assumed obligation and of substantive equality between 'active citizens who are political decision-makers'. From our brief survey of political thought in the first half of the nineteenth century it is clear that there were few in France who saw it that way. The republicans, with their passion for the one and indivisible Republic, would perhaps have been able to make sense of this description but for the rest the experience of the French Revolution had been such as to convince them that Rousseau and his idea of social contract had merely transposed the absolutism of government on to another plane. Sovereignty was presumed to reside in the people, the state had been left intact, and thus the modern Leviathan had been created. This, Rousseau's critics concurred, had been a catastrophe without precedent. For them it was quite definitely a case of la faute a Rousseau.  ROUSSEAU'S CONTRACT LEAD TO STATISM  JEREMY JENNINGS, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF WALES, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, EDS., 1994, P.128  The force of Proudhon's argument was that Rousseau had provided a spurious, if brilliantly oratorical, defence of the domination of the state, in this case the one and indivisible Jacobin Republic. Yet Proudhon, unlike other of Rousseau's critics, did not want to abandon the idea of contract. Far from it: it was precisely the idea of what Proudhon termed the 'free contract' that would lead to the dissolution and ultimate disappearance of the state. The key here was what Proudhon saw as the transition from distributive justice, defined as the reign of law and as feudal, governmental and military rule, to commutative justice, the dominance of the economic and industrial system. It was by moving away from politics to economics that his preferred model of decentralized and pluralistic self-government mutualism - would come into existence.  ROUSSEAU'S WORK INSPIRED THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY DICTATORSHIP  JEREMY JENNINGS, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF WALES, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, EDS., 1994, P.120.  But stated in this way we have no sense of the emotional (and frequently tearful) frenzy that Rousseau induced amongst his disciples. The community born out of the social contract was to be frugal, hard working, virtuous, distrustful of wealth, free of corruption, trusting to the simple qualities of the people cast as the repositories of all that was good in society. Armed thus men such as Robespierre and Saint-Just had little difficulty affirming their own rhetorical and moral ascendancy over opponents that bore the mark of absolute evil. What happened when the people were found to be unworthy of the love that had been invested in them was the recourse to an ever-extensive dictatorship, the combination of virtue and terror, with the general will of society supposedly articulated by a twelve-man Committee of Public Safety.  ROUSSEAU PROVIDED THEORETICAL SUPPORT FOR DESPOTISM  JEREMY JENNINGS, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF WALES, THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FROM HOBBES TO RAWLS, DAVID BOUCHER AND PAUL KELLY, EDS., 1994, P.126.  Constant, like Mill after him, was eager to establish that there was a part of human existence which 'by necessity remains individual and independent' end which therefore was properly beyond social control. Rousseau, he remarked, 'overlooked this truth', thus providing theoretical support for despotism. And here was the heart of the problem. Rousseau, Constant argued, defined the contract struck between society and its members as the complete alienation of each individual with all his rights, without any reservations, to the community. In order to reassure us about the consequences of such an absolute renunciation of all parts of our existence for the benefit of an abstract being, he tells us that the sovereign, that is the social body, can neither harm the totality of its members, nor any of them in particular. Since everyone gives himself entirely, all share the same condition, and nobody is interested in making the condition onerous to others. Because every individual gives himself entirely to all, he does not give himself to anyone in particular. Everybody acquires over his associates the same rights as he surrenders in their favour. Thus he gains the equivalent of all that he loses together with the greater strength to preserve what he has.  ROUSSEAU DENIES NECESSARY RIGHTS OF RESISTANCE TO THE STATE  MICHAEL LESSNOFF, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, SOCIAL CONTRACT, 1986, P.80.  Rousseau makes it clear that this sovereign political authority consisting of all citizens is both supreme and unlimited. It is an absolute sovereignty. The individual associates who are parties to the contract cannot retain any of their rights; if they did Rousseau suggests 'there would be no common superior to decide between them and the public each being . . . his own judge' and the state of nature would in effect continue (R 174 176). It looks as if Rousseau is here trying to avoid the kind of resistance to authority and consequent civil turbulence that is legitimated by Locke's theory of natural rights. This is understandable in view of the fact that the constitution prescribed by Rousseau in The Social Contract is that of an ideal state where it might be hoped such resistance would have no place. But it remains questionable whether any constitution can be so ideal as to ensure this.