Philosophy › Reason, experience & Enlightenment
The social contract
1651–1762· Idea or argument· Politics, society & justice
Well documentedSolid records, texts or physical evidence.
The idea that legitimate government rests on an agreement, real or imagined, among the people it governs.
See it on the Philosophy map →The idea
Idea: picture life without government, the 'state of nature', and ask what terms people would accept to escape it. Hobbes (1651): life there is war, so we hand near-total power to a sovereign. Locke (1689): we keep natural rights to life, liberty and property, and may remove a government that violates them. Rousseau (1762): the people together are sovereign, ruled by a 'general will'. Main objection, from Hume: almost no one ever actually agreed.
Why it matters
It is the logic of the US Declaration of Independence and modern constitutions: power comes from the governed and is conditional on serving them.
Think of it like
Like a condo association's bylaws: owners give up some freedom for shared order, and the bylaws spell out what the board may not do.
Where it comes from
Hobbes' Leviathan (1651), Locke's Two Treatises (1689) and Rousseau's Social Contract (1762) survive; the Declaration of Independence (1776) closely echoes Locke.
Still debated
Whether a hypothetical contract no one signed can bind anyone is still argued; John Rawls revived the approach in A Theory of Justice (1971).
Inside this (2)
Connections (5)
▸Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan founded the modern theory of The social contractWell documented
The connection
Hobbes gave the first full modern version: imagine people without government, in a 'state of nature' that is a war of all against all. To escape it, each agrees with the others to hand their power to a sovereign who keeps the peace. Authority comes from consent and self-interest, not divine right.
When and how
Leviathan, written in exile in Paris and published in London in 1651, two years after Charles I's execution; earlier versions appear in Elements of Law (1640) and De Cive (1642).
How we know
Locke and Rousseau framed their theories against Hobbes, and historians of political thought treat Leviathan as the founding text of modern contract theory.
Debates and open questions
Contract ideas existed earlier, in Plato's Republic, medieval thought and Grotius; how new Hobbes's version truly was is a matter of emphasis.
▸John Locke built rights and consent into The social contractWell documented
The connection
Locke's state of nature is not war: people already have natural rights and can reason about them. They form government by consent only to protect those rights more securely. If rulers violate them, the trust is broken and the people may resist and replace the government, a direct challenge to Hobbes's absolute sovereign.
When and how
Second Treatise of Government, published anonymously in London in 1689, just after the Glorious Revolution replaced James II with William and Mary.
How we know
The Second Treatise states it directly, and the Declaration of Independence (1776) repeats its logic of rights, consent and the right to alter or abolish government.
Debates and open questions
Who has actually consented, especially people born later who never agreed, and whether 'tacit consent' by living under a government counts, are long-standing objections.
▸Jean-Jacques Rousseau rooted popular sovereignty in The social contractWell documented
The connection
Rousseau turned the contract from a deal with a ruler into the people's own self-government. Each citizen gives himself wholly to the community, forming a sovereign people whose 'general will' aims at the common good. Government is only its agent, and laws are legitimate only if the people as a whole could will them.
When and how
The Social Contract, published in Amsterdam in 1762 and promptly banned in Geneva and France.
How we know
The book was widely quoted in the French Revolution; the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man says law is 'the expression of the general will'.
Debates and open questions
What exactly the general will is, and whether it protects individuals or lets the majority override them, is still disputed.
▸The social contract was revived by John Rawls, A Theory of JusticeWell documented
The connection
Rawls said his aim was to carry 'to a higher level of abstraction the familiar theory of the social contract' of Locke, Rousseau and Kant. Instead of a deal to escape a state of nature, his original position is a hypothetical agreement under fair conditions, used to test principles of justice.
When and how
A Theory of Justice (Harvard University Press, 1971), section 3; first sketched in his 1958 paper 'Justice as Fairness'.
How we know
Rawls states the aim in the book's preface and opening chapter, and his work set off a wider revival of contract theories, such as T. M. Scanlon's contractualism.
Debates and open questions
Critics ask whether a hypothetical contract binds anyone; as Ronald Dworkin put it, 'a hypothetical contract is not simply a pale form of an actual contract; it is no contract at all.'
▸Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France saw a partnership across generations in The social contractWell documented
The connection
Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau pictured society as a contract among living individuals, which revolutionaries took as license to rewrite it. Burke agreed society is a contract, but not 'a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee'; it is 'a partnership... between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.'
When and how
London, 1790, in Reflections on the Revolution in France, aimed at English radicals such as the preacher Richard Price, who praised the revolution.
How we know
The passage is in Reflections; Paine's reply, condemning 'the vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave,' shows the dispute was explicit.
Debates and open questions
Whether Burke truly held a contract theory or borrowed the word to turn it against itself; scholars split between natural-law and anti-theory readings.