The Social Contract Theory of John Locke

The Social Contract Theory of John Locke

Social contract theory puts forward the view that a person's moral and political responsibilities rely on a contract between people to create a society in which they exist (Young, 2006, p.102 - 130). Many theorists have presented their views on this theory on its different aspects. The earliest of views presented in the works of Plato in which Socrates used the social agreement as a reason to explain to Crito about why he must stay in prison. In its modern application to the political and moral sphere, Thomas Hobbes was the first writer to associate it with it. After Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau are the most prominent known supporters of this majorly effective theory. This notion is one of the most influential theories within the moral and political theory during the history of the contemporary West. In the twentieth century, moral, and political resumed philosophical force as a consequence of John Rawls' Kantian adaption of the social contract theory and put forward by new analysis of the field by David Gauthier and others. The common factor in these theories is the idea of an autonomous resolve by the members of the society to value the social contract.

First the state is an artificial institution indicating that it is a means to an end. Second the institution created by human beings is with the assistance of a contract. Third the contract must establish itself on the understanding of everyone. Finally, before the creation of a state, people lived in an imaginary position know as 'state of nature'. The initial theory conveyed by Plato discussed that member in a society understood the conditions of the social contract by choosing to stay in the society and obtain security.

Discussion

Differences in Theories

According to Hobbes', without society, people would live in a status of natural world, where a person has unrestricted natural liberties. Anyone can do whatever they desire, meaning he or she can do anything to anyone according to their desires (Lloyd & Sreedhar, 2002). He believed that people would behave with cruelness toward each other, but they had a right to protect themselves in whichever way they would. Such a condition would lead to a battle of “every man against every man” (Taylor, 1938, p.406 - 424). He believed that in the international scenario, countries behaved just as people did in the state of nature.

Hobbes contested the views of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he believed that Hobbes was considering social people and thought they lived outside the society they grew up in. He asserted instead that people were born innocent and good; men had no knowledge of evil and good because they did not interact with each other (Rousseau, 2009). The bad customs of the people were a result of social order, assets, and markets.

Locke in his most important works, Second Treatise of Civil Government, believed that the natural condition of humanity, the state of nature, is a condition ...