However, these arguments were based on a corporatist theory of Roman law, according to which “a populus” can exist as an independent legal entity. Thus, these arguments asserted that a group of people can join a government because they have the ability to exercise a single will and make decisions with one voice when there is no sovereign authority – a notion rejected by Hobbes and later by contract theorists. In the first Platonic dialogue, Crito, Socrates convincingly explains why he must remain in prison and accept the death penalty instead of fleeing and going into exile in another Greek city. He embodies the laws of Athens and declares that with their voice he has acquired an overwhelming obligation to obey the laws because they have made possible his entire way of life and even the fact of his very existence. They allowed his mother and father to marry and thus have legitimate children, including himself. After the birth of the city of Athens, his laws required his father to take care of him and educate him. Socrates` life and how that life flourished in Athens depend on the laws. However, it is important that this relationship between citizens and the laws of the city is not enforced. Citizens, when they are adults and have seen how the city behaves, can choose to leave, take their property with them or stay. Staying implies an agreement to comply with the law and accept the sanctions they impose. And after concluding an agreement that is himself just, Socrates claims that he must respect this agreement he has concluded and obey the laws, in this case by suspending and accepting the death penalty. It is important to note that the treaty described by Socrates is implicit: it is implicit by his decision to stay in Athens, although he is free to leave.

According to Locke, the state of nature is not a state of individuals, as is the case with Hobbes. Rather, it is populated by mothers and fathers with their children or families – what he calls “conjugal society” (para. 78). These societies are based on voluntary agreements to care for children together, and they are moral, but not political. Political society is born when men representing their families come together in the state of nature and agree that everyone will give up executive power to punish those who transgress natural law and surrender that power to public power to a government. After doing so, they are subject to the will of the majority. In other words, by making a pact to leave the state of nature and shape society, they make “a body politic under a government” (para. 97) and submit to the will of that body. One adheres to such a body, either from the beginning or after it has already been established by others, only by express consent. After creating a political society and a government by their consent, people receive three things that they lacked in the state of nature: laws, judges to pass laws, and the executive power needed to enforce those laws. Every human being therefore hands over the power to protect himself and punish violators of the natural law to the government he created by the Pact. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) advocated a conception of the social contract that did not consist in an individual relinquishing his sovereignty to others.

According to him, the social contract was not between individuals and the state, but between individuals who fail to force or govern each other, each retaining complete sovereignty over themselves: for Rousseau, this means an extremely strong and direct form of democracy. You cannot transfer your will to someone else to do what you think is right, as you do in representative democracies. On the contrary, the general will depends on the fact that the whole democratic body, each individual citizen, meets regularly to decide together and at least almost unanimously how to live together, that is, which laws should be promulgated. Since it is composed only of individual wills, these private and individual wills must be composed regularly for the general will to continue. One implication of this is that the strong form of democracy, compatible with the general will, is only possible in relatively small states. People need to be able to identify with each other and at least know who they are. They cannot live in a vast area too dispersed to meet regularly, and they cannot live in such diverse geographical circumstances that they cannot be united under common laws. (Could today`s United States satisfy Rousseau`s concept of democracy? That was not possible. Although the conditions for true democracy are strict, they are also the only way in which we can save ourselves after Rousseau and regain the freedom to which we are naturally entitled. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712-1778, lived and wrote during arguably the most exhilarating period in the intellectual history of modern France – the Enlightenment.

He was one of the bright lights of this intellectual movement, contributing to articles to Diderot`s Encyclopedia and participating in the Paris Salons, where the great intellectual questions of his time were pursued. While Hobbes argued for near-absolute authority, Locke pleaded in his Second Treatise of the Government for freedom inviolable before the law. Locke argued that the legitimacy of a government derives from the delegation of citizens to government of their absolute right to violence (subject to the inalienable right to self-defense or “self-preservation”) as well as elements of other rights (for example. B property shall be taxable) to the extent necessary to achieve the objective of security by granting the State a monopoly on the use of force. where the government, as an impartial judge, can use the collective power of the people to administer and enforce the law, instead of each man acting as his own judge, juror and executioner – the state in the state of nature. [Citation needed] Given his rather strict view of human nature, Hobbes nevertheless succeeds in creating an argument that makes civil society possible with all its advantages. In the context of political events in his England, he also managed to argue for the maintenance of the traditional form of authority that his society had long enjoyed, while placing it on what he saw as a much more acceptable basis. The theory of divine law is that some people are chosen by a god or gods to rule, and the theory of the social contract states that Thomas Hobbes promoted the idea of a social contract in which people left their freedom to the state, but in return they received order and security.

In most cases, feminism defies any simple or universal definition. In general, however, feminists take women`s experiences seriously, as well as the impact that theories and practices have on women`s lives. Given the pervasive influence of contract theory on social, political, and moral philosophy, it is therefore not surprising that feminists have much to say about whether contract theory is appropriate or appropriate from the perspective of taking women seriously. Examining all feminist responses to social contract theory would take us far beyond the limits of this article. I will therefore focus on only three of these arguments: Carole Pateman`s argument on the relationship between the contract and the subordination of women to men, feminist arguments on the nature of the liberal individual, and the argument of care. The theory of the social contract, at its most fundamental level, states that people renounce certain rights that they have in a state of nature in order to obtain the certainties and rights provided by civilization. These thinkers valued reason, science, religious tolerance, and what they called “natural rights” — life, liberty, and property. Enlightenment philosophers John Locke, Charles Montesquieu and Jean-Jacques Rousseau developed all the theories of government in which some or even all peoples would govern. Not only is Hobbes exclusively selfish, but he also argues that people are reasonable. They have within them the rational ability to pursue their desires as effectively and to the maximum as possible. Their reason, given the subjective nature of value, does not evaluate their given goals, but simply acts as “scouts and spies to go abroad and find the way to the desired things” (139). .