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. Hi Anthony and Stan, I respectfully disagree with their respective premises. The quality of a government depends on its logic – the logic with which it allocates resources to its citizens and its structured logic to accomplish its other tasks such as protection. It is a myth that logic (good government) requires public participation (or even awareness) in government processes. This myth has obviously emerged and has been reinforced throughout history by human corruption on occasions when a minority of people have been entrusted with the responsibility of the government of the majority. But future governments, led by a few leaders or by an AI programmed to govern according to strictly logical algorithms, do not need public participation (citizens monitor what they think they need) to govern strictly in accordance with the wishes of the people. Simply put, every citizen will always be an expert in what they want (desire), but no individual really knows what they need in the context of a wider audience. This is the logical purpose of government – to logically determine what people want and logically coordinate the satisfaction of needs accordingly. There is no logical premise for the conscious involvement of citizens in this process (although I understand that they may need to be involved in this time – to ensure accountability – and that people may still want to be involved in future times – out of a desire to do so). Particularly for law enforcement, social contract theory is important in justifying the power that law enforcement can wield over the population as a whole (Evans and MacMillan, 2014). The balance of power held by law enforcement is part of the contract the company entered into in exchange for security. Where the contract can be problematic is when the power used by law enforcement exceeds what the company is supposed to do under the contract.
Given that the end of the « union of men into communities » (para. 124) is the preservation of their wealth and the preservation of their life, liberty and well-being in general, Locke can easily imagine the conditions under which the contract with the government is destroyed and men are entitled to the authority of a civil government, like a king. When the executive power of a government turns into tyranny, for example by the dissolution of the legislature and thus the denial of the people`s ability to legislate for its own preservation, then the resulting tyrant puts himself in a state of nature and, in particular, in a state of war with the people, and they then have the same right to self-defence, as they had done before a pact to found the company. In other words, the justification for the authority of the executive component of government is the protection of the property and well-being of the people, so that when this protection no longer exists, or when the king becomes a tyrant and acts against the interests of the people, they have the right, if not a complete obligation, to oppose their authority. The social pact can be dissolved and the process of creating a political society can be revived. Whether you think the contract is real or just a useful metaphor, social contract theory offers many unique insights into how citizens interact with government and with each other. A more empirical approach follows Schelling`s (1960) early work on haggling and game theory by examining how real people negotiate and come to an agreement. Pioneers of experimental economics used laboratory experiments to study how subjects behaved in divisional problems (Hoffman et al. 2000, Smith 2003). Some of the most interesting results, perhaps surprisingly, came from asymmetrical negotiation games such as the ultimatum game (Smith 1982). Since these first experiments, considerable experimental work has been carried out on negotiation problems and cooperation agreements in enterprises. Much of the most philosophically relevant work involves the importance of social norms and conventions in determining outcomes (Bicchieri 2016, Vanderschraaf forthcoming).
Other problems arise when the social contract is viewed from a feminist perspective. Historically, social contract theories, such as those proposed by Hobbes and Locke, say that the (legitimate) authority of the state comes from the consent of free and equal citizens. So let us assume that we have reached a social contract. Depending on the initial problem of justification, it leads to an R result (principles, rules, etc.). who have normative property N – such as justice, morality, authority, obligation, legitimacy, mutual benefit and so on. But suppose that the contract has produced a principle, a rule, etc. with the relevant normative property, what exactly does the fact that this principle or rule was generated by the contractual device show? The contractary element of the theory comes from the derivation of moral norms. The problem of conformity – the problem of justifying rational compliance with accepted standards – must guide the justification of the initial situation and the implementation of the contractual situation. It is useful to consider the contractual situation as an enterprise in which each party tries to negotiate the moral rules that will allow it to achieve optimal utility, which has led philosophers to apply a number of negotiated solutions to the initial contractual situation. Gauthier`s solution is the « relative minimax concession » (1986, chap.
V). The idea of the relative minimum concession is that each negotiator will be more concerned about the concessions he makes from his ideal result compared to the concessions that others make. If he considers that his concessions are reasonable in relation to others, considering that he wants to ensure as much as possible for himself, while ensuring an agreement (and therefore the zero point: no share of the cooperative surplus) and subsequent respect by others, then he will accept it. What would then be the reasonable result? The reasonable result, according to this view, is the result that minimizes the maximum relative concessions of each party to the agreement (Gauthier 1986, chap. V). With M as the deliberative framework; R rules, principles or institutions; I the (hypothetical) persons in their original position or in the state of nature which form the social contract; and I* am the individuals in the real world who follow the social contract. [6] Contractarism has also been criticized on racial grounds (Williams 1991). Contracts require independent agents who can make and execute promises without the help of others. Historically, while white men have been treated as those pure wills of contract theory, blacks and women have been treated as anti-will: dependent and irrational. Both ideals are false; Whole people, she says, depend on whole other people. But by defining some as entrepreneurs and others as incapable of being tolerated, entire classes of people can be excluded from the realm of justice.
This point has been explored by other critics of contractarianism, first by Allen Buchanan (1993) and more recently by Eva Kittay (1999), who points out that not only are parents such as children and people with disabilities excluded from consideration by contractionist theories, but that the needs and interests of their caregivers tend to be underestimated in the contract. Also. Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679, lived during the most important period of early modern England`s history: the English Civil War, which took place from 1642 to 1648. To describe this conflict in the most general terms, it was a clash between the king and his supporters, monarchists who preferred the traditional authority of a monarch, and parliamentarians, especially under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, who demanded more power for the quasi-democratic institution of parliament. Hobbes represents a compromise between these two factions. On the one hand, he rejects the theory of the divine right of kings, which is expressed most eloquently by Robert Filmer in his patriarchate or the natural power of kings (although it would be left to John Locke to directly refute the filmmakers). Filmer`s view was that the authority of a king was vested by God in him (or probably in her), that this authority was absolute, and that, therefore, the basis of political engagement lay in our obligation to obey God absolutely. According to this view, political obligation is therefore subsumed under religious obligation. On the other hand, Hobbes also rejects the early democratic view adopted by parliamentarians that power should be shared between parliament and the king.
By rejecting these two points of view, Hobbes occupies the terrain of the one who is both radical and conservative. He argues, radically for his time, that political authority and commitment are based on the individual personal interests of members of society who are understood as equal, without a single individual being endowed with essential authority to rule over others, while maintaining the conservative position that the monarch he called the sovereign, absolute authority must be ceded if society is to survive. .