What is a social contract? Who were the main philosophers who developed the concept of the social contract? How does the social contract theory explain the origin of government? What are the key differences between Thomas Hobbes' and John Locke's views on the social contract?

In moral and political philosophy, the social contract is an idea, theory, or model that usually, although not always, concerns the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual. [1] Conceptualized in the Age of Enlightenment , it is a core concept of constitutionalism , while not necessarily convened and written down in a ...

Social contract theory, nearly as old as philosophy itself, is the view that persons’ moral and/or political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement among them to form the society in which they live.

Social contract theory says that people live together in society in accordance with an agreement that establishes moral and political rules of behavior. Some people believe that if we live according to a social contract, we can live morally by our own choice and not because a divine being requires it.

1996年3月3日 · The aim of a social contract theory is to show that members of some society have reason to endorse and comply with the fundamental social rules, laws, institutions, and/or principles of that society.

2024年12月23日 · The Social Contract, major work of political philosophy by the Swiss-born French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78). Du Contrat social (1762; The Social Contract) is thematically continuous with two earlier treatises by Rousseau: Discours sur les sciences et les arts (1750; A Discourse on

2024年2月2日 · The social contract is an idea in philosophy that at some real or hypothetical point in the past, humans left the state of nature to join together and form societies by mutually agreeing which rights they would enjoy and how they would be governed.

“A social contract theory can be defined as one which grounds the legitimacy of political authority and the obligations of rulers and subjects on a premised contract or contracts relating to these matters”.

The classic social-contract theorists of the 17th and 18th centuries—Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), John Locke (1632–1704), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78)—held that the social contract is the means by which civilized society, including government, arises from a historically or logically preexisting condition of stateless anarchy, or ...

2025年1月27日 · At the heart of social contract theory lies the idea that legitimate authority derives solely from consent governed ().Further still, any governmental system ought to reflect general wishes or Volonté générale (”general will”) populace comprising it.While Thomas Hobbes believed that the goal of a social contract was to avoid living a life that is “solitary, poor, nasty, …