Contractarianism: Social Contract Theory from Hobbes to Rawls

Governance by Consent

Why should anyone obey the law? One answer: because God commands obedience. Another: because rulers are born to rule. A third answer — the one that reshaped Western political thought after the 17th century — is that legitimate authority derives from the consent of the governed. People agree, explicitly or implicitly, to be ruled in exchange for the benefits of social cooperation and protection. That agreement — the social contract — is the foundation of political legitimacy.

Contractarianism is not merely a historical curiosity. It remains the dominant framework for justifying political institutions in liberal democracies, and its most sophisticated contemporary formulation — John Rawls's theory of justice as fairness — is the most widely discussed work in political philosophy of the 20th century. The core idea spans three centuries and multiple philosophical traditions, but the question is constant: what principles would rational persons agree to as the basis for social cooperation?

Hobbes: Contract as Escape from Violence

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) presented the starkest version of social contract theory in Leviathan (1651), written during the English Civil War. Hobbes's starting point is a thought experiment: the state of nature, in which no government exists and individuals are bound by no enforceable obligations. In this condition, Hobbes argued, life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Natural equality — no one is so strong that they cannot be killed by others — means perpetual insecurity. Each person has the rational right of nature to do anything necessary for self-preservation, making the state of nature a war of all against all.

The solution: rational individuals, recognizing that no one benefits from perpetual conflict, agree to transfer their natural rights to a sovereign — an absolute authority capable of enforcing peace. The contract is not between rulers and ruled but among the individuals themselves, each agreeing to subject themselves to sovereign authority on the condition that all others do likewise. The sovereign (a monarch or assembly) acquires near-absolute power precisely because any limitation on sovereign authority risks returning to the chaos of the state of nature.

Hobbes's social contract is profoundly conservative: once made, it cannot be revoked even if the sovereign acts badly, since any government is better than the alternative of no government. The contract is purely instrumental — valued for the peace it produces, not as an expression of freedom or equal dignity.

Locke: Contract as Protection of Natural Rights

John Locke (1632–1704) accepted Hobbes's framework but drew radically different conclusions in his Two Treatises of Government (1689). For Locke, the state of nature is not a war of all against all but a condition governed by natural law — the principle that no one may harm another in their life, liberty, or possessions. Natural rights to life, liberty, and property exist prior to any political arrangement and are given by God (in Locke's framework) or derivable from reason.

The social contract creates government for a specific limited purpose: to protect these pre-existing natural rights more effectively than individuals can do alone. Property disputes, criminal enforcement, and collective defense require a neutral judge and coercive enforcement that individuals in the state of nature cannot reliably provide for themselves. Government therefore receives only delegated authority — authority that remains conditional on the government fulfilling its protective function.

The pivotal implication: if a government violates rather than protects natural rights — taxing without consent, governing tyrannically, systematically denying liberty — the social contract is broken. The people retain a right of revolution to dissolve that government and form a new one. Locke's framework directly influenced the American Declaration of Independence and the philosophical justification for constitutional limits on government power.

Rousseau: Contract as Expression of General Will

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) transformed social contract theory in his Du Contrat Social (1762). Where Hobbes feared the state of nature and Locke found it tolerable, Rousseau celebrated natural human goodness corrupted by civilization and private property. His social contract does not protect pre-existing rights but reconstitutes them: individuals alienate all their natural freedom to the community as a whole, and in exchange receive civil liberty — freedom as members of a self-governing community.

The sovereign in Rousseau's scheme is not a separate monarch but the collective will of the citizens — the general will (volonté générale). The general will is not simply the sum of individual preferences but the will oriented toward the common good. When citizens govern themselves according to the general will, they are obeying only themselves, preserving freedom while achieving the benefits of cooperation. Rousseau's theory has been influential in democratic theory and was explicitly cited by French revolutionaries — though its equation of legitimate authority with the general will has also been seen as a basis for authoritarian claims that one party or leader expresses the "true" will of the people.

Rawls: The Veil of Ignorance

John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971) revived social contract theory after decades of dominance by utilitarianism. Rawls argued that principles of justice should be those that rational persons would choose from behind a "veil of ignorance" — a hypothetical original position in which choosers know nothing about their place in society (class, wealth, talent, race, sex, conception of the good) that would bias their choice in their own favor.

From this original position, Rawls argued that rational persons would choose two principles of justice, lexically ordered:

• First principle (Equal Liberty): Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others — freedom of conscience, speech, person, and political participation
• Second principle (Difference Principle + Fair Equality of Opportunity): Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that (a) they are attached to offices open to all under fair equality of opportunity, and (b) they are to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society

Objections to Social Contract Theory

Contractarianism faces persistent objections from multiple directions:

• Consent is fictional: No one literally signed the social contract. Tacit consent (staying in the country, using public roads) as Locke suggested is coerced for those with no real option to leave. The contract metaphor may generate obligations that ordinary contracts do not.
• Exclusion of non-contractors: Classic social contract theories generate obligations only to other contracting parties. This excludes future generations (who cannot consent), animals (who cannot engage in reciprocal agreements), severely cognitively disabled persons, and in historical formulations, women and non-property-owners. Rawls worked to extend his theory more broadly, but the contractarian structure has inherent difficulty with those who cannot participate in mutual advantage.
• Indeterminate outcomes: Rawls's original position arguments rely on assumptions about rational choice under uncertainty — particularly the maximin rule (maximize the minimum outcome) — that other economists and philosophers dispute. Different assumptions about rationality yield different principles from the same original position.
• Conservative bias: If existing institutions roughly correspond to what rational contractors would choose, contractarianism may ratify the status quo rather than critique it.

Legacy in Democratic Theory

Despite these objections, contractarianism has shaped constitutional design, human rights frameworks, and democratic theory more deeply than any competing approach. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) reflects Lockean natural rights translated into international law. Constitutional limits on state power, judicial review, and separation of powers all implement the idea of conditional delegated authority. Rawls's difference principle has informed debates on progressive taxation, welfare state design, and global justice — his argument that inequality is justified only when it benefits the worst-off members of society remains a benchmark against which real-world institutions are evaluated.