6.5 Other Social Contract Theories

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Du contrat social (1762)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), in his influential 1762 treatise The Social Contract, outlined a different version of social contract theory, as the foundations of political rights based on unlimited popular sovereignty. Although Rousseau wrote that the British were perhaps at the time the freest people on earth, he did not approve of their representative government. Rousseau believed that liberty was possible only where there was direct rule by the people as a whole in lawmaking, where popular sovereignty was indivisible and inalienable. But he also maintained that the people often did not know their “real will”, and that a proper society would not occur until a great leader (“the Legislator”) arose to change the values and customs of the people, likely through the strategic use of religion.

Rousseau’s political theory differs in important ways from that of Locke and Hobbes. Rousseau’s collectivism is most evident in his development of the “luminous conception” (which he credited to Diderot) of the general will. Rousseau argues a citizen cannot pursue his true interest by being an egoist but must instead subordinate himself to the law created by the citizenry acting as a collective.

[The social contract] can be reduced to the following terms: Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will; and in a body we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.

Rousseau’s striking phrase that man must “be forced to be free” should be understood this way: since the indivisible and inalienable popular sovereignty decides what is good for the whole, then if an individual lapses back into his ordinary egoism and disobeys the law, he will be forced to listen to what was decided when the people acted as a collectivity (i.e. as citizens). Thus, the law, inasmuch as it is created by the people acting as a body, is not a limitation of individual freedom, but rather its expression.

Thus, enforcement of laws, including criminal law, is not a restriction on individual liberty: the individual, as a citizen, explicitly agreed to be constrained if, as a private individual, he did not respect his own will as formulated in the general will. Because laws represent the restraints of civil freedom, they represent the leap made from humans in the state of nature into civil society. In this sense, the law is a civilizing force, and therefore Rousseau believed that the laws that govern a people helped to mold their character.

John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government (1689)

John Locke’s conception of the social contract differed from Hobbes’ in several fundamental ways, retaining only the central notion that people in a state of nature would willingly come together to form a state. Locke believed that individuals in a state of nature would be bound morally, by the Law of Nature, not to harm each other in their lives or possessions, but without government to defend them against those seeking to injure or enslave them, people would have no security in their rights and would live in fear. Locke argued that individuals would agree to form a state that would provide a “neutral judge”, acting to protect the lives, liberty, and property of those who lived within it.

While Hobbes argued for a sovereign of near-absolute authority, Locke argued for inviolate freedom under law in his Second Treatise of Government. Locke argued that a government’s legitimacy comes from the citizens’ delegation to the government of their absolute right of violence (reserving the inalienable right of self-defense or “self-preservation”), along with elements of other rights (e.g. property will be liable to taxation) as necessary to achieve the goal of security through granting the state a monopoly of violence, whereby the government, as an impartial judge, may use the collective force of the populace to administer and enforce the law, rather than each man acting as his own judge, jury, and executioner—the condition in the state of nature.

Note that in both Rousseau and Locke we see a more positive assessment of human beings left alone in a state of nature. For these thinkers, social contracts were generally not so much about survival as they were about conflict resolutions, the preservation of rights and the people’s participation in choosing a government.