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Sep 9, 2024 · Social contract, in political philosophy, an actual or hypothetical compact, or agreement, between the ruled and their rulers, defining the rights and duties of each. The most influential social-contract theorists were the 17th–18th century philosophers Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Hobbes’ political theory is best understood if taken in two parts: his theory of human motivation, Psychological Egoism, and his theory of the social contract, founded on the hypothetical State of Nature.
Feb 12, 2002 · Hobbes is famous for his early and elaborate development of what has come to be known as “social contract theory”, the method of justifying political principles or arrangements by appeal to the agreement that would be made among suitably situated rational, free, and equal persons.
Hobbes describes the covenant, or social contract, as a “real unity” among the multitude of natural men who have chosen to escape the state of nature. But Hobbes also says that this “multitude is not One, but Many; they cannot be understood for one.
Aug 23, 2024 · According to Hobbes, political authority is justified by a hypothetical social contract among the many that vests in a sovereign (a monarch, a legislature, or almost any other form of political authority) the responsibility for the safety and well-being of all.
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 ...
The starting point for most social contract theories is an examination of the human condition absent any political order (termed the "state of nature" by Thomas Hobbes). [4] In this condition, individuals' actions are bound only by their personal power and conscience , assuming that 'nature' precludes mutually beneficial social ...
