Rousseau on civil society and social contract

Introduction

Rousseau, in Discours sur l’origine de l’inegalité (1755; Discourse on the Origin of Inequality), held that in the state of nature humans were solitary but also healthy, happy, good, and free. What Rousseau called “nascent societies” were formed when human began to live together as families and neighbours; that development, however, gave rise to negative and destructive passions such as jealousy and pride, which in turn fostered social inequality and human vice.

Rousseau on civil society and social contract

The introduction of private property marked a further step toward inequality, since it made law and government necessary as a means of protecting it. Rousseau lamented the “fatal” concept of property and the “horrors” that resulted from the departure from a condition in which the earth belonged to no one. 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. Socrates uses something quite like a social contract argument to explain to Crito why he must remain in prison and accept the death penalty.

Rousseau on civil society and social contract

However, social contract theory is rightly associated with modern moral and political theory and is given its first full exposition and defense by Thomas Hobbes. After Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau are the best known proponents of this enormously influential theory, which has been one of the most dominant theories within moral and political theory throughout the history of the modern West. In the twentieth century, moral and political theory regained philosophical momentum as a result of John Rawls’ Kantian version of social contract theory, and was followed by new analyses of the subject by David Gauthier and others. More recently, philosophers from different perspectives have offered new criticisms of social contract theory. In particular, feminists and race-conscious philosophers have argued that social contract theory is at least an incomplete picture of our moral and political lives, and may in fact camouflage some of the ways in which the contract is itself parasitical upon the subjugations of classes of persons.

Rousseau on civil society and social contract

Rousseau’s conception of citizenship was much more organic and much less individualistic than Locke’s. The surrender of independence, or natural liberty, for political liberty meant that all individual rights, including property rights, are subordinate to the general will. For Rousseau the state is a moral person whose life is the union of its members, whose laws are acts of the general will, and whose end is the liberty and equality of its citizens. It follows that when any government usurps the power of the people, the social contract is broken; and not only are the citizens no longer compelled to obey, but they also have an obligation to rebel. The more perceptive social-contract theorists, including Hobbes, invariably recognized that their concepts of the social contract and the state of nature were unhistorical and that they could be justified only as hypotheses useful for the clarification of timeless political problems. See also state of nature.

Rousseau on civil society and social contract

Entitlement, generally, any government-provided or government-managed benefit or service to which some or all individuals are entitled by law. The term is also but less frequently applied to benefits provided by employers to employees unilaterally or as mandated by law or by contract (see fringe benefit). Among government-provided or government-managed entitlements in the United States, some have been means-tested (Medicaid, Aid to Families with Dependent Children [AFDC], and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps), while others have been available to most or all people independent of means (social security and Medicare). Legally mandated employer-provided benefits have included workers’ compensation and unpaid leave for family and medical reasons. With passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (PRWORA) in 1996, most needs-based assistance programs, including AFDC, were replaced by state-controlled systems funded by federal block grants. (See also social insurance; welfare.)

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