Social Contract Theory

REVOLUTIONS IN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA HIST 1301 | History Social Contract Theory The social contract's essential nature was at the centre of the Enlightenment argument regarding the balance between natural rights and state power. A society's implicit compact, or "contract," requires its members to follow its laws and regulations or face consequences for breaking them. By implicitly accepting the social compact, people essentially cede their inherent rights to the government, which is then tasked with upholding and defending those rights. Nonetheless, many proponents of the social contract theory, such as Rousseau, contend that citizens have the right to rescind their moral and social responsibilities to the state in response to its failure to uphold the common will or defend natural rights. Social contract theory sought to show that civil society's laws could be logically justified and that, in an ideal world, government would successfully serve the interests of the people and preserve the public will. Everyone would live in stability and social order as a result. Thus, philosophers and European leaders concerned with maintaining the delicate balance between individual rights and governmental power focused a great deal of discussion on the roles that justice and liberty play in civil society. Democracy and the social compact are two different concepts. A democracy is a form of government where the people themselves have the authority of governance. According to the social contract doctrine, monarchs and queens were free to decide what was best for their subjects and to adopt any measures they felt would best safeguard them. The people and the monarchy were the two parties involved in the agreement. The king or queen upheld the interests of the people in exchange for the people ceding their rights and allowing the monarch to rule over them. Some absolute monarchs in Europe, like Frederick the Great of Prussia and Catherine the Great of Russia, embraced the influence of the Enlightenment and became known as enlightened despots as social contract theory and the idea of natural rights gained greater recognition in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Enlightened despots set themselves apart from previous kings by asserting that the social compact gave them the authority to rule in the best interests of their subjects, even while they retained the total jurisdiction of their reign. Prominent philosophers were frequently called by enlightened despots to their courts to assist in crafting rules and regulations that would, in principle, uphold the fundamentals of the social contract. For instance, in 1750 Frederick of Prussia extended an invitation to the French philosopher Voltaire to reside at his Potsdam castle. Despite the seeming contradiction between the maintenance of natural rights and the social compact and the nature of authoritarian rule, some thinkers created political models that were attractive to despots who were enlightened. In conventional historical accounts, Locke, Rousseau, and Thomas Hobbes are frequently praised for their defence of liberties and rights. While Rousseau and Locke praised more democratic political models, Hobbes contended that an absolute government—one with unrestricted centralised political authority—provided the best way to protect rights and freedoms in an otherwise anarchic state of nature. However, the society in which Enlightenment intellectuals lived did not grant liberties to everyone, nor were their works as inclusive as they seem, even if they adopted a supposedly progressive ideal of universal rights. Many people—mostly White men from the upper and middle classes in western Europe and what would later become the United States—saw an increase in their liberties as a result of the Enlightenment's advancement of social and political equality, but most women, men at the bottom of the social scale, and people of colour were largely shut out of the movement. Germaine de Staël and Émilie du Châtelet, two prominent French women philosophers, rose to prominence in the era's lively intellectual discussions and were acknowledged for their contributions. Nonetheless, some Enlightenment intellectuals did not believe that women and men had the same position. For example, Rousseau assumed that women were weaker and less rational by nature, which led him to depict women as subservient to males. Based on this notion, Rousseau maintained that males belonged in the public sphere of politics and commerce, while women belonged in the domestic sphere of the home. Some intellectuals, like Locke, argued that males should continue to maintain leadership positions in the home and in public life because of their superior strength and skill, even while they supported women's greater access to education and involvement in society. Most women did not instantly profit from the Enlightenment's emphasis on equality and freedom, despite the fact that a tiny number of them performed significant roles. Enlightenment theories coexisted with the institution of slavery, the taking of lands from Indigenous people, the ability to participate in politics, and the state's protections, which were primarily restricted to White men who owned property, in what would eventually become the United States and in certain European nations. Theorists of the social compact typically rationalised these inconsistencies by claiming that Indigenous peoples were not entitled to the same rights and protections as other peoples since they lived in a nonpolitical state and were thought to be incapable of reason. Furthermore, enlightenment solicitors utilised the social contract idea to justify slavery, arguing that Black people couldn't rule themselves without White owners' protection or that slavery was a legitimate byproduct of conquering. The principles of rights and freedoms that social contract theory promoted coexisted with deeply ingrained racial inequalities that served as the basis for slavery and colonialism, even though social contract theory ultimately served as the foundation for important texts like the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.