David Gauthier`s “neo-Hobbesian” theory holds that cooperation between two independent and selfish parties is in fact possible, especially when it comes to understanding morality and politics. [19] Gauthier points in particular to the advantages of cooperation between two parties when it comes to challenging the prisoner`s dilemma. He suggests that if two parties respected the originally agreed agreement and the morality set out in the contract, they would both achieve an optimal result. [19] [20] In his social contract model, factors such as trust, rationality and self-interest keep each party honest and prevent them from breaking the rules. [19] [20] The social contract begins with Rousseau`s most frequently quoted phrase: “Man is born free, and he is everywhere chained” (49). This claim is the conceptual bridge between the descriptive work of the Second Discourse and the prescriptive work that will come. Humans are essentially free and have been free in the state of nature, but the “progress” of civilization has replaced this freedom with submission to others, dependence, economic and social inequality, and the extent to which we judge ourselves through comparisons with others. Since a return to the state of nature is neither feasible nor desirable, the purpose of politics is to give us back freedom and thus reconcile who we really are and essentially with the way we live together. So this is the fundamental philosophical problem that the social contract seeks to solve: how can we be free and live together? In other words, how can we live together without succumbing to the violence and coercion of others? We can do this, Rousseau said, by subjecting our individual, special will to the collective or general will created by agreement with other free and equal people. Like Hobbes and Locke before him and unlike ancient philosophers, all human beings are inherently equal, so no one has the natural right to rule others, and therefore the only authority justified is the authority that comes from agreements or alliances. The Buddhist king Asoka is said to have pleaded in his cave edicts for a broad and far-reaching social contract.
Buddhist Vinaya also reflects the social contracts expected of monks; Such a case is when the inhabitants of a particular city complain that monks are slaughtering sakas, the Buddha tells his monks that they must stop and give way to social norms. Since Locke did not imagine the state of nature as dark as Hobbes, he can imagine conditions under which it would be better to reject a particular civil government and return to the state of nature, with the aim of building a better civil government in its place. It is therefore both the view of human nature and the nature of morality itself that explain the differences between Hobbes` and Locke`s views on the social contract. Whether social contracts are explicit or implicit, they provide a valuable framework for harmony in society. This racial contract is, to some extent, a meta-treatise that determines the limits of personality and the parameters of inclusion and exclusion in all the other treatises that follow. It manifests itself both formally and informally. It is an agreement, originally between European men in early modern times, to identify themselves as “white” and therefore fully human, and to identify all others, especially the natives with whom they came into contact, as “others”: non-white and therefore not fully human. Thus, race is not only a social construct, as others have argued, it is above all a political construct created to serve a particular political objective and the political objectives of a particular group. The treaty allows some people to treat other people, as well as the country in which they live, as resources that can be exploited.
The enslavement of millions of Africans and the appropriation of the Americas by those who inhabited them are examples of this racial treatise at work in history (such as Locke`s claim that Native Americans did not own the land on which they lived because they did not cultivate it and therefore did not own it). This contract is not hypothetical, as Hobbes describes the one argued in his Leviathan. It is a real contract or a set of contracts concluded by real men of history. It is found in documents such as the Papal Bull and Locke`s writings on Native Americans and have affected historical events such as european voyages of discovery and colonization of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The racial treaty allows and justifies certain people, because of their alleged superiority, to exploit the peoples, countries and resources of other races. Virginia Held argued that “contemporary Western society is plagued by contractual thinking” (193). Contract models shape a variety of relationships and interactions between people, from students and their teachers to authors and their readers. Given this, it would be difficult to overestimate the effect that social contract theory has had both in philosophy and on culture at large. The theory of social contracts will undoubtedly accompany us in the foreseeable future. But also the critique of such a theory, which will continue to force us to think and rethink the nature of ourselves and our relationships with each other.
The theory of an implicit social contract states that by staying on the territory controlled by a society, which usually has a government, people consent to join that society and, if necessary, to be governed by its government. It is this approval that gives legitimacy to such a government. Property played a key role in Locke`s argument in favor of civil government and the treaty that established it. According to Locke, private property is born when a person mixes his work with nature`s raw materials. For example, if you cultivate a piece of land in nature and turn it into a piece of arable land that produces food, then you claim to own that piece of land and the food produced on it. (This led Locke to conclude that America did not really belong to the natives who lived there because, in his opinion, they did not use the basic material of nature. In other words, they didn`t cultivate it, so they had no legitimate right to it, and so others could rightly appropriate it.) Given the implications of natural law, there are limits to the amount of goods one can own: one should not take away more from nature than one can use, so that others do not have enough for themselves. Because the nature of all mankind is given by God for their common sustenance, one cannot take more than one`s own just share. Property is the cornerstone of Locke`s argument for the social contract and civil government, as it is the protection of their property, including their property in their own bodies, that people seek when they decide to abandon the state of nature.
Philipp Pettit (born 1945) argued in Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (1997) that the theory of the social contract, which is classically based on the consent of the governed, should be changed. Instead of advocating explicit consent, which can always be produced, Pettit argues that the absence of effective rebellion against him is the only legitimacy of a treaty. However, the situation is not hopeless. Because people are reasonable, they can see their way out of such a state by recognizing the laws of nature that show them the means by which they can escape the state of nature and create a civil society. The first and most important law of nature dictates that every human being is ready to fight for peace when others are willing to do the same, while reserving the right to continue waging war if others do not seek peace. Since they are reasonable and recognize the rationality of this basic principle of reason, people can be expected to build a social contract that allows them to live a different life than they have in the state of nature. This contract consists of two separate contracts. First, they must agree to establish society by collectively and mutually renouncing the rights they had against each other in the state of nature. Second, they must give a person or a gathering of people the authority and power to enforce the original contract. In other words, to ensure their escape from the state of nature, they must both agree to live together according to common laws and create a mechanism for the application of the social contract and the laws that compose it. .