Introduction
The social contract theory states that there exists a common agreement among individuals in a given society. This agreement ensures that there is no anarchy within the society and every member in the society benefits from the mutual peace and order.
In addition, the accruing of social good developed by each individual exists for the benefit of the whole community. However, the social contract theory is not a perfect theory because it fails to meet the reality of the contemporary world. The theory fails to accommodate other people who do not fit its description of the ideal individual.
This essay looks at the social contract theory as constructed by Thomas Hobbes. It offers an analysis of the shortcoming of the theory in an effort to explain why it is inappropriate for the contemporary world.
The essay begins with a brief background description of the theory and then delves into the main controversy surrounding the theory. The social contract theory construction by other authors also form part of the description used in this essay.
Background
Socrates first developed the social theory in his account of refusing to get out of prison. Socrates considered that it was appropriate for him to remain in prison as a way of being obedient to the state. According to Socrates, obedience to the state was a sign of obedience to the existing social organization that allows everyone to coexist peacefully.
Socrates argued his refusal for imprisonment would amount to justifying the disorganization of the society, whose organization was responsible for the individual achievements that everybody enjoyed. After Socrates’ recount, the social contract idea developed further to a different recognizable modern form through the contributions of several thinkers.
Thomas Hobbes formulated the theory, as we understand it today. Other notable contributions to the theory came through John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and later on, Immanuel Kant. Today the social contract theory has no individual name to its credit; instead, several moral and political philosophers are working on it (Evers 185).
The social contract theory simply states that in some way there is an agreement of all individuals. This agreement rests on the guide of collectively enforced social arrangements, which indicate the presence of a normative property. All the thinkers working on the social contract had different objectives.
However, a common characteristic of all the theories is their view on state. All the theories by Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau justified the state and indicated that everyone consents the existence of the state to maintain the social contract. The reliance on consent presents a voluntary concept of political obligation and justice.
In this way, a just manner of doing things is that which people choose to agree to or what they will accept. The modern debate and criticism of the social contract theory and its thinkers revolves around this issue of justification. The debate looks at the principles that can be justified to all reasonable individuals (D’Agostino and Gaus para. 2-6).
The arguments against the social theory claim that it does not truly represent the society. Instead, it idealizes a particular kind of individual as correct and deserving of the opportunities present in the society. Other persons failing to meet the criteria set by the theory remain at the mercy of the ‘right’ individual.
Such persons exist to face judgment and direction by the ‘right’ individual on the correct way to participate in the society. The theory seems to fail to acknowledge, as equal members of the society, the property-less and women.
As a result, the main voices against the social contract theory have been feminist arguments and race-conscious arguments. Within the feminist arguments, there is the sexual contract argument, the nature of the liberal individual argument and the argument from care (Friend para.10-15).
In this paper, we shall refer to the social contract theory of Thomas Hobbes. According to Hobbes (241), there is a state of nature, which exists without a particular order. As a result, the state of nature is anarchy. This anarchy makes life poor, brutish and short.
Hobbes continues to explain that the nastiness of the state of nature exists because of the four main features of the human condition. These conditions are equality of need, scarcity, the essential quality of human power and a limited unselfishness.
The anarchy of the state of nature arises because of the lack of a particular order. Moreover, this lack of order manifests as an environment that has no social goods enjoyable for the common good. In this kind of environment, modern day activities and goods such as farming, industry, education, housing and technology are non-existent. The individual existing in the natural state has only one goal in life.
This is the goal of avoiding the fate of anarchy. In a summation, this realization presents the justification of a social contract. A social contract guarantees that people will not harm one another. In addition, the social contract ensures that people can rely on one another and are able to keep their agreements (Hobbes 493).
Hobbes presents a government as the entity that can be trusted with the role of enforcing a social contract. A government can provide and fulfill the two conditions that the social contract guarantees to people to ensure peaceful and fruitful coexistence.
Hobbes says that we need a government so that people can give up some of their personal freedom to the government. Though the enforcement of laws and contractual agreements, governments provide a mechanism that prevents individuals from engaging in practices that are only permissible under natural law and inflict harm on others.
A government is essentially the embodiment of the social contract. In case of a central governance system, all individuals commit to follow laws of the state on one premise, that everyone else within the system does the same. Thus, everyone is concurrently safe from the anarchy of the other and all benefit from the social goods that result from this arrangement (Hobbes 121-165).
The expectations of individuals to benefit from social goods that arise out of the communal agreement to the social contract are similar to morality. However, the social contract and morality are different as far as their enforcement is concerned.
In the social contract theory, the state’s role is to enforce the rules indispensable for social living. On the other hand, morality encompasses the set of rules that are essential for social living. A government is necessary for the enforcement of the basic rules of social living such as ‘do not break the law’.
Contrariwise, morality includes rules that allow an orderly social living but its rules exceed the jurisdiction of the state. A good example is the rule of not insulting other people for no particular reason.
The social contract seeks to ensure that the social rules covered in morality present a positive externality to every individual within that society. In this manner, the social contract theory views morality as a social contract without enforcement powers.
Without enforcement, the two preconditions of social order are unrealizable in a society. Let us use the case of a society with highly polluting cars to illustrate this point. A person could install a gadget to his or her vehicle that stops it from polluting the environment and the person will have to exchange a form of payment for the gadget.
When other individuals also use the gadget then the whole society will eliminate the problem of car pollution. In the case that all other individuals are using the gadget, an individual may opt not to use it for the sake of saving on the costs of the gadget. A single car will have a negligible pollution to the environment.
Alternatively, when all other individuals are not using the gadget, a single individual use will not make the air clean. A single gadget has negligible input of clean air to the environment. Thus, the individual using the gadget might consider not using it to save on its cost.
In this illustration, we observe that in both cases the individual faces the dilemma of not using the gadget or using the gadget. It highlights the need for the existence of cooperation in the observance of social rules for them to have a substantial effect. It is likely that not everyone will install the gadget to save on his or her individual costs.
As a result, everyone will be worst off with the pollution. The best solution to this dilemma would be to have a binding contract that enforces the use of the gadget for the benefit of everyone else. This binding contract is the social contract that a government enforces.
There are many situations, such as the pollution case illustrated above, in everyday life. In order to have an order away from the state of nature that Hobbes describes as anarchy, everybody needs to have binding contracts with all other persons that they engage with on a day-to-day basis.
As illustrated in the pollution example, without the consent of everyone or nearly everyone, there would still be anarchy. The evolution of the human population has led to the realization of basic social goods that need binding in social contracts for the benefit of all in the society. Without an order governing the generation and use of the basic needs for the good of all, a society cannot survive.
In any society, the social contract should protect life and property. In this provision, there should be prohibition against the killing of another individual, assault, unlawful possession of another person’s property and destruction of another person’s property.
Police serve as the state’s machinery of ensuring that life and property do not suffer the perils of disorder. Secondly, there should be rules that secure the benefits of social living through protection from the natural law of anarchy. The most common rule is a punishment for infringement of contract and a requirement for honesty from all contracting parties.
Another basic requirement for the state lies in the protection of the whole society from outside threats. In this case, governments institute an army to fulfill the protection function. Apart from the basic requirements, other things ought to be present in the society but are not paramount to its existence.
The inclusion of these other provisions in a social contract enhances the cohesiveness and the benefits accrued to the fulfillment of the basic needs of everyone. The first item on the list of possibly important inclusions in a social contract is civil rights. Law enforcers and protection agencies have a mandate and it is in everyone’s interest that they do not abuse this mandate.
In essence, civil rights ensure that law enforcers follow rules as they protect citizens. Civil rights allow individuals to have free speech and religious freedom without interference from other individuals as long as they reciprocate the mutual agreement.
In addition, civil rights protect against an arbitrary gender and race discrimination of the individual, which is an acknowledgement of the equality of all persons. Another recent inclusion to the civil rights is the protection from the environment.
The social contract has a longstanding and widespread influence. This essay has depicted some of the influence that the social contract has on any given society. Several conflicting thoughts exist on the extension of the social contract to a variety of philosophical perspectives.
The most vicious critiques have been from the feminist and race-conscious philosophers. Critics of the social contract point out the inadequacies of the theory on the contemporary world in terms of its substance and viability.
Gender Arguments against the Social Contract Theory
A characteristic of feminists is their serious consideration of women’s experiences. Moreover, feminists concern themselves with the impact that theories have on women’s lives. In the modern contemporary society, feminists have a considerable influence on social, political and moral philosophy. It is without doubt that they disagree with the adequacy of the social contract theory.
Friend (para.10-15) presents three arguments that feminists hold against the social contract theory. To begin with, Friend describes how the social contract hides the sexual contract, which governs men’s relations with women. In the description by Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, the social contract theory appears to be opposed to patriarchy and patriarchal right.
However, the male control over women happens in the contemporary society through three main social contracts. These paradigmatic contemporary contracts concern men’s control over women. For example, in the United States, a husband has the right to sexual access within the marriage contract.
This provision of the marriage act does not allow the recognition of marital rape within the legal system and puts women at the mercy of men. On the case of prostitution, modernity and the male dominance of society has presented an equal access for both male and women.
This in particular gives men unrestricted sexual access to women’s bodies. Surrogate motherhood extends the same rights to women’s reproductive system. Using these examples, Friend notes that contracts offer a socially accepted way for women dominance and control.
Furthermore, Friend argues that the social contract is not the right way to achieving equality and freedom for all in the society. Friend sees social contract as a means for upholding patriarchy. In fact, a social contract may be the only means available (Friend para.10-15).
According to Pateman (57), feminists also question the nature of the individuals that forms the heart of the social contract. The social contract presented by Hobbes is a man. Locke presents the individual as a proprietor and Rousseau presents the individual as a noble savage. Others like Rawl and Gauthier present the individual as male.
In these accounts, the individual at the heart of the social contract is supposedly race-less, sexless, class-less, disembodied and represents the abstract form of humanity. A closer investigation of the individual at the heart of the social contract reveals that the representation of the individual in the social contract theory is not of the universal humanity.
Instead, as Pateman (57-58) reveals, the individual at the core of the social contract exist in history as a bourgeois man. The human presented by Hobbes is an individual with a masculine character. A notable feminist voice is Virginia Held who argues in her book titled ‘Feminist Morality’ that the social contract represents the individual as an economic man (Held 71-147).
According to Held (71-147), the individual presented by Hobbes, also referred to as the economic man, concerns himself with the maximization of his own personal interests. This individual agrees to contract terms that safeguard his personal interests or provide a way for him to serve his personal interests.
This representation of the ideal individual forming the core of the social contract theory by Hobbes is faulty. Considerably, the individual does not fit the description of children who do not have a means to provide for themselves.
In addition, the description fails to consider the person who provides for children. Historically women have provided for children. Even if all other accounts are disputable, the failure to acknowledge the provision for children by women fails the feminist test.
The feminist Held (213) argues from the emerging tradition of care ethics. In this argument, social contract theory fails to give a full account of morality and political compulsions. Instead, in the argument, the social contract theory demarcates individual’s rights and obligations.
Delineation does not fully describe how to be moral. The social theory relies on the assumption of bonds between people being non-essential and voluntary. In reality, this does not happen in all instances.
Humans have different motivations and act based on human psychology, which is much complex than its representation in the social contract theory by Hobbes. From the care perspective, liberal moral theory relies on the relations between the people it seeks to free the individual.
In this manner, people have to be in the relationships that they seek to be free of in the first place. Human relations exceed the contractual terms that Held (71-147) identifies with the economic man. To represent fully, human relationships, the social contract theory ought to incorporate other models of human relationships that offer an insight on morality.
A first step would be to consider the mother to child relationship. To sum up, the social contract theory should incorporate the moral experiences of most people such as women and children in order to qualify as gender neutral.
Race Conscious Argument
The race conscious argument also comes from Pateman’s arguments. Using Pateman’s arguments, Mills (10-94) offers a critique of the history of Western political thought using the social contract theory. In Mills’ argument, the social contract only serves as an over layer of a stronger racial contract that governs human relationships within the Western society.
In essence, the racial contract determines the qualification of an individual worthy of full representation in the social contract. In this argument, some individuals such as whites have more capacity than other races. Without the recognition as full persons, individuals do not possess the power to make contracts or to be the subject of such contracts.
The racial contract acts as a meta-contract determining the extent of individualism and the criteria for inclusion and exclusion into the society. The racial contract serves as a guide for operation of other contracts coming after it. In this nature, the racial contract serves as a facility to allow persons to treat other persons and their lands as exploitable assets.
Hobbes reinforces the fact that the racial and social contracts are hypothetical in the reference of the state of nature. On the contrary, it is an actual contract whose traces exist in historical documents. While racism appears to be a negative externality of the Western democratic and political ideal, evidence presented by Mills (68-134) claims the contrary.
The social contract theory assumes that racism does not go beyond its superficiality. According to the social contract theory, everyone is equal and the law treats all in the same way by the law. However, an examination of reality indicates that a racial contract informs the structure of the political system that claims to uphold the social contract.
For example, before the establishment of governments, Native Americans did not own land. Likewise, in the colonization and enslavement of Africans, there are indications that such people did not express their ownership of property and thus were unequal to their colonizers or masters.
Mills (121-156) concludes the argument against the social contract theory by saying that its very purpose is to keep hidden from the view of political reality the fact that some individuals are full persons while others are incomplete persons.
To remedy this misconception, a new contract would be appropriate. This new contract is a naturalized racial contract that would tell the story of individuals and the details their history.
While the social contract may be faulty as shown by the feminist and race conscious arguments, the justification of a social contract still exists. Individuals implicitly enter into contracts that allow them to enjoy the benefits of the society.
The arguments presented above indicate that the social contract only covers self-interested parties who, under the social contract, are full humans. Therefore, we can rightly claim that the inclusion of all humans in a given society is not sensible because their inclusion was not in the interest of the parties under the contract.
Persons who affect the life of others will be of interest to the people whose lives they are likely to affect (Evers 188). The social contract theory should not be a universal contract governing human interactions in all societies.
The ideal individual presented in the social contract cannot fit into every aspect of individuals in the contemporary world. Hence, the social contract theory should only serve as an explanation of the historical social engagement that fits its ideal individual environment.
Conclusion
The social contract theory remains an abstract theory that fails to explain the contemporary realities. Although it serves as an explanation and justification for the existence of the state, largely, it fails miserably at accommodation of all individuals.
On one part, the theory describes the benefits that all individuals get from the common observance of the contract. However, on another part the theory fails to account for relationships among individuals that do not arise out of the assumptions it represents.
This essay has presented a background description of the social contract theory in order to form a basis for the argument against the theory.
Then, the essay has delved into gender and racial controversies facing the social contract theory to show that the application of this theory can only be partial to be acceptable. Modern societies are complex and include attributes and retaliations that are missing in Hobbes explanation of the social contract theory.
Works Cited
D’Agostino, Fred and Gerald Gaus. “Contemporary approaches to the social contract.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008. Web.
Evers, Williamson M. “Social contract: A critique.” Journal of Liberation Studies 1.3 (1977): 185-194.
Friend, Celeste. “The Social Contract Theory.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2004. Web.
Held, Virginia. Feminist morality: Transforming culture, society, and politics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Forgotten Books, 2008.
Mills, Charles Wade. The racial contract. Ithaaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997.
Pateman, Carole. The sexual contract. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988.