Social Contract
Social Contract
The title of a book on the theory of the state written by Jean Jacques Rousseau in 1762. The problem Rousseau is seeking to solve is:
“To find that form of association which should protect and defend, with the whole force of the community, the person and property of each individual; and in which each person, by uniting himself to the rest, shall nevertheless be obedient only to himself, and remain as fully at liberty as before” (Social Contract, Bk. I, Chap. 6).
“We, the contracting parties, do jointly and severally submit our persons and abilities to the supreme direction of the general will of all; and in a col- lective body receive each member into that body all an indivisible part of the whole” (ibid.).
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Social Contract
The original covenant by which, according to certain philosophers of modern times — Hooker, Hohbes, Althusius, Spinoza, Locke, Pufendorf, etc. — individuals have united and formed the state. This theory was combined with the older idea of the governmental contract by which the people conferred the power of government upon a single person or a group of persons. This theory goes back to ancient philosophy and was upheld by medieval thinkers, suth as Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padova. Though most of the philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century realized that no such original compact as the idea of the Social Contract called for, had actually occurred, the idea, nevertheless, served as a criterion to determine whether any act of the government was just or not, i.e., whether the consent of the governed might be assumed (especially Rousseau, Kant). The theory of the Social Contract had a remarkable influence upon the political philosophy of the American colonies. See Political Philosophy. — W.E.