Modern contract theory, beginning in the 17th Century, offers methods for organizing our understanding of the way that equitable human relations can give rise to legitimate forms of state power. In this lesson we will take a look at two broad traditions in modern contract theory. On the one hand we find contract theories arising from Epicurean empiricism, where sense experience combines with pleasure and pain to guide our natural reasoning. On the other hand we find contract theories arising from Stoic rationalism, where we pay primary attention to the inner structures of reason and consciousness.
PRELUDE TO MODERN CONTRACT THEORY
Utopia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia
New Worlds Are Possible in 1516
The Schleitheim Confession
http://www.anabaptists.org/history/the-schleitheim-confession.html
A 16th Century text from the radical reformation of the Swiss Brethern, which challenges the ordering assumptions of European polity and hastens the need for a secular (ie non-sectarian) theory of state.
Galileo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
New forms of physical science are emerging. Why not new forms of political science?
CONTRACT THEORY FROM THE EPICUREAN-EMPIRICIST FAMILY
Hobbes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hobbes
Leviathan (Ch. XIII)
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/hobbes/leviathan-c.html#CHAPTERXIII
This is he famous “state of nature” chapter which “demonstrates” the unsustainability of human life without some common power or common law. Be sure to note that this is the problem, not the solution.
Locke
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke
Two Treatises on Government
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=222
Jefferson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
Archives.gov
http://www.archives.gov/
Note: read the opening passages of the Declaration and Constitution. Contract Theory?
Douglass
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=162
What does Douglass say about the value of the Preamble?
CONTRACT THEORY FROM THE RATIONALIST-STOIC FAMILY
But first a reminder of Hume, the brilliant Epicruean-Empiricist who knocked Kant from his dogmatic slumbers.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=342&Itemid=27
Kant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant
Philosophy of Law
-Mine (see No. 8)
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=359&chapter=55713&layout=html&Itemid=27
Hegel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel
Lordship & Bondage (Master-Slave Dialectic)
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phba.htm
Or how feudalistic consciousness evolved into republican recognition.
CourseLinks 