Updated 2024 Fall
Modern contract theory, or social 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.
Orientation Lectures
Do we Need Government? (The Social Contract)
8-bit Philosophy, YouTube
Constitutional Principles: Consent of the Governed
Bill of Rights Institute, YouTube
https://youtu.be/_-pDcYF64rs
James Earl Jones Reads Frederick Douglass
Democracy Now, YouTube
https://youtu.be/8tTkHJWxfP0
Dr. Charles W. Mills – Liberalism and Racial Justice, Simpson Center, YouTube (Note: in philosophy and political theory, the term “liberalism” indicates a theory that defends individual liberty, especially against social and political restraint.)
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 (radical Baptists), 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://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm#link2HCH0013
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. Here’s a link to the complete table of contents.
Locke
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke
Two Treatises on Government
First Treatise: against the religious justification of absolute authority
Second Treatise: a philosophical argument for “consent of the governed”
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Two_Treatises_of_Government/Book_II
Jefferson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
Archives.gov
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration
Note: read the opening passages of the Declaration and Constitution. Contract Theory?
Douglass
https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/
What does Douglass say about the value of the Preamble?
Descendants of Douglass read excerpts
CONTRACT THEORY FROM THE RATIONALIST-STOIC FAMILY
Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico Politicus
CH XVI Of the Foundations of the State
But first a reminder of Hume, the brilliant Epicruean-Empiricist who knocked Kant from his dogmatic slumbers.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4705/4705-h/4705-h.htm
Kant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant
Philosophy of Law
-What is “Right”? (or Law)
See Online Library of Liberty text for Kant’s Philosophy of Law
In the Table of Contents look for: GENERAL DEFINITIONS AND DIVISIONS, then see section IV. B. & C.
-To Have Anything External . . . (as mine, by law)
See Online Library of Liberty text for Kant’s Philosophy of Law
In the Table of Contents look for PRIVATE RIGHT. THE PRINCIPLES OF THE EXTERNAL MINE AND THINE GENERALLY, then see CHAPTER FIRST, Section 8.
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.
Rawls
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/
This is an encyclopedia. Check library for full text “primary source” authored by John Rawls.
CRITICAL CONTRACT THEORY
Please check your library databases for “primary source text”
Caole Pateman’s Sexual Contract Theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sexual_Contract
Charles Mills’ Racial Contract Theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Racial_Contract
Racial Liberalism
https://youtu.be/78wzAfQu9Mw
Database suggestion:
Dempsey, James. “Pluralistic Business Ethics: The Significance And Justification Of Moral Free Space In Integrative Social Contracts Theory.” Business Ethics: A European Review 20.3 (2011): 253-266. Philosopher’s Index. Web. 8 Jan. 2014.
CourseLinks 