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The central assertion that social contract theory approaches is that law and political order are not natural, but human creations. The social contract and the political order it creates are simply the means towards an end—the benefit of the individuals involved—and legitimate only to the extent that they fulfill their part of the agreement.
The concept of the right of revolution was also taken up by John Locke in Two Treatises of Government as part of his social contract theory. Locke declared that under natural law, all people have the right to life, liberty, and estate; under the social contract, the people could instigate a revolution against the government when it acted ...
Locke's political theory was founded upon that of social contract. Unlike Thomas Hobbes , Locke believed that human nature is characterised by reason and tolerance . Like Hobbes, however, Locke believed that human nature allows people to be selfish.
John Locke, a liberal philosopher, was an important theorist of liberal government. Writing in his Two Treatises of Government, Locke reasoned that men living in a state of nature would voluntarily join in a social contract, forming a "commonwealth" or government. Locke further reasoned that the powers of the government had to be restricted to ...
17th-century English philosopher John Locke discussed natural rights in his work, identifying them as being "life, liberty, and estate (property)", and argued that such fundamental rights could not be surrendered in the social contract. Preservation of the natural rights to life, liberty, and property was claimed as justification for the ...
The social contract theory, most influentially formulated by Hobbes, John Locke and Rousseau (though first suggested by Plato in The Republic), was among the first to provide a political classification of rights, in particular through the notion of sovereignty and of natural rights.
Contractualism is a term in philosophy which refers either to a family of political theories in the social contract tradition (when used in this sense, the term is an umbrella term for all social contract theories that include contractarianism), [1] or to the ethical theory developed in recent years by T. M. Scanlon, especially in his book What We Owe to Each Other (published 1998).
The idea of political obligation is philosophical, focusing on the morality of laws, rather than justice. Discussion of political obligation grew during the era of social contract theory, in which Thomas Hobbes and John Locke were crucial in explaining the idea and its importance. Political obligation is distinct from legal obligation.