The purpose of this report is to discuss the social contract theories of Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau.
The 18th century Enlightenment, an era that celebrated free inquiry, political liberty, and progress, saw the development of the theory of the social contract. This theory postulated a new political and social principle, which held that relations among individuals in a society, and between individuals and government, are governed by a social contract. Its chief proponents--John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau--were widely published on the Continent and discussed in learned journals, and their ideas became the philosophical cornerstone of democratic government. Indeed, the ideas of Locke and his contemporaries strongly influenced the political and moral philosophies of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the other architects of the American government.
The antecedents of the theory of social contract can be traced back to Aristotle, who distinguished between monarch and tyrant and upheld the right of the people to elect officials and call them to account. St. Thomas Aquinas expanded this concept further, arguing that while the basis for authority is ordination by God, the form of authority, whether monarchical or constitutional, is to be determined by the people. He wrote that "government is instituted by the community, and may be revoked or limited by the community if it be tyrannical" (Essays ix). This idea passed through the feudal period of the Middle Ages, receiving further endorsement from clerics seeking religious liberty. But it was not until the 18th century, with its conducive political and intellectual climate, that the social contract theory was formally proposed and systemized by Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau.
The Great Age of the Social Contract theory spans the century from the publication of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan in 1651 to the publication of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Du Contract Social...