A Social Contract with the Purpose of Maintaining Order in Society

In a state society of nature, the strongest would control the others who are weak. Society would not have rules or laws that prohibit or discourage unethical or immoral behavior. People would be forced to be exclusively selfish to survive and vulnerable to struggles for possession of scarce goods (rare due to lack of trade). Patriarchal control over women is found in at least three paradigmatic contemporary contracts: the marriage contract, the prostitution contract and the surrogacy contract. Each of these contracts relates to men`s control over women or a particular man`s control over a particular woman. Under the terms of the marriage contract, a husband is granted the right of sexual access in most states of the United States, which prohibits the legal category of marital rape. Prostitution is a typical example of Pateman`s assertion that modern patriarchy demands equal access for men to women, especially sexual access, access to their bodies. And surrogacy can be understood as more of the same, albeit in terms of women`s access to reproductive abilities. All these examples show that the treaty is the means by which women are dominated and controlled. The Treaty is not the way to freedom and equality.

Rather, it is a means, perhaps the most fundamental, by which patriarchy is maintained. In 1649, a civil war broke out over who would rule England – Parliament or King Charles I. The war ended with the beheading of the king. Shortly after Charles` execution, an English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), wrote Leviathan, a defense of the absolute power of kings. The book`s title referred to a Leviathan, a mythological whale-like sea monster that devoured entire ships. Hobbes compared Leviathan to government, a powerful state created to create order. . in Du contrat social (1762; The Social Contract), a work less widespread before 1789, but even more symptomatic of change. First, Locke argued that natural rights such as life, liberty, and property existed in the state of nature and could never be taken away by individuals or even voluntarily abandoned. These rights were “inalienable” (impossible to give up).

Locke also disagreed with Hobbes regarding the statutes. For him, it was not only an agreement between the people, but between them and the sovereign (preferably a king). The problems with the theory of social contracts are as follows: Rousseau wrote his Second Discourse in response to an essay competition sponsored by the Dijon Academy. (Rousseau had already won the same essay competition with an earlier essay commonly referred to as the first speech.) He describes the historical process by which man began in a state of nature and over time has “progressed” in civil society. According to Rousseau, the state of nature was a peaceful and chimerical period. People lived a lonely and simple life. Their few needs were easily met by nature. The theory of an implicit social contract states that by staying on the territory controlled by a society, which usually has a government, people consent to join that society and, if necessary, to be governed by its government. It is this approval that gives legitimacy to such a government.

Hobbes` political theory is best understood when it consists of two parts: his theory of human motivation, psychological egoism, and his theory of the social contract, which is based on the hypothetical state of nature. Hobbes mainly has a particular theory of human nature that leads to a particular view of morality and politics as developed in his philosophical masterpiece Leviathan of 1651. .

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