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Is there a Social Contract?—I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Extract

It is easy to dispose of the historical aspect of this question. When Aristotle affirmed that the family is more natural than the State, in the sense of original rather than final or necessary, and taught his contemporaries to regard the State as the result of a gradual development through the family and the tribe, he adopted a viewpoint which would probably find universal endorsement to-day. Only a particularly perverse writer would endeavour to revive the controversy as to whether or not the institution of the State began with explicit resolutions concluded at a specific date. No doubt there are plentiful instances of the establishment of particular States through some agreement or contract on the part of its members. The case of the Pilgrim Fathers is often cited as a classical example. But this does not give us an original contract. We should seek one in vain.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1940

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References

page 64 note 1 On the Social Contract, Works, p. 499.

page 65 note 1 On the Social Contract, Works, p. 499.

page 65 note 2 Two Treatises of Civil Government, book ii, sect. 102.

page 65 note 3 Op. cit., book ii, sect. 103.

page 65 note 4 Gough, W. J.: The Social Contract, p. 224.Google Scholar

page 66 note 1 Op. cit., p. 230.

page 66 note 2 Op. cit., p. 231.

page 66 note 3 Works, p. 510.

page 67 note 1 MrGough, . reminds us of the tendency “to regard nature or the will of God as merely a causa remota or causa impulsiva, which required the cooperation of human will and action for it to be translated into effect. This necessary human action was identified with the contract of subjection, by which the people set up a government to rule over them” (The Social Contract, p. 37).Google Scholar

page 69 note 1 For a more elaborate statement of this point, see Lindsay's, A. D. essay on Sovereignty, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 19231924.Google Scholar

page 70 note 1 See especially K. C. Hsiao, Political Pluralism, chap. i.

page 72 note 1 E.g. by Rousseau, Contract Social, book i, chap. 2. Rousseau's criticism of Hobbes's real view appears in book i, chap. 4. “What do they gain, if the very tranquillity they enjoy is one of their miseries? Tranquillity is found also in dungeons.”

page 72 note 2 Consider the passage on p. 116, Everyman edition of Leviathan: “The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer than the power lasteth, by which he is able to protect them.” While this suggests the view that government is based on force, the context proves the meaning to be different, namely, that the obligation to obey ceases when the sovereign fails to observe that minimum of order which makes his rule preferable to the state of war. An ineffective government loses its title to our allegiance.

page 72 note 3 C. E. Vaughan is vague on this point. While he mentions the threat of a “return to the miseries of nature,” he also makes such declarations as these, with reference to Hobbes's contract: “It is therefore impossible for the subject to turn round at any later moment and quarrel with the inevitable consequences of the step which he, or his forefathers for him, deliberately took” (History of Political Philosophy, p. 26). “If there is one writer above all others who pins his faith to the reality of the state of nature, to the authenticity of the facts he relates about it, it is the author of Leviathan. The whole form which he gives to the contract, the whole force of the reasoning which he builds upon it, depends upon the assumption that the state of nature was a terrible reality” (op. cit., p. 29).

page 73 note 1 Social Contract, p. 107.

page 73 note 2 The Modern State, p. 115.

page 75 note 1 Principles of Political Obligation, Lecture F.

page 75 note 2 Op. cit., sect. 84; see also sect. 90.

page 75 note 3 Darwin and Hegel, p. 259.

page 76 note 1 Lectures on Jurisprudence, p. 303.

page 76 note 2 Cp. above, p. 72. Austin's instance runs thus: “If a man condemned to imprisonment were dragged to the prison by the jailers, he would not obey or submit. But if he were liable to imprisonment in the event of his refusing to walk to it, and if he were determined to walk to it, by a fear of that further restraint, the man would render obedience to the sentence or command of the judge.”

page 76 note 3 Works, vol. iii, p. 28.

page 77 note 1 Principles of Political Obligation, Sect. 132. Italics mine.

page 77 note 2 Politics 1275 b.τάς δέ πολιτέίας δρώμεν έιδει διαфερούσας άλλήλων καί τάς μέν ύστ ύοτέρσς ς δέ δροις ούσα τάς γάρ ήμαριημένσς καί παρεκβεβηκηκνίς άναγκίον ΰστέρας είναί τών άναμαριήιων.. Aristotle's problem is slightly different from the problem discussed in the text. Accordingto his definition the citizen is one who participates in the government and its administration. Where this is only partially achieved, we have anerroneous or divergent, as distinct from a correct, form of state. The consent for which I have been arguing, however, does not require any direct influenceupon the conduct of government.

page 78 note 1 Cp. also the words of Archbishop Temple in the Hibbert Journal, October 1937. P. 4. “At any rate there is a great deal to be said for the view that actual freedom could be increased in most civilized countries to-day by a greater amount of control or coercion in the purely economic sphere. Regulated control, even if legally coercive, may be very much less tyrannical than the pressure of blind competition.”