Social Contract Theorists

There was a time when mankind lived in a “state of nature” without any ruling body governing them. There were no laws implemented thus the citizens either enjoyed unlimited freedom or lived in fear. As a result, these men entered into an agreement, a ‘social contract’, to form a political society for order to take place. There are five prominent philosophers who tackled about this social contract: Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume.

Grotius anchored his principles on the idea that every individual had natural rights which enabled self-preservation and acted as a basis for moral consensus. But, there’s a delineation of those rights because everyone was entitled to try to preserve himself. He stated that with a natural law accepted by all, even if we were to concede what we cannot concede without the utmost wickedness, these laws would still hold. This proposed that power could go back to the individuals if the political society they build forfeits its purpose. In other words, individuals were sovereign and under their own jurisdiction.

Hobbes, in his work Leviathan, described the state of nature in a state of war. Everyone lived in constant fear of everything and life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” According to Hobbes, the only way out of this situation was a mutual agreement among the people to be represented by a sovereign. People will hand over all their natural rights and give absolute power to the sovereign. This would mean more resolute and consistent exercise of political authority. The sovereign would then make and enforce the laws to secure a peaceful society. For him, the social contract was an agreement only among the people and not between them and their king. Fearing religion might be a source of civil war, he advised that the Church will be a department in the government. With this, life was no longer "a war of all against all".

      Locke contradicted Hobbes, for him, men lived in a state of perfect freedom, equality, and were governed by the law of nature before. It turned out to be chaotic so men had social contract to have a civilized society. He believed property to be the most significant natural right and declared that owners may do whatever they want with it. He also argued that government's authority comes from the citizens' delegation of their rights and the government enforced these on their behalf and acted for the general good. In this view, the government derived its powers from the consent of the governed. Unlike Hobbes, Locke is against the idea of the divine rights of king. The king did not hold absolute power. If a sovereign violated people’s rights, the social contract is broken, and the people had the right to revolt and establish a new government. For him, it was not just an agreement among the people, but between them and the sovereign.

      According to Rousseau, state of nature means a state of amorality alongside goodness. When people started to claim ownership of property, inequality, and war resulted. Through social contract, life, liberty, and property were protected while each person remained free. They should give up all their rights, not to a king, but to “the whole community”. Unlike Hobbes, he referred the people as “sovereign”. For him, representation is not enough.  Citizens could not delegate their civic duties.  He also agreed with Locke that the individual should never be forced to give up his or her natural rights to a king. He believed in a direct democracy in which everyone exercised their “general will” to make laws for the “public good.” Rousseau pictures this situation on a small scale, a city-state like his native Geneva.

      Hume argued that social contract did not really occur based on history. He pointed out that there had never been a situation called the ‘state of nature’ and that nobody had consented to a social contract, it was purely hypothetical and not realistic.

      In terms of the relationship of the citizens and rulers, all philosophers have the same idea that the power of the government is acquired from the people, but they differ on how the government acts afterwards. For Hobbes, governments are designed to control, not necessarily represent the people. People should obey the sovereign for he’s authorized with absolute power.  As for Locke and Grotius, the government represents the people, but if it violates rights, the people can revolt and establish another. On the contrary, Rousseau argued that representation through the government is not enough for citizens cannot delegate their rights. Governments must be responsive and aligned with the general will of the people.

     Continuations of these ideas by social contract theorists in the Philippine politics are very observable on the Preamble of the 1987 constitution and of the process how leaders acquire power. Rousseau’s idea is applied on the Preamble with the opening statement, “We, the sovereign people...” It just implied that it is us, Filipinos, who have the real ‘power’ given that Philippines is a democratic state. Leaders acquire power through the votes of the citizens. They are the elected representatives of the Filipinos, in support to Locke’s principle.