The idea of a Social Contract

Question 1

What is Political authority?

Answer 1

Right to rule

• right to legislate
• right to impose taxation
• right to encore the law etc.

Question 2

What is a social contract?

Answer 2

Mutual consent to confer political authority to a person or a small set of persons establishes their right to rule

Question 3

Hobbes distinguishes between two types of social contract?

Answer 3

Commonwealth by institution

Commonwealth by Acquisition

Question 4

What is common wealth by institution?

Answer 4

Mutual consent (by majority) to obey a common political authority

Question 5

What is commonwealth by acquisition?

Answer 5

Promising obedience to a conqueror

Question 6

Why does Hobbes think that both types of social contract are equally legitimate?

Answer 6

Both are grounded in consent
Commonwealth by acquisition is also grounded in consent of those subjected, not in rights associated with victory
Hobbes understands parents authority over their children as a case of authority by acquisition

Question 7

Hobbes affirms a natural (liberty) right to secure one’s self-preservation. (What is this liberty right?)

Answer 7

“The right of nature… is the liberty each man hath to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature, that is to say, of his own life, and consequently of doing anything which, in his own judgement and reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto”

Question 8

How do people give up their right to all things?

Answer 8

Through the social contract, individuals give up their right to all things, thus creating obligations for themselves

Question 9

Giving up a liberty right?

Answer 9

To law down a man’s right to anything is to divest himself of the liberty of hindering another of the benefit of his own right to the same
Giving up right either through renouncing or transferring.

Question 10

Renouncing means?

Answer 10

Renouncing is general

Question 11

Transferring means?

Answer 11

transferring is to a specific person or assembly of persons

Question 12

Political obligation

Answer 12

Conseting to social contract creates obligations towards the state

Question 13

The rationality of cooperation?

Answer 13

Hobbes intends to argue that because state of nature is so grim, it is rational for us to consent to a social contract
How is this argument supposed to work?

Question 14

Rationality interpretation/ Problems

Answer 14

It shows that avoiding the state of nature is desirable

However it also shows that not cooperation, is rational

Therefore, the conclusion that consenting to obey a political authority is rational does not follow

In addition, it seems wrong: surely, co-operation is rational?

Question 15

Passion interpretation/problems

Answer 15

Passion interpretation shows that it is rational to cooperate

If cooperation is rational, however, why is the state of nature so bad?

Do we not have, even in the state of nature, resources to avoid a war of all against all

This interpretation thus does not seem to support the need for political institutions

Question 16

alternative interpretation?

Answer 16

Hobbes answer to the fool?
the fool claims that there is no such thing as justice?

Justice according to Hobbes, means promise keeping/ respecting a contract

The fool questions whether we can have reason to respect a social contract

Question 17

Hobbes rejects the reasoning of the fool? Why?

Answer 17

That reason suggests that promises should be kept as long as this can be enforced.

Rule-following is rational provided there is enough certainty that others will follow the rule as well

His answer to the fool makes sense of the claim that “covenants without the swords are but words”

Question 18

In foro Interno/in foro externo distinction?

Answer 18

In state of nature, it would be irrational to act cooperatively
In civil state, cooperation can be enforced and thus becomes rational

But show should we make sense of the intermediary stage, where individuals are in the state of nature need to promise to each other to transfer their rights?

Question 19

Short- sightedness interpretation

Answer 19

A modification of the rationality account
State of nature is that of an iterated PD
Cooperation becomes rational but people are too shortsighted to see that
Enforcement of cooperation is also rational, as it helps to secure benefits of cooperation
Civil state guards against short-sightedness

Question 20

Further problem: hobbes does not have a robust account of volutariness

Answer 20

A covenant not to defend myself from force by force is always void

Hobbes grants that one cannot incur obligations through coercion

Hobbes does not seem to have the resources to distinguish between freely given and enforced consent between voluntariness and coercion