What Are Social Contract Theorists

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  According to the story of the prisoner`s dilemma, two people were questioned separately about a crime they are suspected of having committed. The police have strong evidence of a less serious crime they committed, but they need a confession to sentence her to more serious charges. Each inmate is informed that if she cooperates with the police by informing the other inmate, she will be rewarded with a relatively light prison sentence of one year, while her cohort will go to prison for ten years. If they are both silent, then there will be no such rewards, and they can each face moderate penalties of two years. And if the two cooperate with the police by informing each other, the police will have enough to send them to prison for five years. The dilemma then is this: in order to best serve her own interests, each prisoner argues that no matter what the other does, she should cooperate better with the police by confessing. All the reasons: “If she confesses, then I should confess and be sentenced to five years instead of ten years. And if she doesn`t confess, then I should confess and be sentenced to one year instead of two. So no matter what she does, I should admit it. The problem is that if all the reasons are like this, everyone confesses, and everyone goes to jail for five years. However, if they had all remained silent and cooperated with each other and not with the police, they would have spent only two years in prison.

  In 1971, John Rawls revived interest in social contracts with the publication of A Theory of Justice. He then extended the model developed in A Theory of Justice in The Law of Peoples to the international stage. Rawls uses a model of social contract that he calls “justice as equity” in the national context and “peoples` rights” on the international stage. [10] Rawls` account is purely normative and does not purport to be an accurate descriptive account of how nations actually treat each other. He describes his argument as an “ideal theory” in pursuit of a “realistic utopia.” [11] In most cases, feminism defies any simple or universal definition. In general, however, feminists take women`s experiences seriously, as well as the impact that theories and practices have on women`s lives. Given the pervasive influence of contract theory on social, political, and moral philosophy, it is therefore not surprising that feminists have much to say about whether contract theory is appropriate or appropriate from the perspective of taking women seriously. Examining all feminist responses to social contract theory would take us far beyond the limits of this article. I will therefore focus on only three of these arguments: Carole Pateman`s argument on the relationship between the contract and the subordination of women to men, feminist arguments on the nature of the liberal individual, and the argument of care. The intuition of the need for social rules and a government to apply them is due to an implicit “contract” with logic (i.e., the intuition that a government and its rules are a logical necessity) – not on a contract between the government and the citizen. That is, the overwhelming majority of citizens intuitively recognize that it makes sense that the things we desire are universally more valuable than the things we think we need; We believe that we need what we believe, only as a means and because of what we desire – it makes sense that we consider our desires more precious than what we need. As a result, it makes sense for us to use a mechanism to pool and coordinate our resources (which satisfy our needs) so that we can maximize our desires (what we want).

  Government and its rules are sought only as a logical necessity – a mechanism for the logical allocation of resources to citizens and the fulfillment of other duties of need, such as the protection .B. Thus, the ultimate goal of social contract theories is to show in the more general than social sense (moral, political, legal, etc.). Rules can be rationally justified. However, this does not distinguish the social contract from other approaches to moral and political philosophy, all of which attempt to show that moral and political rules are rationally justifiable in some sense. The real peculiarity of the social contract approach is that justification is not based on exogenous reason or truth. Justification is generated by rational consent (or no rejection in T.M. Scanlon`s version), not according to the reasons that generate consent. That is, the fact that everyone in a society, taking into account their individual reasoning, would accept a particular rule or principle is the decisive justification for that rule and not certain correct or valid reasons that would be appreciated by sufficiently rational individuals and, if valued, would lead to an agreement. These views may seem contradictory at first glance in the Krito and in the Republic: in the first dialogue, Socrates uses a social contract argument to show why it is up to him only to remain in prison, while in the latter, he rejects the social contract as a source of justice. However, these two views are compatible.

  From Socrates` point of view, a righteous person is someone who, among other things, recognizes his obligation to the state by obeying its laws. The state is the most morally and politically fundamental entity and, as such, deserves our utmost loyalty and respect. Only men know this and act accordingly. However, justice is not limited to obeying laws in exchange for others obeying them. Justice is the state of a well-regulated soul, and therefore the righteous man will necessarily also be the happy man. Justice is therefore more than just mutual obedience to the law, as Glaucon suggests, but it always includes obedience to the state and the laws that support it. Although Plato may be the first philosopher to offer a representation of the argument at the heart of social contract theory, Socrates ultimately rejects the idea that the social contract is the original source of justice. Given the long-standing and widespread influence that the theory of social contracts has had, it is not surprising that it is also the subject of much criticism from various philosophical perspectives. Feminists and race-conscious philosophers in particular have advanced important arguments about the substance and feasibility of social contract theory. On the other hand, “contractualists” such as Rawls, John Harsanyi (1977), Thomas Scanlon (1998), Stephen Darwall (2006), Nicholas Southwood (2010) and Gerald Gaus (2011) attribute ethical or political values to consultative parties, as well as a much more substantial and non-instrumentalist form of practical thought.

  The types of substitutes that model the problem of justifying “you and me” are already located in such a way that their considerations are framed by ethical and political considerations. The considerations of agents are not carried out, as in the case of Hobbesian theorists, in purely prudential or instrumentalist terms, but are subject to the “veil of ignorance” or other substantive conditions. Here, the central problem of justification is not whether the idea of moral and political constraints themselves makes sense, but what kinds of moral or political principles meet certain fundamental moral requirements, such as. B treat everyone as free and equal legal persons or not subject a person to the will or judgment of another person (Reiman 1990, chap. 1). This approach is therefore non-reductionist in the sense that all morality is not derived from non-morality. The social contract is not written and is inherited at birth. It dictates that we will not break any laws or certain moral codes, and in return we reap the benefits of our society, namely security, survival, education and other necessities necessary to live. How the contract theorist models the parties to the agreement is determined by our (real) problem of justification and what is relevant to its solution. A large gap between contemporary theories of the social contract therefore implies the definition of the problem of justification. .

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