Comprehensive Notes on Social Contract Theory: Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau

Locke, Hobbes, Separation of Powers, and the Rise of Capitalism

• Locke's Critique of Hobbesian Sovereignty:

  • Locke quips against Hobbes that thinking men are so foolish that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done by polecats or foxes (meaning other individuals), but are content and think it is safe to be devoured by lions.
  • Hobbes' solution to the conflict of the state of nature is to erect an absolute sovereign with immense power to terminate interpersonal violence.
  • Locke rejoins that erecting an absolute sovereign creates a centralized power capable of dominating and oppressing ordinary citizens. Giving absolute power to one sovereign ruler is potentially far worse than remaining in the state of nature.

• Lockean Solution and Impartial Judicial Power:

  • Locke advocates for impartial judges who are structurally separable from both the legislative power and the magistrates (executives) administering government.
  • Impartial judges settle disputes between ordinary citizens and those who occupy executive or legislative authority.
  • The establishment of an impartial judiciary tasked with protecting individual rights against government officials was an innovative political concept that proved instrumental to the emergence of modern capitalism.

• Foundations of Capitalism:

  • Capitalist economic structures require individuals to hold productive property (capital capable of producing goods, such as factories and shops) and to profit from that ownership.
  • Entrepreneurial activity—owning shops, manufacturing goods, selling products, and hiring workers—is ancient and has existed across human history for millennia.
  • Distinction between ancient commerce and modern capitalism:
  • Prior to the separation of powers and independent judiciaries, state authority was centralized, typically under a monarchy.
  • In disputes between a monarch and an entrepreneur (e.g., if a monarch wished to seize an entrepreneur's property or profit), state-controlled courts invariably ruled in favor of the monarch.
  • Once judicial functions became independent from rulers and capable of ruling in favor of private property owners against state authority, entrepreneurs gained the security needed for long-term capital investment.
  • Business owners no longer faced arbitrary state confiscation upon accumulating significant wealth or profitability, fostering modern economic investment.
  • Modern Parallel:
  • Modern corporations asserting intellectual or physical property rights can dispute state claims in independent courts, expecting a fair hearing before impartial judges—an institutional arrangement impossible under a Hobbesian state.

Rule of Law and Limits on Political Authority in Locke

• Political Obligations and Public Standing Laws:

  • Political obligations are governed by durable, publicly known, established laws rather than the arbitrary will of an individual monarch or prince.
  • Primary purpose of the Lockean state: to convert implicit natural laws into explicit positive laws enacted by a legislative power.
  • State governance differs fundamentally from military command or corporate executive rule; governance operates strictly through pre-established legal rules that bind all members.
  • Equality Under the Law: Rulers are strictly bound by laws and subject to identical punishments for violations as ordinary citizens.

• Limits on Legislative Power:

  • The fundamental positive law of any commonwealth is the establishment of the legislative power, which serves to preserve peace, safety, and property.
  • Legislative authority is not absolute; it remains constrained by fundamental moral principles inherent in natural law.
  • Prohibitions on Legislative Authority:
  • Cannot rule through arbitrary decrees; must act exclusively via standing, published laws and authorized impartial judges.
  • Has no authority to deprive individuals of their property, persons, labor, fruits of labor, or land without explicit consent.

• Locke's Direct Excerpt on Property Rights:

  • "The great end of men's entering into society being the enjoyment of their properties in peace and safety and the great instrument and means of that being the laws established in that society. The first and fundamental positive law of all commonwealths is the establishment of a legislative power."
  • "The supreme power cannot take from any man any part of his property without his consent. For the pressure of property being the end of government and that for which men enter into society, it necessarily supposes and requires that the people should have property. Men, therefore, in society having property, they have such a right to the goods, which by the law of the community are theirs, that nobody hath the right to take their substance or any part of it from them without their own consent. Without this, they have no property in that which another can take right by right, take from me when he pleases against my consent."

• Theoretical Implications for Wealth Redistribution:

  • The strict prohibition on taking property without consent raises foundational questions regarding the legitimacy of taxation and wealth redistribution within a strict Lockean framework.

Introduction to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Social Contract Tradition

• Biographical Context:

  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau lived from 1712 to 1778 and originated from the Republic of Geneva (located in modern-day Switzerland).
  • Authored works in French, exerting a primary intellectual influence across French-speaking Europe.
  • Achieved fame by winning an essay contest held by the Academy of Dijon on whether the restoration of the arts and sciences contributed to the purification of morals; Rousseau argued in the negative, asserting that arts and sciences corrupt humanity.
  • Major Philosophical Works:
  • Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (Second Discourse): An expansion of the themes from his winning essay, submitted to a subsequent iteration of the contest (which he did not win).
  • The Social Contract: His foundational treatise on political legitimacy and social contract theory.

• Role among French Philosophes:

  • Categorized as a philosophe—public intellectuals including novelists, playwrights, and musicians who shaped the intellectual climate leading to the French Revolution (which erupted approximately a decade after Rousseau's death in 1778).
  • Intellectual Style and Character:
  • Led a nomadic lifestyle and maintained turbulent personal relationships.
  • Engaged in a bitter dispute with Voltaire, who misconstrued the Discourse on Inequality as advocating a literal return to a primitive "savage" state (a return Rousseau explicitly considered impossible).
  • Maintained a long-term friendship with philosopher David Hume, though this relationship also eventually dissolved.
  • Uncommitted to formal philosophical conventions of precision and charity; frequently employed hyperbole and polemical exaggerations, often misrepresenting opponent arguments (such as Hobbes).

Philosophical and Anthropological Origins of Inequality

• The State of Nature as a Literary and Theoretical Genre:

  • Initiated by Hobbes as a thought experiment to justify political authority, the "state of nature" narrative evolved into a widely practiced philosophical genre across Enlightenment Europe.
  • Theoretical approaches ranged from pure hypothetical models justifying state sovereignty to speculative anthropological accounts tracking the transition from pre-civilization to organized society.

• Anthropological Insights from Graeber and Wengrow:

  • David Graeber and David Wengrow's anthropological text, The Dawn of Everything, analyzes the historical emergence of these inequality narratives.
  • Shift in European Intellectual History:
  • In medieval European thought (and earlier classical philosophy such as Aristotle's), social hierarchy and inequality were treated as natural, inevitable baseline conditions (e.g., Aristotle's assertion that some individuals are naturally fit to rule while others are fit to be ruled).
  • Contact between European colonizers and North American Indigenous populations exposed Europeans to egalitarian, highly democratic social structures.
  • Experiencing alternative modes of governance prompted European thinkers to question why rigid European hierarchies existed, whether they were morally justified, and how social inequality originally arose.

Frameworks of Social Contract Thinkers: Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau

• Hobbesian Framework:

  • State of nature: A hypothetical pre-political condition defined as a state of total war ($\text{war of all against all}$), rendering life "nasty, brutish, and short."
  • Underlying Human Psychology:
  1. Unlimited desires (driving competitive conflict).
  2. Diffidence (pervasive mistrust, fear, and insecurity).
  3. Pursuit of glory.
  • Consequences: Absence of security prevents industry, agriculture, navigation, architecture, science, letters, and arts.
  • Political Conclusion: Justifies absolute authoritarian sovereignty as the only mechanism to secure order.

• Lockean Framework:

  • State of nature: Individuals exist with natural property rights and act as individual executives of natural law.
  • Inconveniences of the State of Nature:
  1. Bias in self-interpretation and vengeful execution of natural law.
  2. Unwritten, implicit nature of natural law.
  3. Lack of explicit standing laws and consistent enforcement power.
  • Political Conclusion: Justifies limited government with explicit statutory laws, independent judges, and clear separation of powers.

• Rousseau as a Post-Liberal Theorist:

  • Hobbes represents a proto-liberal figure (introducing individualist baseline premises alongside authoritarian conclusions).
  • Locke represents classical liberalism (establishing foundational principles of property, limited state power, and rule of law).
  • Rousseau operates as a post-liberal critic, aiming to dismantle the foundational premises of both Hobbesian and Lockean state justifications.
  • Common Methodology: All three theorists utilize the state of nature primarily as hypothetical thought experiments rather than exact historical reconstructions, despite occasional flawed commentary on Indigenous societies.

Progressive vs. Decline Models of History

• Progressive View of History (Enlightenment, Hobbes, Locke):

  • Posits that human well-being systematically improves as civil society, governance, and social institutions develop and strengthen.
  • Core Premise: Institutional stability enables cumulative advancements in science, philosophy, technology, education, and art, cultivating rational governance and reducing interpersonal violence.

• Empirical Claims and Modern Proponents of Progress:

  • Data Metrics on Human Well-being (Tracking historical cohorts across two centuries):
  • Extreme poverty rates dropped precipitously worldwide.
  • Global democratic governance expanded.
  • Infant and child mortality rates declined dramatically from $41$ per $100$ children two centuries ago down to approximately $6$ per $100$ in modern times.
  • Comparative Metric: Two hundred years ago, the country with the absolute lowest child mortality rate had higher mortality rates than the country with the highest child mortality rate today.
  • Literacy rates expanded universally over the same timeframe.
  • Steven Pinker's Defense of Hobbesian Progress:
  • In The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Pinker utilizes anthropological data to argue that human deaths from interpersonal violence have declined over time.
  • Mechanisms driving violence reduction:
    1. Formation of centralized states (the Hobbesian Leviathan monopolizing violence).
    2. Expansion of literacy, education, and public reason.
    3. Adoption of Lockean human rights ideologies.

• Decline View of History (Rousseau and Romanticism):

  • Rejects enlightenment progressivism, formulating a narrative of historical degeneration and alienation.
  • Core Tenets:
  • Idealizes natural human existence over artificial civil institutions.
  • Views civilization, private property, and institutional progress as agents of moral corruption.
  • Functions as an intellectual precursor to the 19th-century Romantic Movement, which sought to revive idyllic, pre-civilized, pastoral human relationships.

Rousseau's Critique of the Hobbesian State of Nature

• Elevating the Justificatory Burden of the State:

  • Rousseau asserts that the state of nature was not a state of misery or perpetual war, thereby dramatically increasing the burden of proof required to justify political authority.
  • Rejection of Anarchism: Although Rousseau idealizes natural man, he does not advocate a return to the natural state (viewing it as historically irreversible), but instead develops his own model of legitimate authority in The Social Contract.

• Critique of Hobbes' Psychological Fallacy:

  • Rousseau directly criticizes Hobbes' conclusion regarding natural human wickedness:
  • "Let us not conclude with Hobbes that since man has not the slightest idea of goodness, that he is naturally wicked or that he is vicious because he does not know virtue, that he always denies his fellow services, which he does not believe he owes them."
  • Rousseau argues Hobbes committed a fundamental methodological error: projecting traits generated entirely by civil society onto natural humans in the state of nature.
  • Trait Attribution Error:
  • Hobbes incorrectly assumes natural humans naturally possess limitless desires, diffidence, pervasive fear, and glory-seeking behavior.
  • Rousseau counters that these destructive passions—vanity, hyper-competitiveness, greed, and social anxiety—are artificial products induced by living within competitive social institutions and property systems.

• Human Characteristics in Rousseau's Primitive State of Nature:

  • Simple Passions and Needs: Primitive humans possess minimal, easily satisfied physical needs, eliminating structural incentives for major interpersonal conflict.
  • Autonomy and Independence: Absence of complex social interdependencies prevents the formation of permanent social hierarchies, dominance structures, or economic inequality.
  • Non-Exploitative Self-Preservation: Natural self-preservation operates independently without requiring the subjugation, exploitation, or ruin of others.