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In moral and political philosophy, the social contract is a theory or model that originated during the Age of Enlightenment and usually concerns the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual.
The social contract is unwritten, and is inherited at birth. It dictates that we will not break laws or certain moral codes and, in exchange, we reap the benefits of our society, namely security, survival, education and other necessities needed to live.
What was the significance of John Locke’s social contract?
Locke used the claim that men are naturally free and equal as part of the justification for understanding legitimate political government as the result of a social contract where people in the state of nature conditionally transfer some of their rights to the government in order to better ensure the stable, comfortable …
Hobbes was one of the earliest western philosophers to count women as persons when devising a social contract among persons. In this relevant sense, women are naturally equal to men. They are equally naturally free, meaning that their consent is required before they will be under the authority of anyone else.
The social contract states that “rational people” should believe in organized government, and this ideology highly influenced the writers of the Declaration of Independence. that created it, or popular sovereignty. He believed that every citizen was equal in the view of the government.
What is the concept of the social contract?
social contract, in political philosophy, an actual or hypothetical compact, or agreement, between the ruled or between the ruled and their rulers, defining the rights and duties of each. They then, by exercising natural reason, formed a society (and a government) by means of a social contract.
Social contract theory says that people live together in society in accordance with an agreement that establishes moral and political rules of behavior. The U.S. Constitution is often cited as an explicit example of part of America’s social contract. It sets out what the government can and cannot do.