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What Is the Social Contract and How Does It Relate to American Government

The concept of the social contract was originally established by Glaucon, as described by Plato in The Republic, Book II. These two principles are linked by a certain order. The first principle, the distribution of civil liberties as far as possible in accordance with equality, precedes the second principle, which distributes social and economic goods. In other words, we cannot decide to give up some of our civil liberties in favour of greater economic advantage. Rather, we must meet the requirements of the first principle before moving on to the second. From Rawls` point of view, this series of principles expresses a fundamental rational preference for certain types of goods, that is, those embodied in civil liberties, over other types of goods, that is, economic benefits. However, the state system that emerged from the social contract was also anarchic (without leadership). Just as individuals had been sovereign in the state of nature and therefore allowed themselves to be guided by self-interest and the absence of rights, so States were now acting in their own interests in competition with each other. Just like the state of nature, states were therefore forced to come into conflict because there was no sovereign beyond the (more powerful) state who was able to impose a system such as social contract laws on everyone by force. In fact, Hobbes` work served as the basis for the theories of realism of international relations put forward by E.

H. Carr and Hans Morgenthau. Hobbes wrote in Leviathan that people (« we ») need to « terrify it with power, » otherwise people will not observe the law of reciprocity, « (in short) to do to others what would be done for the little ones. » [13] Building on the work of Immanuel Kant with his conjecture of state boundaries,[18] John Rawls (1921-2002) in A Theory of Justice (1971) proposed a contractual approach in which rational people in a hypothetical « original position » would set aside their individual preferences and abilities under a « veil of ignorance » and accept certain general principles of justice and legal organization. This idea is also used as a theoretical formalization of the game of the concept of equity. When America`s independence was achieved, Jefferson saw the Constitutional Convention as an opportunity to experiment with a true social contract that followed Locke`s theories. James Madison was inspired by Locke`s ideas to draft the Constitution. From its first words, the American government is created by the American people to serve the common good and protect their freedom. Madison also referred to the French philosopher Baron de Montesquieu, who proposed protecting republics from factions with a system of checks and balances. If each of the branches of government controlled itself, none of them would be the higher school.

This discouraged a small group from taking control of the government and using it to promote their own private interests rather than the public good. Epicurus appeared in the fourth century BC. Having had a keen sense of the social contract, with justice and law rooted in mutual agreement and benefit, as these lines prove, among other things, from his main teachings (see also Epicurean Ethics): John Locke believed that the government was obliged to follow the will of the majority that created it. or popular sovereignty. He believed that all citizens were equal from the point of view of the government. Locke developed the « branch » system of government, which includes the legislative, executive, and judicial branches we know today. If the government does not fulfill its duties, citizens have the right to rebel and eliminate the figurehead. This idea gave the colonists the inspiration and the right reason to fight against the British for independence. Locke is known for stating that everyone has the right to pursue « life, liberty and the pursuit of property. » In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson amended this declaration to affirm that everyone has the right to « life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. » John Locke merged « individualism within the framework of natural law and the limits of the legitimate authority of the state. » Locke`s work inspired the Declaration of Independence and later the United States Constitution. It also inspired many other famous documents written during the revolutionary period, including the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Locke`s most important and influential political writings are contained in his Two Treatises on Government. The first treatise deals almost exclusively with the refutation of robert Filmer`s Patriarchate argument that political authority was derived from religious authority, which is also known by the description of the divine right of kings, which was a very dominant theory in seventeenth-century England.

The second document contains Locke`s own constructive view of the goals and rationale of civilian government and is entitled « An Essay On The True Original Extent and End of Civilian Government. » Rousseau also analyses the statutes in terms of risk management[17], proposing the origins of the State as a form of mutual insurance. It manifests itself both formally and informally. It is an agreement, originally between European men in early modern times, to identify themselves as « white » and therefore fully human and to identify all others, especially the natives with whom they began to come into contact, as « others »: non-white and therefore not completely human. Thus, race is not only a social construct, as others have argued, it is above all a political construct created to serve a particular political goal and the political goals of a particular group. The treaty allows some people to treat others, as well as the land they inhabit, as resources that need to be exploited. The enslavement of millions of Africans and the appropriation of America by those who inhabited them are examples of this racial treaty that has been at work throughout history (such as Locke`s claim that Native Americans did not own the land on which they lived because they did not cultivate it and therefore did not own it). This contract is not hypothetical, as Hobbes describes the contract argued in his Leviathan. It is a real contract or a set of contracts concluded by real men of history. It is found in documents such as papal bulls and Locke`s writings on Native Americans and has been used in historical events such as Europeans` voyages of discovery and colonization of Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

The racial treaty allows and justifies certain people, by virtue of their alleged superiority, to exploit the peoples, lands and resources of other races. The theory of an implicit social contract is also part of the principles of explicit consent. [25] The main difference between implied consent and express consent is that express consent must leave no room for misinterpretation. In addition, you must specify directly what you want, and the person must respond concisely who confirms or rejects the proposal. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), in his influential 1762 treatise The Social Contract, sketched a different version of the theory of the social contract as the basis for political rights based on unlimited popular sovereignty. Although Rousseau wrote that the British were perhaps the freest people in the world at the time, he did not approve of their representative government. .