Self-love, self-love and pity are not the complete complement of the passions of Rousseau`s thought. As soon as people have acquired an awareness of themselves as social beings, morality also becomes possible and this depends on the additional capacity of consciousness. The most detailed accounts of Rousseau`s conception of morality can be found in the Lettres Morales and in sections of the Confession of Faith of the Vicar of Savoy, which is part of Emile. In the most primitive forms of human existence, before the emergence of self-love, pity balances or inhibits self-interest. In this respect, it sounds like a moral feeling like huhmic sympathy. But as something that is only instinctive, Rousseau lacks a truly moral quality. True morality, on the other hand, consists in the application of reason to human affairs and behavior. This requires the mental faculty, which is the source of a truly moral motivation, namely conscience. Conscience pushes us in an almost aesthetic way to love justice and morality. Like the appreciation of justice and the desire to act to promote it, consciousness is based on a rational appreciation of the orderly nature of God`s benevolent plan for the world. However, in a world dominated by fiery self-love, the normal pattern is not just a complete morality of reason or replaces our natural proto-moral sympathies.

Instead, the usual course of events in civil society is that reason and sympathy are suppressed, while people`s increased ability to argue is put at the service not of morality, but of the impulse to dominate, repress, and exploit. (For Rousseau`s recent discussion of consciousness and reason, see Neidleman, 2017, chap. 7.) David Gauthier`s “neo-Hobbesian” theory holds that cooperation between two independent and selfish parties is in fact possible, especially when it comes to understanding morality and politics. [19] Gauthier points in particular to the advantages of cooperation between two parties when it comes to challenging the prisoner`s dilemma. He suggests that if two parties respected the originally agreed agreement and morality set out in the contract, they would both achieve an optimal result. [19] [20] In his social contract model, factors such as trust, rationality and self-interest keep each party honest and prevent them from breaking the rules. [19] [20] Bertram, C. (2010) “Jean Jacques Rousseau,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [online], Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Available: plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/entries/rousseau/ [Accessed January 5, 2011]. Mills` central argument is that there is a “racial contract” that is even more fundamental to Western society than the social contract. This racial contract primarily determines who is considered a legal and political person in its own right, and thus defines the parameters of who can “move” into the freedom and equality promised by the social contract. Some people, especially white men, are individuals in their own right according to the racial contract.

As such, they are granted the right to conclude the statutes and certain legal contracts. They are considered completely human and therefore deserve equality and freedom. Their status as full-fledged persons gives them greater social power. In particular, it gives them the power to conclude contracts to be the subject of the contract, while other persons are denied such a privilege and are relegated to the status of contractual objects. The central assertion that social contract theory is approaching is that law and political order are not natural, but human creations. The social contract and the political order it creates are only the means to an end – the benefit of the individuals involved – and are legitimate only to the extent that they fulfill their part of the agreement. Hobbes argued that the government is not a party to the original treaty and that citizens are not obliged to submit to the government if it is too weak to act effectively to suppress factionism and civil unrest. According to other social contract theorists, if the government does not guarantee their natural rights (locke) or satisfy the best interests of society (called “general will” by Rousseau), citizens can withdraw their duty of obedience or change direction through elections or other means, including, if necessary, violence. Locke believed that natural rights were inalienable and that, therefore, God`s rule replaced governmental authority, while Rousseau believed that democracy (self-government) was the best way to ensure prosperity while maintaining individual freedom under the rule of law.

Locke`s concept of social contract was cited in the United States Declaration of Independence. Social contract theories were eclipsed in favor of utilitarianism, Hegelianism, and Marxism in the 19th century; they were built in the 20th century. == References ===== External links ===* Official website [5] What is the social contract? An agreement between the citizen and the government? No, it would only mean the continuation of [Rousseau`s] idea. The social contract is an agreement between man and man; an agreement from which what we call society must result. In this is the concept of commutative justice, first put forward by the primitive fact of exchange. is replaced by that of distributive justice. If you translate these words, contract, commutative justice, which are the language of the law, into the language of business, and you have commerce, that is, in its highest sense, the act by which man and man declare themselves essentially producers and renounce any claim to govern each other. The concept of social contract also plays a more or less direct role in various approaches to ethical theory developed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Some philosophers, for example, have argued that conventional moral principles are justified by the fact that rational and selfish individuals would agree to pay attention to them (because each of these principles would gain more for itself in a situation of general cooperation than in a situation of general non-cooperation). Others argued that correct moral principles are those that no one could reasonably dismiss as the basis for justifying their actions to others. Rousseau`s political theory differs from that of Locke and Hobbes in important respects. Rousseau`s collectivism is most evident in his development of the “luminous conception” (which he attributes to Denis Diderot) of the general will. Rousseau argues that a citizen cannot pursue his true interest by being selfish, but rather must submit to the law created by citizens acting as a collective. 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. For Rousseau, the state of nature is relatively peaceful, but a social contract becomes necessary to overcome the conflicts that inevitably arise as society grows and individuals become dependent on others to satisfy their needs. .