John Loacke's Social Contract

9 Pages 2223 Words

ng to the social contract. Secondly, I will discuss the principal advantage of the social contract, which is that the government is legitimized by the consent of the people. Thirdly, I will discuss the principal advantage peculiar to Locke’s formulation of the social contract, which is that the sovereign is held accountable for his actions. To more thoroughly examine the validity of the social contract in justifying a political order, I will discuss a possible objection to the use of the social contract, namely, that the social contract cannot oblige any but those who originally formed such a contract.
I begin my analysis by positing the existence, at some past point, of a state of nature, in which man could be found in his natural condition. Granted that no contemporary polity, or any polity duly recorded in historical records, has existed indefinitely into the past, the presence of a former of state affairs in which men were without a government of men must certainly have preceded the creation of the first such government. One may raise two possible objections to the presence, at one time, of a state of nature. Firstly, it is argued that government, usually monarchy, is a natural condition among men, because the weak are naturally subject to the strong. However, no single man is sufficiently stronger than another to subject the weaker to his will. Indeed, individual men are roughly equal to each other, for “the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination, or by confederacy with others” (Hobbes 118). The equal, inherent rights which men enjoy further demonstrate the inherent equality among men. Locke argues that, because all men share a common creator, whose works all men are obliged to respect, natural law obliges men not “to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions” (Locke 219). Indeed, the state of nature is a state of perfect equality, because there is no e...