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The Social Contract
The democratic contract is no longer so much a contract but a swindle. Nobody bothers to put up any real kind of fight against infringements of civil liberties and constitutional changes (many of these insinuating themselves subtly into the country from Brussels). Only an association of landlords made any serious fight -- which inevitably failed -- against last year's introduction of a ban of smoking in pubs and clubs; nobody was really told that ailing industries (eg. a few years ago, Rover) can't legally be supported by government funding, so inevitably collapse; only rarely do people demonstrate against changes, which amount in many particular instances to being senseless, to our environment and institutions that are introduced under some politically 'acceptable' banner, or more starkly in response to the lure of big money. The spirit of protest has been sapped from us partly through our becoming a society of easy options, partly because the world is awash with issues, and partly because the protesting voice becomes ever more powerless in the modern constitution, or vulnerable to being branded extremist or stuck in the past.
David: Social contract
A good idea to discuss the development of unsafe theories via three personalities. I did not hear the name of philosopher Samuel Clarke, whose 1704-5 Boyle Lectures dissected the deceptive, materialistic premises of Hobbes. Clarke, who articulated many of the theological ideas of Isaac Newton, pointed out the fallacies and ‘absurdities’ of Hobbes not dealing with conscience and moral philosophy given man’s desire of ‘absolute dominion over others and their possessions’. Without this Newtonian spiritual perspective, the phantom ‘social contract’ is easily manipulated into utilitarianism and worse, by a Hitler, Stalin or Mao, from the times of Gilgamesh (who overthrew the two-chamber Sumerian governance system) till today.
Dr David Barnett, Social Contract - General Will,
Rousseau's "General Will" concept is fundamentally unsound as a basis for social contract and has been abused by authoritarians ever since. Andrew Colman hit the nail on the head introducing game theory to this discussion. Adam Smith called it "The Tragedy of the Commons". The solution is usually to find a way to privatize the commons because a man will generally take care of what he owns.
If you go out with a group to a restaurant you will generally consume much more if you agree simply to divide a common bill by the number of people. Further some members of the party will feel aggrieved at paying over the odds for their own modest consumption and resent subsidizing the profligate. Such problems don't arise when each pays for his own. Generally the aggregate cost is much less.
Similarly with the social contract. It is best to limit its scope to things which can be achieved in no other way [defense against foreign predators, for example].
Dr David Barnett, Social Contract - The State as A
I subscribe to to Lockian notion of the State being my agent in the exercise of my right of self-defence. Fundamentally, one may not ask an agent to perform an act which one would not be entitled to perform oneself. For example, I may not contract with a burglar to steal from my neighbour's house.
The strength of this concept of agency is that it provides a way to judge when the state has exceeded its legitimate authority - something Hobbes was unable to do.
Social Contract
There are many agencies by which the complex contract between government and people is secured - religious, educational, satirist, humanist, brutalist (in which category I include the manifold influences of finance), psychologist, feminist - and this 'variety' is in modern thinking supposed to constitute the pluralism of a society in which the neediness of a voice will duly be afforded proportionate power. But in many ways it does is not constitute, but rather superficiallly exhibit this brand of pluralism, while imposing with excessive vehemence the apparatus of power on behalf of those who have access to it. This is very far from the kind of freedom that takes the form of the enlightened relationship between individual and God; indeed it is not freedom at all, but ultimately a kind of manipulation of mind, operatng under the title of 'rights', that follows the pattern (suppression followed by release - for those whom it transforms - from it) suggested by the slogan 'arbeit macht frei'.
John Hopkins - The Social Contract
Excellent program today. I would have loved to hear something on the extension of Social Contract ideas to international relations and the problems of democratic legitimacy that supranational organisations face today. Kant spoke of a a League of Peace (foedus pacificum) almost as in international social contract but by 1795 (during the reign of Terror) seems not to believe in democracy any more. J.S. Mill (in Considerations on Representative Government) doubted multinational government could be representative. And today we see all supranational institutions suffering (to a greater or lesser extent) from problems of demoratic legitimacy. It seems to me that Locke, Rousseau, Kant & Mill all have something important to say on these 21st century problems.
léo burton...the tribe or individuals
In our culture the assumption is that the unit is the individual, and that indivuals evolve to society; we talk of children becoming socialized.It may be that pre-civilization the unit was the society or tribe, and that there was no concept of the individual, "I" Society has devolved to become a collection of indivdualsIf the tribe is the organism,there may be roles based on age, gender, strength; almost ertainly there will be a behaviour pattern, i.e. a culture, yet there may be no concept of individual will or choice. In our time, it is often when original inhabitants and descendants of conquerers occupy the same territory that a social contract becomes necessary.
James Macdonald - The Social Contract
In your discussions of the origins of the idea of a social contract, you and your guests missed by far the most important ancient statement of the idea. In The Republic, Plato quotes the sophist Glaucon as stating:"So, when men do wrong and are wronged by one another and taste of both, those who lack the power to avoid the one and to take the other, determine that it is for their profit to make a compact with one another neither to commit nor to suffer injustice; and this is the beginning of legislation and covenants between men." In other words, the social contract is made between those who reject the rule of superior force (the Hobbesian position) because they are likely to be on the losing end in a struggle for power conducted on those terms.Put in this straightforward way, the social contract does not require a doctrine of natural rights to suport it. It is a de facto political sytem put in place by those who reject the idea of force in social and political life in favour of the rule of commonly agreed laws.The doctrine of natural rights was only necessary in the seventeenth century as a counterargument against royal and aristocratic rule which sought to cover its rule-of-force origins under the cloak of divine authorization. Hobbes's problem was that while he saw through the religious claptrap of the monarchists (and of the puritan theocrats) he only succeeded in resurecting the right of conquest as a justification for power.James Macdonald (author of A Free Nation Deep in Debt: The Financial Roots of Democracy)
Stephen Rhodes - The Social Contract
On a day that sees the Archbishop of Canterbury suggesting that we incorporate Sharia Law into the legal system to which we are all subjected, it is depressing that the works of Enlightenment writers such as Hobbes and Paine are not actively promoted in the National Curriculum. Governments and religious leaders should all be aware that those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind.
Andrew Colman The Social Contract
This was an excellent programme, better than any short general introduction to the subject that I've seen or heard. However, like almost all philosophical and historical accounts, it failed to clarify Rousseau’s problem adequately. I don’t blame the contributors for this, because we need the conceptual framework game theory to see it clearly, and Susan James even indicated at one point that there was something deeply obscure about Rousseau’s problem. The problem pivots on the distinction between the "general will" and the "will of all": "There is often a great difference between the will of all and the general will; the latter regards only the common interest; the former regards private interests, and is merely the sum of particular desires" (The Social Contract, Bk. II, chap. iii). Game theory has revealed the existence of fundamentally paradoxical types of social interactions in which it is in the rational interest of each individual to act in a particular way, irrespective of how others act, and yet each is individually better off if each does NOT act in that way. For example, it is in the individual self-interest of every North Sea fisherman to catch as many cod as possible, irrespective of whether or not other fishermen exercise voluntary restraint, but if they all behave in this way, then cod will be fished to extinction, as herring were many years ago, and each fisherman will be individually worse off than if each had exercised restraint. Games of this type are called social dilemmas, and they are ubiquitous in social, political, and economic life. Individual rationality leads to a sub-optimal outcome, and everyone is better off if they are all able to put in place a binding mechanism that prevents them from pursuing their individually rational interests. This is the social contract that promotes the general will by circumscribing the (individual, unfettered) will of all. It is in that sense that "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains" (Bk I, chap. i), because the social contract is freely entered into by civilized people to escape the paradoxically negative results of individual rationality.
keith farman - The Social Contract
It is said that particularly Rousseau was struck by the nature of the social structure and relationship between the individual and his social group to be found among Native American social and political groups - especially the long-standing and politically effective Iroquois Confederacy. Native American social and political experience was not infected by the deeply influential concepts of 'ownership' that lay at the heart of western philosophy and political belief. Thomas Paine was also apparently greatly impressed and influenced by the existence of a social and political grouping demonstrating many of the social values he and Rousseau were trying to recommend.It would be SO interesting for a later programme to trace this connection and influence - especially as they relate so directly to the twin doctrines of 'Discovery' and 'Manifest Destiny'. These were the philosophical principles that were used to justify genocide and enslavement of the indigenous peoples of North America (and aboriginal people elsewhere).And what is "making the world safe for democracy" other than a modern version of Manifest Destiny? Or indeed the treatment of all non-Muslims or non-Christians by fundamentalists of both faiths, as infidels or people of less spiritual value?Tracing this connection would show that these are not mere historical specualtions - but living, active, principles causing death and injustice today.keith farman
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