John Locke Contract Theory

John Locke's Social Contract Theory

The Social Contract and the mechanisms of its implementation concept of “Social Contract” first appeared in the writings of philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It was after Rousseau's book, “The Social Contract” (1762); this concept has become popular in European politics and social science. Socio-economic theory explains the origin of civil society, government and law, as a result of an agreement between people. The social contract refers to an agreement between people and their ruler, or between members of a community. The idea of a social contract, popular with many enlightened thinkers of the age and prior eras, has been used with arguments that differ in what they try to justify, be it the State, particular conceptions of justice, or a particular moral theory (Fox, 1988).

Thomas Hobbes (1651), John Locke (1689) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762) are the most famous philosophers of the social contract theory. According to Thomas Hobbes, human life would be "dangerous, brutish and short" without political power. Without it we would live in their natural state, where everyone has unlimited natural freedoms, including the "right to everything" and, accordingly, the freedom to harm all who threaten our own lives, would be an endless "war of all against all» (Bellum omnium contra omnes). To avoid this, people set free political society, that is, the civil society through the social contract in which everyone benefits from the subordination of civil rights instead of civil code, or political power. However, they have very different conclusions from this initial position (Bolton, 2004). Locke distinguished between three types of qualities. The primary quality - this is according to him, the qualities that "absolutely inseparable" from the thing. These include the shape, number, density and motion or rest. Locke thought that they are inherent in the objects themselves, and our perception in a way similar to these objects. Secondary qualities are "power" of things arouse in us certain feelings (Dunn, 1969). Invisible under the microscope the particles interact with the things our bodies so that they produce a sensation of color, sound, taste, smell and touch. These "quality" is not inherent in the objects themselves, but arise in our minds under their influence. Finally, tertiary qualities are the ability of things to cause physical changes in other things. For example, the ability of fire to turn lead from solid to liquid is a tertiary quality.

The philosophers of the past have assumed that things are substances. However, a careful analysis of Locke led to the conclusion that the empirical (sensory) evidence for the existence of the substrate cannot be found, because all the data we have, are the qualities of things. He concludes that neither material nor spiritual substance unknowable, and that this idea is so incomprehensible that defies meaningful analysis. Unlike some of his followers, Locke did not go to the end, that is not completely abandoned the idea of ??substance (Uzgalis, 2007). He simply concluded that the substance is “the unknown is something that ...