The Social Contract from Hobbes to Rawls.

McCandless, Amy Thompson

As its title suggests, The Social Contract From Hobbes to Rawls examines the various ways political scientists and moral philosophers have used the concept of the social contract to formulate their theories of the good society. The idea of a social contract has been crucial to shaping liberalism in Britain, the United States, and Canada, and although the authors discuss continental philosophers such as Rousseau and Kant, their emphasis is on the Anglo-American political experience.

The volume of essays had its origin in a conference on contractarianism held in Wales in 1993, and eleven of the fourteen authors are lecturers in politics at British universities. Of the three remaining authors, two hold positions at American institutions and one at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Several authors have backgrounds in law and philosophy as well as politics, but despite the book's claim to approach contractarianism historically as well as philosophically, there are no historians among the contributors, and only a few essays examine the historical context in any great detail. The volume is designed for "courses in the history of political thought and modern political philosophy" [p. xi] and will probably have little appeal outside these classrooms.

David Boucher, a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Wales, Swansea, and Paul Kelly, Lecturer in Politics at the same institution, introduce the essays by discussing the diverse forms contractarian theories have taken since the seventeenth century. They divide social contract theories into three types: moral, civil, and constitutional. Moral contractarians such as David Gauthier "ground moral principles in the creative self-interest of individuals who adopt constraints on their behaviour in order to maximize benefits" [p. 3]. Civil contractarians are more concerned about a social contract which delineates political authority and explains political associations. In constitutional contractarianism "civil society itself is not necessarily posited to rest upon consent, [but] it is instead the relationship between the ruler and the ruled that is said to be contractual . . ." [p. 10].

Boucher and Kelly also distinguish between the classical contractarians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant and modern contractarians such as Rawls, Nozick, Buchanan, and Gauthier. The former were far more preoccupied with the personality of the state. "The state becomes the principal moral entity through which the interests of individuals are expressed in the international society of state. The primary obligation of the citizen de facto belongs to the state, and that of the state to its citizens, and only to humanity as a whole as a secondary consideration" [p. 14].

The volume also investigates various forms of anti-contractarian theories, including those by Hume and Hegel. One of the most interesting of these chapters is a feminist critique of contractarianism by Diana Coole, a Senior Lecturer in Politics at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London. Although early feminists sought to share with men the right to life, liberty, and property, more recent feminists question a mode of political discourse which is based on male values and behaviors. They argue that "liberal political and ethical relations need restructuring to accommodate a different - more 'feminine' - voice, which would infuse an ethic of responsibility and care, a concern for concrete others, into the detached and impersonal individualism of the modern polity" [p. 197]. Feminists, like communitarians and democratic theorists, prefer a "conversation rather than contract . . . a dialogue among actual, encumbered, situated selves" [pp. 206-207].

Marxists similarly object to the individualist nature of social contract theory. Marx believed that workers enjoyed little personal freedom under liberal capitalism, and he rejected the abstract philosophical premises upon which classical contractarianism was based. In Marx's materialist conception of history, the community, not the individual, was the basic unit of society: "only in the community has each individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; hence personal freedom becomes possible only within the community" [p. 171].

Communitarians question whether contractarians can reconcile the divergent claims of personal self-interest and political impartiality. In response, modern proponents of the social contract such as David Gauthier and John Rawls argue that principles of morality can be "self-interestedly rational" [p. 214]. In his book Morals by Agreement, Gauthier contends that morality "'can be generated as a rational constraint from the non-moral premises of rational choice'" [p. 211]. Likewise, Rawls in A Theory of Justice argues that "the terms of association in a just or liberal polity are those that individuals would agree to as fair because they are principles that would have been chosen in a hypothetical fair original agreement" [p. 227].

Margaret Moore, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo, doubts that Gauthier's principles of morality can be derived from the decisions of rationally self-interested individuals. She questions whether it is rational to keep one's agreements or to divide the fruits of cooperative production. Paul Kelly notes that communitarians have exposed similar flaws in Rawls's work: "The first part of the argument against Rawlsian contractarianism is that it presupposes an implausible conception of the moral subject, the second part of the argument extends this critique of 'justice as impartiality' into a 'motivation' problem" [pp. 228-29]. Although Kelly believes that Rawls's notion of "justice as fairness" has a lot to offer contemporary liberalism, he concludes that social contract theory simply does not provide the best defense of liberal principles in the modern world. Post-contractarian liberalism, he argues, must connect "liberal political principles with other aspects of ethical motivations broadly conceived, that is not only with personal welfare but also with morality. Liberal principles need to be shown to form an essential component of a good life" [pp. 241-42].

Political theorists from Hobbes to Rawls have tried to understand the nature of political society and to construct the ideal polity. By examining the various responses to the social contract since the seventeenth century, we can better understand the political issues and concerns of our modern, pluralistic society. Indeed, in a chapter on "Contractarianism and international political theory" John Charvet posits a "world ethical order" [p. 175] based on contractarian theory, where states rather than individuals are the primary ethical units.

Amy Thompson McCandless College of Charleston