Thread 17854380

>Sovereign: There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension. I am Sovereign!
>Sovereign: Barbarian life is nothing but a genetic mutation, a tragedy. Your short, nasty and brutish lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die.
>Sovereign: We impose order on the chaos of Barbarism. You exist because we allow it. And you will end because we demand it.
>Sovereign: My kind transcends your very understanding. We are each a nation. Independent, free of all weakness. You cannot even grasp the nature of our existence.

Show of hands, /his/, do you understand the social contract? How do you think society should be run, or at least what the philosophical framework should be?

Who was right and/or based:
>Hobbes
>Locke
>Rousseau

Hardmode:
>Rawls

Nightmare mode:
>Filmer

>>17854380 (OP)
>do you understand the social contract?
People consenting on a moral authority to live together.

>Hobbes
Hobbes's idea that the social contract must be 'absolute' (in the sense that you either uphold it and forsake completely your sovereignty or don't adhere to it) and that injustice can only come from conventions is retarded. In Hobbes' view, if your father signed a social contract with others to guarantee his own benefit, he can't suffer from an injustice because he's agreed to sign the contract and forsake his sovereignty. This repeats until one of his descendants voluntarily breaks the social contract.

>Locke
God created man and granted him property of his own things. The issue of the state of nature is that it doesn't allow for an effective justice. Therefore people get together to ensure some common laws to ensure that they enjoy their natural rights granted by god.
It's not the worst social contract philosophy but it's too reductive of the state and his natural laws (like property) don't have proper justification.

>Rawls
Makes the most sense desu. It recognizes that the social contract isn't purely some descriptive event that happens when people bond but something greater that enables for the creation of justice, something beneficial for all. His notion of rights of the commons in The Law of Peoples is imo a bit shaky at times but other than that he's definitely one of the more superior liberals.

>Rousseau
Rousseau is somewhat like the polar opposite of Hobbes. The latter argues that the state of nature is so bad that the only thing you can do is forfeit your sovereignty to the people's representatives (whether king or assembly). The former argues that everything bad comes from the civil state, and that people should bond together to mimic the state of nature. That ultimately leads him to hardcore republicanism. Like Hobbes, his personal conception of the state influences him too much.