The Social Contract: A Basic Contradiction in Western Liberal Democracy
See all articles by Eric Engle
Eric Engle
Date Written: September, 15 2008
Abstract: The social contract and state of nature are accepted legitimating myths in the liberal democracies, yet do not correspond to reality. In contrast, a theory of natural law (lex naturalis, the law of the jungle) combined with ius naturalis (natural justice - right reason in accord with the law of nature) is internally consistent and externally verifiable and thus an adequate description of reality - natural law is a consistent and complete system with more than purely formal value. Yet, natural law theories were rejected by late modernity in favour of pure positivism and voluntarism - with disastrous consequences. Natural law arguments are the basis of the individual rights underlying the social contract model of liberal democracy and so the rejection of natural law should entail the rejection of social contract theory. Contemporary theorists such as Dworkin, Rawls and Nozick struggle to this very day with the concept of the social contract and state of nature without however consciously developing or deploying any theory of natural law and are thus doomed to irrelevance and failure because both the social contract and the state of nature are ahistorical myths. A reconceptualisation of the foundations of the state requires recognition of the validity of natural law and the rectitude of the Aristotelian view that the state is inevitable and a natural phenomena. The social contract is no answer to the problems of state formation or legitimation. Liberal democracies would more consistently and coherently legitimate themselves by reference to laws founded not on a mythical social contract but which reflect the facts of human nature.
The Social Contract: A Basic Contradiction in Western Liberal Democracy	1 I. Natural Rights	5 A. Foundation of natural law in intellectual realism	5 B. Human rights	11 1. The central function of human rights is political legitimation	12 2. The idea of human rights is necessarily ambiguous	12 a. Universal terminology is a source of ambiguity in human rights	12 b. The multiplicity of theoretical sources of law is the source of the ambiguity inherent in human rights	13 c. The multiplicity of legal sources also at the root of the ambiguity of human rights	13 d. The quest for political legitimacy based on human rights as unworkable because of the ambiguity inherent in the idea of human rights.	13 II. Social Contract Theory	14 A. The State of nature	15 B. The Social Contract	15 III. Contemporary Social Contract Theorists	18 A. Ronald Dworkin	18 Dworkin on Natural Law and Positivism	19 Principles and Policies	20 Intensive Reiteration to Exhaustion of a Fundamental Principle	21 The Inductive Deductive Method	21 Dworkin on Law and Economics	22 Conclusion: A Potentially Powerful Synthesis as yet Undeveloped and Rife with Contradictions Due to Absent Resolution of Conflicting Presuppositions	23 B. John Rawls	23 1. The "original position"	23 2. Rawls and the School of "public choice"	27 3. Rawls Contrasted with Aristotle	27 Origin of the State	27 Human Inequality	28 The Theory of Justice	29 A Catholic Inspired Synthesis of Rights Theory and Jus Naturel?	30 IV. Libertarians	31 A. Introduction: Commonalities between different anarchisms	31 Points of divergence among anarchisms	32 B. Anarcho-Capitalistes (libertarians)	33 1. Nozick - the political theory of anarcho-capitalism	34 1. Nozick's Ultraminimal State	36 2. David Friedman - the economic theory of anarcho capitalism (libertarianism) 38 3. Conclusions:	40 a. Anarcho-capitalism is unrealistic	40 b. No dissolution of private property	41 c. Privatization of state functions.	41 d. A negationist thought	41 V. Criticisms of the Social Contract	43 1. Criticisms of the Social Contract from within its own terms	43 a. The state of nature" is an impossibility	43 b. The Social contract is but a fiction	43 2. Criticisms of the Social Contract from outside its own terms	44 a. The Necessity of Government	45 b. The impossibility of an end of history	45 VI. Conclusion: Explaining the success of the theory of Social Contract Theory	45
Keywords: social contract, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Dworkin, Nozick, Rawls
JEL Classification: K10
Engle, Eric, The Social Contract: A Basic Contradiction in Western Liberal Democracy (September, 15 2008). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1268335 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1268335
Eric Engle (Contact Author)
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