Social Contract: Format

I am doing research on the topic of the social contract, as enunciated by John Locke, Thomas Hobbes and developed in the United States by contemporary liberals; and as it appears in the literature on the nature of society and government.

The format consists of posting materials on various reading matter and applying the concept of the social contract.

I think the concept has been woefully underused in the political realm and scarcely at all applied in the social contexts (of course, the notion of contracts is widely used in business transactions).
It is the success in business transactions of contracts that makes it appealing for extensive application, howbeit adapted.

The concept of the social contract is associated with the establishment of government. Hobbes and Locke used the concept to legitimatize the relation between citizen and government, whereby each entity has certain responsibilities and benefits accruing to them. Government, for one, would protect the rights of individual freedom and of his property. In return, the citizen is to abide by the laws of the state. The terms of the agreement were assumed to be set forth in a contract, viz., the country's Constitution. In sum, for these thinkers the concept refers to a one-time affair, the founding of government: the terms of the relation between citizen and his government.

Yet, as John Rawls notes in his book Political Liberalism (2005 edition), a contract can have long duration, as long as the parties live up to the "deal." Contracts of long duration are subject to historical changes. Seemingly, neither Locke nor Hobbes address the historical backdrop of contracts. If they had, they might have argued for periodic review of the social contract.

In a democracy, we are familiar with constitutional conventions, but may not be aware of their value f0r review and evaluation of the Constitution in effect. I suggest that constitutional conventions have merit for just such a purpose.

In business, an employee under contract is subject to annual performance review with the aim to improve the efficiency of the enterprise as it pertains to the employee's job description. Indeed, when a employee anticipates and participates in the performance review, he comes to know "where he stands" with the company. He may take satisfaction in knowing that he is being appreciated and is doing well.

Similarly, there could be a synergy of national pride if constitutional conventions were periodically held.

There might other uses of the social contract in the political arena; and I intend to look for them. One area I am examining is that of social justice, and I will cite a very recent book on liberalism in America, should I be able to make the connection.

In the social realm, the marriage contract is an obvious candidate for applying the meaning of the social contract. What is needed to constitute a social contract in my opinion is a review process. Some married people already have come to the practice of renewing their marriage vows periodically; yet the contract itself does not call for it, so does not constitute a social contract, as I am using the term (following Rawls).

Other possible areas of its use in the social sphere that come readily to mind: education and medicine and ethics. The value of the social contract is it promotes rationality in mankind's affairs to a degree not heretofore afforded! In what follows, I've applied the concept of the social contract to social justice, ethics, education, marriage and medicine.

The influence of Professor Jerry Law, Philosophy, Glendale Community College
In the Fall, 2008, I took an ethics class with Professor Law as Instructor. I became intrigued by his application of the scientific method in first, identifying areas where a philosophical concept was used by particular philosophers and second, finding other areas of life where the concept could usefully be extended so as to gain insight into the concept's power, not merely in explaining human behavior but in giving direction to act even more rationally.

This I take to be the value of the scientific method in social research: to corral a group of studies to form a cognitive theory and then to design further experiments about which the theory has predictive value as to their outcomes. In philosophy, these initial studies are conducted by philosophers who then develop a conceptual schemata for the term's use; which I, as a philosopher, extend to other areas where the term's use determines new ways of doing things that should result in greater rational behaving in the world.

Years ago, I was looking for a conceptual basis for making human action more rational. I was influenced by the linguistic analysts and the phenomenologists, thinking that their programs for analyzing human action could lead to making decision making more rationally founded. But I could not find in these philosophies a method that could impel thought to be even more consistent and logical. Jerry Law's method of applying science to matters of human action seems to better fit what is needed, if mankind can reach even greater levels of rationality in our behaviors.