Signing of a Social Contract: Locke, Hobbes, and Plato on the Duties of Citizens

The concept of social contract theory has been around for centuries and has its own justification for political authority and obligation. It allows for leaders to create nations and for them to uphold social order. Thomas Hobbes and John Locke had their own concepts of social contract, which was distinguished form that of the Classical or Church thought, especially on the issues of political authority and obligation.

Plato's Crito defines social contract in classical thought perfectly. When on his death bed, urged by his followers and friends to run and escape from the sentence that was imposed on him, he refuses and drinks the poison willingly knowing that being a citizen of Athens for his entire life, to abandon the local laws would go against social contract, which he very much believed in. Justice therefore, must come from agreement and not harm to one another. In classical theory it is better to uphold your social contract to your nation than to abandon it in favor of life.

Thomas Hobbes expressed his theory of social contract through The Leviathan. His arguments led to the ultimate conclusion that an absolute monarch is the only form of commonwealth that can provide security and politics should stay that way. Sovereignty was the absolute law and must rule without consent because by nature men are evil and mean. Men forfeit natural law and cede to the safety of civil law to protect their liberties. Man must then make it from its original condition of "the state of nature," to a society ruled by the sovereign. According to Hobbes, the law of nature was the general rule found through reason and the right of nature was self-preservation. The laws of nature included avoiding war, renouncing rights to all other things in social covenant and to keep all covenants. Hence, Thomas Hobbes chose divine right over natural right.

John Locke sees the social contract as common sense, or God-given reason. However, unlike Hobbes and Plato, he states that social contract requires consent from the people and is not absolute in which individual power has its limits, but the right of property is to be secured by the people. The form of government that Locke prefers also differs from that of Hobbes. Locke chooses that a commonwealth or a republic but not necessarily a democracy is the best form of government but it must be chosen after social contract has been created. Also, Locke was in favor of the people constituting major political changes, unlike Hobbes. In summary, Locke chose the establishment of natural right and social contract over divine right.

Both of these great political minds had their own ideas of political authority and political obligation, some thoughts mirroring classical thought, others contradicting it. Each of them represented a form of social contract that has been proven to be effective in a number of countries throughout history. Most importantly however, they set the groundwork for future political minds to create and build on social contract theory.