Origin of the Word Social Contract
Rousseau also analyzes the social contract in terms of risk management[17], proposing the origins of the state as a form of mutual insurance. Elements of the social contract are often codified in legislation, even if they are understood implicitly and almost globally. In the United States, for example, there are anti-murder laws that further classify crime by gravity: first- and second-degree murder, murder, manslaughter, and premeditated murder. However, the state system that emerged from the social contract was also anarchic (without leadership). Just as individuals had been sovereign in the state of nature and therefore allowed themselves to be guided by self-interest and the absence of rights, States were now acting in their own interests in competition with each other. Thus, just like the state of nature, states were forced into conflict because there was no sovereign beyond the (more powerful) state who was able to impose a system such as social contract laws on everyone by force. In fact, Hobbes` work served as the basis for the realist theories of international relations put forward by E. H. Carr and Hans Morgenthau. Hobbes wrote in Leviathan that people ("we") need to "terrify it with power," otherwise people will not observe the law of reciprocity, "(in short) do to others what would be done." [13] These views may seem contradictory at first glance in the Krito and in the Republic: in the first dialogue, Socrates uses an argument from the social contract to show why it is right for him to remain in prison, while in the latter he rejects the social contract as a source of justice.
However, these two views are compatible. From Socrates` point of view, a righteous person is one who, among other things, recognizes his obligation to the state by obeying its laws. The state is the most morally and politically fundamental entity and, as such, deserves our utmost loyalty and respect. Only men know this and act accordingly. However, justice is not limited to obeying laws in exchange for others obeying them as well. Justice is the state of a well-regulated soul, and therefore the righteous man will necessarily also be the happy man. Justice is therefore more than just mutual obedience to the law, as Glaucon suggests, but it always includes obedience to the state and the laws that support it. Although Plato may be the first philosopher to offer a representation of the argument at the heart of social contract theory, Socrates ultimately rejects the idea that the social contract is the original source of justice. Given the long-standing and widespread influence that social contract theory has had, it is not surprising that it is also the subject of much criticism from different philosophical perspectives. Feminists and race-conscious philosophers in particular have advanced important arguments for the substance and viability of social contract theory. However, these arguments were based on a corporatist theory of Roman law, according to which "a populus" can exist as an independent legal entity. Thus, these arguments argued that a group of people can join a government because it has the ability to exercise a single will and make decisions with one voice when there is no sovereign authority – a notion rejected by Hobbes and later by contract theorists.
[The social contract] can be reduced to the following terms: Each of us places his person and all his power together under the supreme direction of the general will; and in a body we receive each limb as an indivisible part of the whole. [15] In the first Platonic dialogue Krito, Socrates convincingly explains why he must remain in prison and accept the death penalty instead of fleeing and going into exile in another Greek city. He personifies the laws of Athens and declares in their voice that he has acquired an overwhelming obligation to obey the laws because they made possible his entire way of life and even the fact of his existence. They allowed his mother and father to marry and thus have legitimate children, including himself. After the birth of the city of Athens, his laws required his father to take care of him and educate him. Socrates` life and how that life flourished in Athens depend on the laws. .