Practice question · Select all that apply
Which are true of the social contract as an argument?
Hints
- Three describe how the argument works and how it is attacked; one takes it literally.
- No contract theorist claims the contract happened.
Show the answer
- B. Its standard objection is that hypothetical consent binds nobody
- C. It tests institutions by asking whether they could have been consented to
- D. It is hypothetical: nobody actually signed anything
Why
Reading the contract as history is the most common first-year error, and it makes the theory absurd rather than wrong. The argument is a test: legitimate authority is authority that free and equal people could have agreed to, and the serious objection is exactly that could-have-agreed is a strange ground for being bound.
Practise The Liberal State and Its Contracts
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More questions on The Liberal State and Its Contracts
- A nineteenth-century state has a constitution, entrenched rights, separated powers and a franchise of under…
- Complete the account of liberal theory.
- Pateman argues that contract theorists simply forgot to consider women.
- Social contract theory relies on a hypothetical agreement rather than a historical one. What follows from…
- Approximately what percentage of the adult population in Britain could vote before the 1832 Reform Act?
- Sort each feature by whether it belongs to LIBERALISM or to DEMOCRACY.
- Arrange these works and events in chronological order.
- Arrange the steps of the contract argument in the order it proceeds.