What Is Contractarianism?

Direct Answer

Contractarianism is the theory that the moral and political obligations that bind us are best understood as arising from an agreement among agents. In political philosophy, it justifies the state: individuals who would otherwise live without security or justice consent, actually or hypothetically, to a set of rules and institutions because doing so benefits everyone. In ethics, the same idea grounds moral rules: what is right is what no one could reasonably reject, or what self-interested parties would agree to as the terms of fair cooperation. Because it grounds obligation in agreement rather than in divine will, nature, or intuition, contractarianism is a distinctively modern, secular, and choice-based approach to normative questions.

Historical Context

The social contract tradition was born in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thomas Hobbes argued in Leviathan (1651) that the state of nature is a war of all against all, and that rational, self-interested individuals would agree to hand over their rights to an absolute sovereign in exchange for security and peace. John Locke transformed the contract into a charter of limited government, arguing that individuals retain natural rights to life, liberty, and property that governments exist to protect. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract (1762) recast the agreement as the foundation of popular sovereignty and moral freedom: in obeying the general will, each person obeys a law they give to themselves. The tradition declined with the rise of utilitarianism in the nineteenth century but was spectacularly revived in the twentieth by John Rawls, whose A Theory of Justice (1971) derived principles of justice from the choice of free and equal persons behind a "veil of ignorance."

Key Arguments & Debates

The central argument for contractarianism is that agreement explains the normative force of rules: if we have agreed to a rule, we have a reason to comply that we cannot lightly set aside, and the rule is legitimate precisely because it expresses our own choices. The theory also explains why moral requirements bind everyone equally: they are the terms of fair cooperation among equals.

The objections are equally fundamental. First, no actual agreement seems to have occurred: most people never consented to any contract, so the theory appears to rest on a fiction. Contractarians reply that the relevant contract is hypothetical, what rational agents would agree to, and that hypothetical agreement reveals the content of justified norms even where actual consent is absent. Second, critics such as Robert Nozick ask why hypothetical agreement binds those who would not in fact agree, and others press the question of whether the starting position is fair: Rawls's veil of ignorance is meant to ensure impartiality, but its design already embodies moral commitments. Third, the theory seems to require a robust account of the parties and their rationality, and to presuppose that all can benefit from cooperation, which is not true of the severely disabled, future generations, or non-human animals. Contemporary contractualists such as T. M. Scanlon shift the emphasis from self-interest to the idea of principles that no one could reasonably reject, blurring the line between contractarianism and Kantian ethics.

Contemporary Relevance

Contractarian reasoning pervades modern politics and ethics. The idea that legitimate government rests on the consent of the governed animates constitutional theory, democratic practice, and international law. Rawlsian justice as fairness has shaped debates about welfare, taxation, and the design of institutions, and the veil of ignorance remains a standard device for thinking about fairness. At the same time, Nozick's entitlement theory, derived from a Lockean contractarian starting point, grounds contemporary libertarianism, and the Rawls-Nozick debate defines the philosophical landscape of distributive justice. Anyone who reasons about legitimacy, consent, fairness, or the terms of social cooperation is reasoning within the contractarian tradition.

Related Concepts

Contractarianism is closely related to social contract theory and theories of justice, and its leading contemporary result is justice as fairness. Its accounts of justice and distributive justice are developed by Rawls, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Locke.

Further Learning

For authoritative treatment, see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries on Contractarianism and Contemporary Approaches to the Social Contract, and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Social Contract Theory.