Most Famous Social Contract Philosophers
Social contract theory is the philosophical tradition that grounds the legitimacy of political authority in an actual or hypothetical agreement among the governed. Its classical formulations were developed in the 17th and 18th centuries by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, each of whom offered competing accounts of the state of nature, the terms of the contract, and the legitimate scope of government. Social contract reasoning shaped modern constitutional government and the doctrine of consent of the governed. The tradition was substantially revived in the 20th century through the work of John Rawls, who argued that principles of justice are those that would be chosen behind a veil of ignorance. Variants of social contract theory remain central to contemporary political philosophy.
Philosophers in this tradition
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John Locke
John Locke was an English philosopher and physician, regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. In the Essay Concerning Human Understanding he argued tha...
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was an 18th-century Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer whose work profoundly influenced political theory, education, literature, and the French Revo...
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Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes was a 17th-century English philosopher whose 1651 book Leviathan is one of the founding texts of modern political philosophy and social contract theory. Writing du...
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John Rawls
John Rawls was a 20th-century American political philosopher whose 1971 book A Theory of Justice is the most influential work of political philosophy of the post-war era. The bo...