The social contract is an idea in philosophy that at some real or hypothetical point in the past, humans left the state of nature to join together and form societies by mutually agreeing which rights they would enjoy and how they would be governed. The social contract aims to improve the human condition by establishing an authority based on consent which protects certain rights and punishes those who infringe on the rights of others. Although some philosophers deny such an event has ever occurred, the idea was attractive to some thinkers, particularly during the Enlightenment, as a way to justify citizen participation and promote the advantages of one type of government over another.
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Definition
Timeline
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1651Thomas Hobbes publishes his Leviathan.
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1689John Locke publishes his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Two Treatises on Government, and Letters on Toleration.
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1762Jean-Jacques Rousseau publishes The Social Contract.
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1971John Rawls publishes his Theory of Justice.