Social Contract

Social Contract, voluntary agreement among people defining the relationship of individuals with one another and with government and by this process forming a distinct organized society. Concern over the origin and conditions of political obligation was manifest even in the writings of philosophers and statesmen in ancient Greece and Rome. Such ideas were not systematically formulated, however, until the latter part of the 16th century, when Protestant philosophers sought a democratic principle with which to oppose the authoritarian theory of the divine right of kings. In the 17th and 18th centuries the theory of a social compact among individuals of a society was linked with the doctrine of natural law. For the development and historical importance of the major social contract theories as expounded by the English philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke and the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, see Political Theory.