Locke argued against absolute monarchy by contending that no existing political constitution is legitimate or just unless it could be contracted into starting from a position of equal right within a (relatively peaceful) state of nature, and without violating any natural rights or duties.
For Rousseau and perhaps Kant too, the idea of a social contract played a different role: as part of their accounts of the General Will, the social contract is a point of view that lawmakers and citizens should adopt for assessing existing laws deciding on measures that achieve justice and citizens' common good.
Rawls eschews the idea of a state of nature wherein pre-social but fully rational individuals agree to cooperative norms (as in Hobbesian views), or where pre-political persons with antecedent natural rights agree on the form of a political constitution (as in Locke). We are social beings in the sense that in the absence of society and social development we have but inchoate and unrealized capacities, including our capacities for rationality, morality, even language itself
Rawls maintains (in LHPP, cf. p.15) that the major advocates of social contract doctrine—Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant—all regarded the social contract, as a hypothetical event. Hobbes and Locke thus posited a hypothetical state of nature in which there is no political authority, and where people are regarded as rational and (for Locke) also reasonable.
For Rousseau and perhaps Kant too, the idea of a social contract played a different role: as part of their accounts of the General Will, the social contract is a point of view that lawmakers and citizens should adopt for assessing existing laws deciding on measures that achieve justice and citizens' common good.
Rawls eschews the idea of a state of nature wherein pre-social but fully rational individuals agree to cooperative norms (as in Hobbesian views), or where pre-political persons with antecedent natural rights agree on the form of a political constitution (as in Locke). We are social beings in the sense that in the absence of society and social development we have but inchoate and unrealized capacities, including our capacities for rationality, morality, even language itself
Rawls maintains (in LHPP, cf. p.15) that the major advocates of social contract doctrine—Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant—all regarded the social contract, as a hypothetical event. Hobbes and Locke thus posited a hypothetical state of nature in which there is no political authority, and where people are regarded as rational and (for Locke) also reasonable.
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