Whose Social Contract?

Many scholars view political contractarianism as a distinctly modern account of the foundations of political order. Ideas such as popular sovereignty, the right of revolution, the necessity of the consent of the governed for rightful political authority, natural equality, and a pre-civil state of nature embody the modern rupture with classical political philosophy and traditional Christian theology. At the headwaters of this modern revolution stands Thomas Hobbes. Since the American founders subscribed to the social contract theory, they are often said to reject classical political philosophy and traditional Christian political theology as well. In America on Trial, Robert Reilly rejects the usual argument. He maintains that the building blocks of the American founding originate in medieval Christian political theology. In this essay, I argue that a morally and metaphysically realist contractarian tradition—one that affirms natural equality, the authority of the society over government, the necessity of consent for legitimate government, the right to resist tyrannical rulers, and the idea of a pre-civil state of nature—predates Hobbes and also that the voluntarist contractarian tradition inaugurated by Hobbes is self-referentially incoherent. A coherent political contractarianism logicially depends on the sort of metaphysics and moral ontology Hobbes rejects.