Social Contract Theory Should Be Abandoned

Files in this item
Date
2013Author
Frederick, Danny
Quotable link
http://dx.doi.org/10.22029/jlupub-415Abstract
I argue that social-contract theory cannot succeed because reasonable people may always disagree, and that social-contract theory is irrelevant to the problem of the legitimacy of a form of government or of a system of moral rules. I note the weakness of the appeal to implicit agreement, the conflation of legitimacy with stability, the ... undesirability of `public justification' and the apparent blindness to the evolutionary critical-rationalist approach of Hayek and Popper. I employ that approach to sketch answers to the theoretical, historical and practical questions about the legitimacy of government or of systems of moral rules.
Original publication in
Rationality, markets, and morals: RMM 4 (2013), 178-190