Contract and Consent: The Evolution of Social Contract Theory

By Jeremy Riley

Contract and Consent: The Evolution of Social Contract Theory by Jeremy Riley explores the development of social contract theory from its origins in the works of early political philosophers to its modern-day implications. The book delves into the seminal contributions of thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Marx, examining how their ideas about the state, individual rights, and the nature of authority have shaped political philosophy and governance.

The narrative traces the evolution of the social contract, a foundational concept in political thought, and its role in shaping the relationship between the individual and the state. It begins with Hobbes' bleak view of human nature and his justification for absolute sovereignty, followed by Locke's more optimistic vision of government as a protector of natural rights. Rousseau introduces the concept of the general will, challenging traditional notions of political authority, while Kant elevates moral law and individual autonomy as central to the legitimacy of the state.

The book then examines the critiques of liberalism, from Marxist and anarchist perspectives that reject the state's legitimacy altogether, to the rise of neo-liberalism in the late 20th century, which argues for a minimal state focused on individual liberty and free markets. Through these theoretical evolutions, Contract and Consent provides a critical lens on the balance between individual freedom, equality, justice, and political authority.

Drawing on historical context, key philosophical debates, and the evolution of political thought, this book offers an insightful exploration of the social contract's centrality to understanding the modern political landscape and its continued relevance in addressing contemporary issues of governance, justice, and rights.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Historia Magna
• Release date: Apr 20, 2025
• ISBN: 9798230727095

Book preview

Chapter 1: Origins of the Idea — Covenant, Oath, and Authority in the Ancient World

The roots of social contract theory lie not in philosophy textbooks, but in the religious rituals, legal codes, and political practices of the ancient world. Long before Hobbes or Rousseau articulated formal doctrines of consent, ancient societies wrestled with the question of how human beings should be bound to one another, and to authority, through shared understanding, moral obligation, and sacred vow. The earliest expressions of what would become the raw materials of contract theory can be found in the Mesopotamian plains, the deserts of Sinai, and the agorae of Greece—places where authority was negotiated in the language of gods and kings, and where social order rested precariously upon both coercion and consent.

In the third millennium BCE, the Sumerians of Mesopotamia codified some of the first known legal systems. The Code of Ur-Nammu (c. 2100 BCE), found in tablets from the city of Nippur, is often considered the oldest surviving law code. Its prologue attributes lawgiving to the divine mandate: Ur-Nammu, the mighty warrior, king of Ur, king of Sumer and Akkad... by the command of Nanna, lord of the moon... established equity in the land. What is striking here is the fusion of royal power and divine sanction—the idea that law is not merely enforced by kings but legitimized through celestial authority. While not a contract in the modern sense, these early codes rested on an implicit covenant: the ruler provides order and justice, and the people obey, not out of fear alone but out of a sacred recognition of order.

More elaborate and influential was the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, dated to around 1754 BCE. Its stele, inscribed in Akkadian cuneiform and discovered in 1901 in Susa (modern Iran), outlines over 280 laws covering commerce, property, family, and criminal justice. In its prologue, Hammurabi claims: Anu and Enlil named me to promote the welfare of the people... to cause justice to prevail in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil, so that the strong may not oppress the weak. Here, the king functions almost as a divine trustee—entrusted with the mandate to ensure balance and justice. Although coercion clearly loomed behind the laws, Hammurabi’s rhetoric evokes the rudiments of a proto-contractual relationship: mutual obligation between ruler and ruled, rooted in a cosmic order.

Yet it is in the Hebrew Bible that the concept of covenant (berith) emerges with distinctive clarity. The Book of Exodus (c. 13th–10th centuries BCE), particularly chapters 19–24, offers a powerful vision of a moral and political covenant between Yahweh and the Israelites. At Sinai, Moses conveys the divine offer: Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples... and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Exodus 19:5–6, ESV). The people respond collectively, All that the Lord has spoken we will do (Exodus 19:8). This scene is nothing less than a national contract, sealed by blood (Exodus 24:8), forming a people not merely by descent but by consent—a community founded upon mutual obligation, mediated by law, and articulated through solemn vow.

This notion of divine-human covenant shaped the Jewish political imagination deeply. The prophet Samuel’s warning to the Israelites in 1 Samuel 8, when they demand a king, is particularly resonant: You are rejecting your God, who saves you from all your disasters and calamities. You said, ‘No, set a king over us!’ (v. 7–8). The idea that governance must emerge from consent, and that such consent may be misguided if it leads to tyranny, is a tension that would echo centuries later in the works of Locke and Rousseau.

Turning to the Greek world, the city-states (poleis) of the classical period offered the first secularized models of collective rule through human reason and deliberation. In Athens, citizenship was framed not merely as a hereditary status but as a shared commitment to the nomos—the body of laws governing the city. Socrates, in Plato’s Crito (c. 399 BCE), famously refuses to escape his death sentence, defending his obedience to the law with an argument rooted in implicit contract. He imagines the Laws of Athens speaking: Since you were born, brought up, and educated here, and never left the city... have you not agreed, by your actions, to obey us? (Crito, 51c–52a). Socrates introduces a vital element to contract theory: the idea of tacit consent, given not by explicit agreement but by continued residence and benefit from a legal system.

Plato himself was skeptical of democracy and proposed in The Republic (c. 380 BCE) a radically different vision of political order based on philosopher-kings. Yet even here, a form of social contract remains: citizens are to be educated, categorized, and governed for the good of the whole. Justice, for Plato, is harmony—each doing their proper task within the structure. While the contract is not voluntary in a modern sense, it is rational, ordered, and bound to the common good.

Aristotle, more empirical than his teacher, grounded politics in human nature. In Politics (Book I), he writes: Man is by nature a political animal. Unlike beasts or gods, humans live in poleis because only in such associations can they realize their full potential. Aristotle did not posit a formal contract, but he viewed law and governance as natural extensions of rational life in community. Justice, for him, was teleological—each person receiving their due based on function and virtue.

The Roman contribution to contract thought came not only in political theory but in legal practice. Roman law formalized the pactum and contractus as binding civil arrangements. The Twelve Tables (c. 450 BCE) established the principle that mutual agreement and public acknowledgement created enforceable obligations. Later jurists, such as Cicero in De Re Publica and De Legibus, emphasized the ideal of a republic governed by reason, tradition, and shared commitment to the res publica. In De Legibus (Book I), Cicero writes, True law is right reason in agreement with nature... it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting. This natural law framework would profoundly influence Christian and early modern thinkers.

Equally significant was the Stoic contribution. Thinkers like Epictetus and Seneca articulated a vision of moral equality under divine reason—ideas that laid groundwork for the universality of rights and the dignity of individuals that later contract theorists would invoke. The Stoics viewed every human as a citizen of the world (cosmopolites), subject to a universal law above any temporal authority.

By the end of antiquity, then, key components of contract theory were in place: the mutual obligation of ruler and ruled (from Mesopotamia and Rome), the idea of divine or moral law as superior to temporal commands (from the Hebrews and Stoics), the notion of tacit or explicit consent as a source of legitimacy (from Athens), and the recognition of political association as natural or rational (from Aristotle). What was still absent, however, was the deliberate and hypothetical act of founding—a conscious collective agreement to exit a state of nature and form civil society. That radical conceptual leap awaited the early modern philosophers. But they would not invent contract theory ex nihilo; they would inherit a legacy of covenants, codes, oaths, and republican virtue, stretching back thousands of years, each shaped by the cultural and theological soil from which it grew.

Even in its earliest forms, the language of contract served as a mirror of power and a mask for it. Whether invoked by kings to justify rule, or by prophets to limit it, the concept of obligation by consent reveals a perennial human desire—to bind ourselves together not merely by fear or force, but by reason, word, and will. It is this ancient hope that pulses beneath every later articulation of the social contract, from Hobbes’s Leviathan to the universal declarations of our own age.

Chapter 2: The Polis and the Citizen — Consent and Civic Duty in Classical Greece

In the ferment of the fifth century BCE, Athens emerged not only as the cradle of democracy but as the philosophical crucible where the ideas of consent, law, and justice were relentlessly examined. The Athenian polis, in its fragile experiment with self-rule, produced a new vision of political life: one in which free citizens governed themselves through deliberation, vote, and public accountability. It