Contractarianism

• Hobbes described life in a totally free society as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short," a "war of all against all"

  • the state of Nature; freedom ≠ security
  • He said that rational people would opt to trade in some of their natural freedoms in exchange for the security offered by civil society (via contract)
• Free + self interested + rational individuals = morality
• Contractarianism: right acts are those that do not violate the free, rational agreements that we've made
• implicit contracts: contracts that we never actually agreed to, but find ourselves bound to regardless

  • Ex. natural born citizens
• no morality until we make them (the rules) up
• rights imply obligations; when you take benefits from society, you are expected to, in turn, provide benefits for society (ie. taxes)
• defection: when you break the contract you're in - whether you agreed to be in it or not - and you decied to look after your own interests instead of cooperating
• In order for a contract to be valid, the contractors must be free

  • cannot force or coearce someone into a contract, and the contractors must be better off in the system that the contract makes possible than they would be outside of it. The system must, overall, make life better than if you were on your own
• Morality becomes real once contractors agree to rules and the contract becomes binding, and hence, morality is determined by contractors

  • morality can then change (explicitly: changing laws. implicitly: shifting social norms and mores)
• special moral outrage for those who freely made an agreement they didn't have to, and then violates it because society is built on the trust that people will keep their word