A Defence of Contract Theory against Some of its Critics

Abstract

Fifty years ago a distinguished historian of the social contract, J. W. Gough, wrote that Kant’s political philosophy ‘brings us within sight of the end of the history of the contract theory’ (Gough, 1957, p.181). Recent developments have shown this judgement to be premature, as we shall shortly illustrate at some length. Nevertheless, Gough had apparently good grounds for his remark. In the first place, it is true that after the time of Kant’s writing (the end of the eighteenth century), contract theory went into eclipse, along with the theory of natural law with which it was so closely allied. This was, in part, a delayed result of the influence of Hume on the utilitarian philosophers whose style of thinking became predominant in Britain; in part, also, a consequence of the increasing tendency to consider society and politics historically, a vantage point from which the social contract idea seems highly dubious. One of the most important of the historicist critics of contract theory is the German philosopher, Hegel, about whom we shall have more to say below.