Social
Contract
Theory
The ideas behind the Declaration
of Independence and the
American Revolution
Journal Prompt

What would your life be like without
government?
– Consider services the government
provides
– freedoms government limits
– your safety, health, happiness and
property

Would you like to live without
government? Why or why not?
Social Contract Theory is about
1. Why people theoretically
choose to give up some of
their power in order to form
a government
2. The purpose of
government
Who are the main social
contract theorists?
 Rousseau,Thomas
Hobbes, &
John Locke wrote about social
contract theory in 1600s &
1700s.
John Locke’s
ideas are the
foundation of
the
Declaration of
Independence
The Second Treatise on
Government by John Locke
 Written
1679-83
124-page PERSUASIVE ESSAY.
 Why did he write it?
Purpose of Locke’s
Second Treatise on
Government
To explain the role or purposes of gov’t
 Justify resisting the power of the king
 To protect property rights and increase
Britain’s wealth. (Locke was a big land
owner)

Social Contract theorists
like John Locke based their
ideas about government on
a fictitious “state of
nature”
What is
this
state of
nature?
What does “the state of
nature” mean?
What life is “naturally” like before
people created governments
 Do we really know what this is? No. It
is what different philosophers imagine
life would be like without government.
 What do you think the state of nature,
or life without government would be
like?

According to Locke, in the state
of nature everyone

Is equal

Has liberty

Follows “natural laws of reason” – don’t harm others’ LIFE/HEALTHor
– LIBERTY or
– PROPERTY POSSESSIONS
– Everyone has to preserve himself and others

Has executive power- everybody has the right
to punish others for breaking these natural
laws
Natural laws of the state of nature:
don’t mess with someone’s
 Life
 Liberty
 Property
The state of nature
is dangerous!
 If
everybody has the right to
punish people who break the
natural laws then what is life
like in the state of nature?
Violent! Chaotic!
Here’s how Thomas Hobbes’
described life in the state of nature,
or life w/o government
Life in the state of nature is
essential a state of constant
violence, a state of war. It
is...
“short, nasty,
and brutish”
If everyone has executive
power to punish then
x
People who are selfish or revengeful or
unfair will be extra lenient on their
friends and hard on people they dislike
when punishing people who break the
natural laws
Trade State of Nature for Gov’t
State of nature can easily turn into a
state of war, in which nobody’s life,
liberty or property is safe. So…
 Give up some liberties to leave the state
of nature and form a civil society, to
form a GOVERNMENT.
 You give the GOVERNMENT your
executive power to punish people who
mess with your life, liberty or property.

The purpose of government
according to John Locke is to
Liberty
Life
Property
Protect people’s natural rights
Definition of Political Power

“right of making laws and penalties for
the regulating and preserving of
property and of employing the force
[power] of the community [to enforce
those laws] and in the defense of the
common-wealth from foreign injury;
and all this for the public good.”
(Locke, 8)
Forming a
government to
protect yourself
from the
violence of the
state of nature
is called...
A social
contract
Right to revolution
According to John Locke, people have a
right to rebel or change the government
when it no longer protects their LIFE,
LIBERTY & PROPERTY.
This what the Founding Fathers used as
the reason for declaring independence
from England.
Right to revolution…
“… governments are dissolved from within
when they fail to protect, life, liberty and
property: contrary to their trust… by this
breach of trust they forfeit the power the people
had put into their hands for quite contrary ends,
and it [the power] devolves [goes back to]the
people, who have a right to… provide for their
own safety and security, which is the end for
which they are in society.”
“The [goal] of government is the
good of mankind….
Which is best for mankind,
A) that the people should be exposed to the boundless
whim of tyranny?
B) that the rulers should sometimes be opposed, then
they grow exorbitant in their use of power and employ
it for the destruction, and not the preservation of the
properties of their people? …people have a right to …
erect a new [form of government]… as they think
Should people revolt immediately or
over little things?
“Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and
inconvenient laws, and all the slips of human frailty,
will be born by the people without mutiny or murmur.
But, if a long train of abuses, prevarications [lies]
and artifices… make the design visible to the
people…. It is not to be wondered that they should
then... endeavor to put the rule into such hands which
may secure them the the ends for which government
was at first erected.”
Compare John Locke’s ideas
with the Declaration of
Independence
Natural Rights of men
Property