Renegotiating the social contract: Hobbes to Rawls | Posted on:2004-01-15 | Degree:Ph.D | Type:Dissertation | University:University of Hawai'i at Manoa | Candidate:Kissinger, Deborah A | Full Text:PDF | GTID:1466390011963615 | Subject:Philosophy | Abstract/Summary: | | Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Rawls set out different versions of the social contract theory. In this dissertation, these different versions are treated as iterative accounts within an on-going meta-conversation. To facilitate this conversation, a generic social contract is developed that sets out a uniform way to look at the different versions of the social contract. The generic social contract highlights specific features of the contract process for comparison by creating a set of questions that are posed to each theorist. This conversation reveals a series of progressive choices regarding the values and standards incorporated into the moral and political institutions designed to bring about social order. Taken as a whole, the different versions are subsumed under a social contract paradigm that reinterprets the social contract as a diagnostic tool that goes back and forth between assessing problematic moral and political situations and the societal institutions that manage them. The social contract paradigm offers a technique of continuous inquiry that permits renegotiation of the social contract in light of progressive refinement of the demands placed upon moral and political institutions. | Keywords/Search Tags: | Social contract, Different versions, Moral and political | | Related items |
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