Analysis Of Rawls' Contract Theory

The development of modern western humanism has stimulated the development of classical contract theory. As to explain the contract classical theory, basically I chose Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Kant for representative; Hobbes is accepted as a main founder of modern social contract theory, who holds the view that the national contract hypothesis was based on motivation, who is the first person to complete framework for his social contract theory. He discusses the relationship between humanity principle and national origin, and then explores the essence of state sovereignty. Locke stars from goodness and reaches the core points of his social contract theory—the legitimacy of origins of nation and its existence is from the universal admission of people, and this is the only agreed based can indicates the thought of modern sovereignty from people, which means all the rights of state are from the consent of people, without which the state can not be justified. Therefore, the government's sole purpose is to protect people's property, and promote the welfare of all people. But Rousseau's contract theory is more complex than Hobbes and Locke. Because he expresses the social contract in two versions, although among which are not consistent in some places, I think the key of Rousseau's theory is below. All people give all their natural rights to the state, conversely they also get the whole social rights from the state and the social rights are much better than the natural rights. He assumes that it is eventually that human get into the social civilization; though the social state is denial to the natural situation, it is not the end of the development of human society. The history of mankind should be posed at a new political society, and this nation should be a real contract countries. Kant's thought is different from the other classical contract theorists, because Kant uses rational free to replace the experience of contract theory of freedom from Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. But all these theories have two basic features, the first is to define and transcend the human nature, the other is to stipulate the evolution of human social nature from the historical dimension.From the open of"A theory of justice", Rawls want to develop the traditional contract theory into a higher level. Through the design of the original position and the reflective equilibrium, he asserts that the two principles on which an ideal society should be based on would be chosen by the public. After that there are some typical evaluations on Rawls'contract theory. Then I make some comparison on the similarities and differences between Rawls and the classical theorists. Finally, I come to the conclusion that though there are some similarities between them, Rawls'contract theory has transcended the classical theory and improved it to a more abstract level.