Something Different

I was reviewing a paper I wrote a couple of years ago. Reading it again, I'm fascinated by the seismic shift in worldview that occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries. While my 21st century sensibilities struggle with the concept of the divine right of kings, I wonder if the mischief introduced by modern social contract theory has been a boon or bust for the moral disposition of our civilization. Usually not what I post on, but...food for thought.

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During the second half of the 17th century through the middle of the 18th century three political philosophers – Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau – revolutionized political thought through the development of treatises and essays on the social contract. These social contract theories arose in the context of a world that generally believed that rulers were entitled by virtue of birth to govern. This divine right to govern was part of a cosmic social topography that some historians have referred to as the Great Chain of Being. This metaphor refers to the order of the universe that God had ordained:

The Chain purported to place every creature and every object in the universe in its proper place. Because that place had been assigned by God himself, to attempt to change one’s place, let alone to attack the hierarchical concept overall, was to commit treason against God.

This hierarchy included the right of kings to rule and the obligation of subjects to obey. Except for ancient Greek and Roman experiments in democracy and republican governments, political rule until the middle of the 18th century largely remained in the hands of monarchs and kings as justified by the Great Chain of Being, but that was changing. Over time, especially during the Renaissance and later Reformation, the hierarchical structure – the role of the Roman Catholic Church, the authority of the Pope and priests, the authority of civic rulers and kings – began to come into question. Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau were instrumental to this transition. They fundamentally interpreted the world differently and started to turn this world upside down by deriving all social and political obligations from and in the service of the individual rights of man, not the divine rights of kings. Moreover, they theorized that contrary to the ancient view of human nature, men are not naturally citizens and not naturally obligated to one another through political life. This raises a fundamental question, “If we are not naturally citizens, we must be naturally something else.” And if we do not have a natural obligation to be citizens, how does this obligation occur? These are the fundamental questions that Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau endeavored to answer and are the subject of this paper.