Follow Up on Social Contracts

In reflecting on my most recent post I have realized the need for clarification and further elucidation.

In rejecting the Hobbesian conception of man in a state of nature as the origin of the social contract, what I was not saying is that life was one big, happy family or that life was not nasty, brutish and short for the people. Pre-modern, especially pre-industrial, life was so burdensome on individuals that the great majority of humanity suffered under toilsome conditions, were reduced to begging, or simply perished. It was Capitalism, Ludwig von Mises observes, that enabled the great masses of men to rise above abject poverty through selling their labor to owners of productive capital. However, none of those men in poverty entered into a social contract in order to create civil society.

What I am arguing is that the abstraction, "man in the state of nature" is not an adequate understanding of the modern state, or of legitimizing governmental authority at all. Ultimately, governing authority originates in the natural condition of the human family with its own naturally ordained hierarchy.

Perpetual Tyranny
The turn to contractarian conceptions of the state is precisely the turn towards habitual tyranny, for the state is defined in its origins as that entity which exists as arbiter and enforcer over and against individual persons. In this contractarian worldview, the state can only be that which embodies the monopoly on violence.

If the state is granted, at its very origin, a monopoly on violent coercion, than how can we expect to restrain it? With a piece of paper called a constitution? Thomas E. Woods correctly asks if the government is the one who writes, enforces and interprets this constitution, what is ever going to stop it from assuming more and new powers? "Will the constitution grow fangs?!" (from his podcast lecture, Who Killed the Constitution?)

Moral Confusion and the State
What furthers the drive of the modern nation-state toward tyranny is the shipwreck of morality, the breakdown of moral understanding between competing ideologies. Alasdair MacIntyre sees in the Enlightenment Project a rejection of the teleological framework of morality (explicitly Aristotelianism) and the adoption of diverse systems of practical rationality, with their own justifications and first principles. Then these opposing systems of morality inevitably conflict in the public sphere, but holding to precise first principles that radically differ from one another, the conversation becomes argument becomes a yelling match, becomes an issue for the courts to ultimately decide moral issues.

That is why MacIntyre brilliantly observes that the lawyers are today's clergy, today's magisterium. In a society that has multiple conceptions of the Good, of rules, goods, evils, virtues and vices, there can be no rational argumentation where 2 parties can come to agreement. The disputes never resolve, save that by state intervention. The state becomes the arbiter of moral disputation through legislation.

Even holding that our contract-originated state is just meant to preserve life, liberty, and property I think that if we yield to such a justification, we have already lost the war for liberty in the long run. We loose from the beginning individual sovereignty over our lives, our liberty and our property. Why? Because once we conceive of the state as being the only thing that can guarantee those things, then we grant it the ability to take all of it away from us.

Personalism
If your first step is in the wrong direction, then you will never reach your destination. We cannot base a program of liberty on a thesis, even a moderated one (that is, Locke and not Hobbes), on a social contract that, a) is based on a fictional accounting of anthropology, b) conceives the state as super-arbiter over individuals, and c) is the only one with enforcement power.

I find it interesting to note that Catholic theological anthropology is both communitarian and individualist. This is, in a large way, the Church's evolving understanding of personalism- the identity, destiny, and dignity of the human person. In Vatican II, it was this personalism that characterizes much of Gaudium et Spes. I think that the Church's personalism is more than just a mitigated individualism or mitigated collectivism. Clearly, the person is not to be regarded as merely instrumental to the ends of the state. The state cannot violate the dignity of the human person, which is an expression of natural rights. The person is greater than the state, not just a part in a whole. However, the person ought to serve the common good, and acts of justice and charity are not option works for Christian living.

There is a lot more to be said, but I should wrap it up here.

Family as the Negation of Social Contract Theory

Introduction.

This post is simply on the social contract, made famous by philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Renee Rousseau, and how the use of pre-historical man's "state of nature" narratives are false and inadequate for founding of a political order that is satisfactory to man. It is my belief that the family is the basis of all human society and that social contract theories of the State's authority are tried and found wanting.

Many influential Enlightenment thinkers on political science begin their social theories by constructing statements about pre-historical man, or man in a "state of nature". Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau all begin their justification of the State and its authority by creating an abstract account of man-without-government (what I sometimes term "pre-historical man") in order to bolster their social-contract theory of legitimizing governing authority.

Most (in)famous of these being the Leviathan of Hobbes, who viewed pre-historical man as both radically free and radically equal with his fellow man, resulting in a hostile, dog-eat-dog society. This is man in a "state of nature" that is, according to Hobbes, "a war of all against all." In order for man not to have a life that is "poor, nasty, brutish and short" the individual yields some of that freedom and equality to the Leviathan, the absolute State that, through awe of its power, coerces men to be civil towards one another.

The monopoly on violence is given over to the State so that its leaders may compel others to obey its laws and commands in order to ensure social cooperation and create civil society. For Hobbes, this is embodied in the absolute monarch. Locke envisioned a liberal monarchy, and Rousseau constructed republicanism and desired direct democracy as the perfect expression of the "general will" of society.

Man, in order to escape hostility and absolute aggression of all against all, surrenders the absolute sovereignty over himself and, in contract with other men, gives to society some of his own individual freedoms in exchange for security. This account, altogether fictional, of pre-historical, pre-social man is based upon a series of presuppositions that cannot be sustained.

False Radicalism.

For Hobbes to have his narrative of contractarian society to be sufficient, it relies on a false radicalism that can only be possible in abstract thought experiments and not through historical, biological or spiritual experiences. No man is brought into the world as a fully formed adult individual, cut off and isolated from other human persons, tossed into a completely hostile, alien and brutal world, able to rely only upon one's self and no other, being violent to others in order to maintain one's own freedom and equality with other men. For Hobbes, each man is radically equal with every other man in this "state of nature" who must engage in aggressive actions in order to protect his own person and property. All men are on equal playing fields, tossed into the gladiator arena whose only outcome is violence and death.

This abstracted and violent individual in a "war of all against all" is pure fiction and is invented in order to create the need for a social contract, for men to say to other men, "I yield to your authority over me (inequality) and of some of my freedoms to you, if you will create a society where we are not killing or being killed constantly."

Familial Society.

This is pure fiction because it ignores the physiological structure of human nature and human society. The first society is - and can only be - the family, of which there has never been a pre-historical time where a man was not subject to this condition of nature. To be conceived, born and raised in a family means that society itself, no matter how primitive, already exists. Families form cohesive units of mutual protection, security, bonds, expectations, rules, goods to be pursued and evils to be avoided.

The earliest political realities were not brought about by social contract, but through family, through nature. This is the only real "state of nature" that happened in human history and thus ought to be the only conceptual basis of human society that ought to be employed. The radical individual simply does not exist because, as nature intends, each person can only come to be through the action of other persons. It was the family structure, no matter how pre-historical one looks back, that forms the basis of political and social interaction.

Hobbes needs three radicalisms for his social contract to have a proper foundation: individualism, freedom and equality. His radicalization of anthropology, though, is not historically accurate. Even other animals are dependent on parents at some point. Human animals are more dependent on family units than any other animal. Not only is the human baby born more defenseless than most other mammals, but higher functions, like speech and reasoning, are formed only through social interactions made in those formative years of life.

Furthermore, within the human family there is no radical equality. The children are always beneath the adults, and this is so by nature. The family has authority (or headship) that is rooted in nature, not convention or contract. The human person, then, has never experienced radical equality with all other human persons. In fact, the earlier back in human history one goes, there seems to be inequality even among the children, as the firstborn male is considered the heir to the family and ranks higher in authority than his younger or female siblings.

An Individualist Social Contract.

A better, but still lacking, conception of social contract would be the individualism of Proudhon, who asserts that the contract is not between man and government, but between men; for such a contract does not yield an individual's sovereignty to others, but rather all men agree to refrain from aggression towards one another, maintaining one's own sovereignty over oneself and never attempting to be sovereign over others.

For many libertarians, this is akin to their principle of non-aggression, where no one- not even the State- ought to have the power to coerce or compel others. The same problem remains, for man is still conceived as radically free and equal, and the primitive world as one of aggression and hostility. The only difference being the individual stays his own sovereign. Now, this difference is huge in its implications for political thought (tending towards libertarian anarchism), but the foundations are the same and the same problems remain, I believe.

Conclusion.

We cannot base our political institutions upon philosophical systems that are fictional accounts of man in his "state of nature", with that state seen as normative for man and society. A hostile individualism fosters, for Hobbes, as well as for Locke, a social contract whereby man surrenders his own authority over himself- his autonomy and/or sovereignty- to others, and gives to an absolute monarch complete authority. This state of nature is anything but natural.

An historical and natural explanation of legitimate government authority lies in the physiological and social sphere of the human family. It is in the family that the human person receives love, education, duties, responsibilities, an identity to live and a role to perform. It is from this familial society that governmental authority originates. Families, households, clans and tribes are ruled by paternal authority, their legitimacy being derived initially from nature. If one is to found a political system based upon man in a state of nature, it had better be the right one!

Peace,

AMDG