Following Pateman`s reasoning, a number of feminists have also questioned the nature of the person at the center of contract theory. The liberal individual, the entrepreneur, is represented by the Hobbesian man, the owner of Locke, Rousseau`s ”Noble Savage”, the person of Rawls in the initial position and Gauthier`s Robinson Crusoe. The liberal individual is supposed to be universal: raceless, genderless, classless, disembodied, and is seen as an abstract, generalized model of humanity that is capitalized. However, many philosophers have argued that if we take a closer look at the characteristics of the liberal individual, we do not find a representation of universal humanity, but a specific type of person historically localized. It .B Macpherson, for example, argued that the Hobbesian man is in particular a bourgeois man, with the qualities we would expect from a person during the emerging capitalism that characterized modern Europe. Feminists have also argued that the liberal individual is a specific, historical, and embodied person. (As well as race-conscious philosophers like Charles Mills, discussed below.) Specifically, they argued that the person at the center of liberal theory and the social contract is gendered. Christine Di Stefano shows in her 1991 book Configurations of Masculinity that a number of historically important modern philosophers can be understood to develop their theories from the point of view of masculinity as it is conceived in modernity. She argues that Hobbes` conception of the liberal individual, which laid the foundation for the dominant modern conception of the person, is particularly masculine because it is conceived as atomistic and solitary, and owes none of its qualities or even its very existence to another person, especially to his mother. Hobbes` man is thus radically individual, in a way that is specifically due to the character of modern masculinity.
Virginia Held argues in her 1993 book Feminist Morality that social contract theory is implicitly based on an idea of the person that can be described as an ”economic person.” The ”economic man” is primarily concerned with maximizing his own individual interests, and he enters into contracts to achieve this goal. However, the ”economic man” does not represent all people at all times and in all places. In particular, it does not adequately represent children and those who provide them with the care they need, who have been women in the past. The model of the ”economic man” cannot therefore rightly claim to be a general representation of all people. Similarly, Annette Baier argues that Gauthier`s idea that the liberal individual enters into the social contract to maximize his or her own individual interests is gender-specific, as it takes seriously neither the position of children nor that of the women who are usually responsible for caring for those children. Gauthier has an advantage over Hobbes when it comes to developing the argument that cooperation between purely selfish agents is possible. He has access to rational choice theory and its sophisticated methodology to show how such cooperation can occur. In particular, he invokes the prisoner`s dilemma model to show that self-interest can be compatible with cooperative action.
(There is a reasonable argument that we can find in Hobbes a primitive version of the prisoner`s dilemma problem.) Unlike Hobbes, Locke has a more passive view of man`s natural state. He notes that this does not lead directly to chaos, but to equality. Other differences in natural law with Hobbes are observed. He argues that the law of nature can coexist with the state of nature and maintains the freedom and equality that exists there. Another point of comparison is the more important role God plays in his theory. In his essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke depicts the existence of God as something we can understand and even understand – again unlike Hobbes – and says that it was through Him that the laws of nature were given to man. He also sees man as free and capable of behaving accordingly. Such an empowerment of man can also be said for the general will of Rousseau. So people don`t have to depend on others to enforce their rights.
Of course, this does not mean that a government is not necessary. The Two Treatises of Government, another famous work by Locke, say that government is man`s method of enforcing such laws of nature. However, as with Rousseau, consent to the third party remains an important factor to consider here. One of the striking features of state-to-state relations, as opposed to relations between allies within a state, is the extent to which they occur in a context that seems more similar to the metaphor of the state of nature. While the problems associated with social contract theory on issues of justice and legitimacy are exacerbated only by the extension of social contract theory to the international context, the international context actually has some advantages in terms of question of origin in general and Humean objection in particular. Before establishing international laws or treaties, states are aligned in two ways that reflect the state of nature of Lockean or Hobbes. First, there is no authority above the parties to an alleged contract or international agreement. Second, the adoption of such an agreement is based on the express consent of the parties concerned, and not on the tacit consent that Locke had to resort to in response to the problem identified at the beginning of this section: ”Any man who has possession or enjoyment of any part of the dominions of a government thus gives his tacit consent and is bound to obey the laws of that government. [15] The theory of social contracts, almost as old as philosophy itself, holds that the moral and/or political obligations of individuals depend on a contract or agreement between them to form the society in which they live. Socrates uses something like a social contract argument to explain to Krito why he must stay in prison and accept the death penalty. However, the theory of social contracts is rightly associated with modern moral and political theory and is for the first time fully presented and defended by Thomas Hobbes. According to Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau are the best-known proponents of this extremely influential theory, which has been one of the most dominant theories of moral and political theory in the history of the modern West.
In the twentieth century, moral and political theory regained a philosophical impetus following John Rawls` Kantian version of social contract theory, followed by new analyses of the subject by David Gauthier and others. More recently, philosophers have proposed new critiques of social contract theory from different angles. .
