M5D2 Discussion Notes

• Media sometimes serves to solidify or undermine our understanding of the social contract in
terms of race, class or social equality. Current topics of racial profiling, police brutality, and
other issues of social inequality often appear in media. Please share specific examples and post
a link to a political cartoon that best illustrates your ethical approach.
• Essentially, social contract ethics dictate an agreement on how we should live among
one another.
• It is not a formal contract, but a moral code that enables us to each pursue our
own self-interests, understanding others will feel permission to do the same.
Ideally, this will serve to create a peaceful society.
• Hobbes believed that people would relinquish claims upon one another and their
possessions, in exchange for being treated reciprocally.
• Locke set forth the view that the state exists to preserve the natural rights of its
citizens. When governments fail in that task, citizens have the right, and even
duty, to revolt. Locke thought that reason guides our behavior, unlike Hobbes
who believed that rational self-interest alone will not secure the social contract.
Locke specifically disagreed with Hobbes assessment that human nature is
essentially self-interested, and that individuals surrender their rights, through a
social contract, for the sake of self-preservation.
• John Locke utilized the natural law theory to determine these natural rights. The
concepts of natural rights provided the foundation for our Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution of the United States, which represent the
elements of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It has been amusingly
observed that John Locke was the most influential person for our founding
documents, but was not actually in the room at the American Continental
Congress and the Constitutional Convention. Similarly, the United Nations’
Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention also employ natural
rights and have basic tenets that all people have certain human rights regardless
of their country or origin, their race, or their religion
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• Are philosophers Carole Pateman and Charles Mills correct that the social contract is not
inclusive of all people in our society? Please explain your response.
• Both feminists and race conscious philosophers are often critical of the social contract
theory, in general, which they believe was written for the benefit of white men and
generally has excluded women and people of color. Specifically, the works of Carole
Pateman’s The Sexual Contract, and Charles Mills’ The Racial Contract, both
maintain that women and people of color, respectively, have not generally counted as the
full moral and political beings for which these contacts were written. White men’s
power, as full human beings, affords them greater social power to create such contracts.
The contract has historically enabled those in power to politically exploit those who are
not really protected under the contract, such as women, African slaves and Native
Americans. John Locke had claimed, for example, that Native Americans did not own
the land they inhabited because they did not farm it (Friend, 2015).
• Mills believes that because we have idealized the social contract, we have continued to
address racial problems superficially. We erroneously believe that everyone is equal and
lawfully treated as such and that our Founding Fathers were committed to this liberty
and protection for all people. In actuality, according to Mills, the social contract theory
accorded full rights to a privileged few, and very few rights to many. Indeed, the contract
continues this racial oppression. Mills believes we need to reexamine our politics in
general, understanding how our society has been informed by the systematic exclusion
of some persons from the social contract. Thus, being honest about who we are and the
history of this contract truly is the solution; it holds the potential that we will someday
live up to the values that are truly at the heart of our country’s traditions (Friend, 2015).
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