Contractarianism and Rawlsian Justice: the moral philosophical underpinnings for America.
In moral theory, we find theories of right conduct in which the idea of a social contract figures centrally in that right conduct is determined by principles of cooperation that all individuals, suitably motivated, could agree upon. (Timmons, pg. 242)
Have we forgotten the social contract? the ideological vision that created the foundational underpinnings for this nation. The Declaration of Independence, certainly reads like a social contract. On the one hand we recognize and respect the individual liberties that we have:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
In the same document however, we also explicitly state what liberties we, as a people, are willing to sacrifice in order to contribute to the common good of the society and government we want to achieve.
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
This is the nature of the social contract that defines who and what the United States of America is. Least we forget the founders of this nation were formed by the philosophical contributions of the enlightenment, This included the ideal of the social contract as espoused by Hobbes and Locke. Certainly this informed both Jefferson and Adams as they developed the ideals, government and legal system for this nation. The Constitution is written as the law of the land that codifies this social contract, the preamble of the Constitution is another articulation of the social contract.
But it doesn’t feel that we either recognize or respect the social contract. On the one hand we have conservative-libertarian Americans that either limit the notion of this contract as being relevant to a only specifically defined community or otherwise the notion is ignored/abolished altogether. On the other hand there are the hyper-liberal Americans that in their own way do recognize the core ideal of the contract but has relativized it to various groups and subgroupings that the common good (the principle aim of the contract) no longer has any identifiable status. This is the grave problem that I see facing America today.
Ruth Sample, from the philosophy department at the University of New Hampshire, offers some stirring questions and concluding suggestion in her opening preface to the provocative book “Reviving the Social Contract.”
Can citizenship in the era of Trump be saved? If our government has broken the social contract and no longer serves the interest of the people, can citizens have faith that they are better off with government than without it? What happens when our government promises fair and equal treatment, but it has become obvious (and sometimes visible through camera-phone video) that people of color, immigrants, women, and poor people are not truly equal citizens? is it time to shift our focus from the idea of a social contract between government and citizens - to the idea of a social compact - direct interaction and agreement among citizens and social institutions for the common good?
To these pertinent questions Ruth Sample goes on to affirm that the author of this book, Naomi Zack, says yes. Her book is moving us to affirm the role of the social compact - the explicit social agreement between peoples within a local community, over the social contract - the social agreement between people on the nature of government. Having read her thoughtful consideration on this argument I still maintain that it does not have to be an either/or question, but a both/and consideration.
In my courses on Catholic social teaching I remind my students that the Catholic principle of the common good is based on the tension between two other important principles.
Subsidiarity: The principle promoting the freedom of individuals and local communities to express their own political and economic agency and to participate in society and government.
Solidarity: The principle where the people and the State have a responsibility to respond to issues where certain communities are not able to adequately respond to their own oppressive or unsustainable situation.
The value of the common good forms the basis for the social contract. The social contract articulates and defends the individual values and rights that we mutually declare to one another while curtailing the extreme liberality of these rights in order to adequately serve the entire community. That is what we say as a nation in the Declaration of Independence above.
What is needed here is an appreciation of the common good and a desire to once again believe in the social contract. We can promote the idea of the social compact in our own local communities while valuing the implicit social contract that does exist (at least on paper) in our own State and Federal government. Every State has their own constitutional preamble, Bill of Rights and Amendments as does our national government. While our federal government doesn’t go into socio-economic rights states like New York do espouse these values. As an example, for those of us who work in social service (like Catholic Charities) it is good to know that the Constitution of the State of New York does provide for the social welfare of our low-income community.
The aid, care and support of the needy are public concerns and shall be provided by the state and by such of its subdivisions, and in such manner and by such means, as the legislature may from time to time determine.
How many of us know what our own states believe in? This is the tragedy that allows some of us to define our own community and national values as we so choose too rather than to accept and respect the broader social contract. While it is fine to consider the idea of a social compact between local communities it should not come at the risk of ignoring the social contract that we agree too in forming our government. It is our right to evaluate and adjust the contract and social compacts can be useful process for doing this. But this process should be done through our own civic involvement with the broader community, not with acts of domestic terrorism and insurrection by a small subsection of the community.
The social contract is an implicit agreement that we all make by agreeing to the benefits of being part of a community and sacrificing some of our liberties in order to support these benefits for ourselves and others. It is an ancient moral theory that includes our own Judeo-Christian religious tradition. Watch the 24th minute (just that one minute) of this documentary on the Jewish people to appreciate historical and religious context for this moral theory. I added the quote from archeological scholar Richard Friedman below. He offers an amazing insight into how the original Ten Commandments represent a social contract between God and Israel.
One of the great discoveries of scholarship in the last century was that in the ancient Near East there were all sorts of legal document, treat documents, between nations and individuals. And in the Bible the covenant between God and Israel follows the form of those ancient treatise, it’s in the legal terminology of the day. It would be, as if the covenant were given today, it would say something like: “Well, here and after in this covenant, God will be known as the party of the first part and Israel will be known as the party of the second part. Whereas the party of the first part brought the party of the second part out of the land of Egypt, out of house of bondage; therefore you shall have no other gods...” and so on. The covenant is really in legal terminology, it was understood to be a contract between God and Israel.
Contractarianism is a valuable moral theory that is central not only to our Judeo-Christian values but also to our own American identity (as I have explained above). The theory of an implicit, yet morally binding social contract with one another. Even though many of us do not explicitly agree to the values that our founders and immigrant citizens do, we all benefit from these social contracts so we can’t just assume they do not apply to us when it becomes inconvenient. As Hank Green tells us in the crash course video above:
Catholic moral theory applies natural law theory for assessing absolute values that are based on basic human needs but this does not discount the value or use of moral contractarianism. The natural law values feed into conventional law (the laws we live with on a day to day) and since it is good for conventional law to be adaptable, in order to account to our emerging understanding of the natural law, then the contractarian approach is good so that we, the people, can evaluate the role and relationship that government has with us. The social contract allows us to make the evaluations like the ones that Ruth Sample does in the quote above.
A central value for our social contract is certainly the common good but even this value is shaped by the virtue of justice and how it is applied to society. Here is where John Rawls and Thomas Aquinas steps in to help define this virtue both individually and in society. Their development of justice fits very well within a moral contractarian framework. On the one hand you have commutative justice within each individual but your relationship with larger society and government is also organized with distributive and contributive justice. I will not say more about this here as I have developed an earlier post on the virtue of justice. Suffice to say that when we consider our social contract (which I hope we do) we should also reflect on how our collective sense of justice helps define the values that we agree to.
